Spring Cleaning of your WordPress Sites
Many of you have already become very familiar with WordPress, and how it can be used to build a website that does anything you want it to do! From Building a Product Review Site to a Free Article Directory, WordPress is quite a powerful content management solution that will fill the needs of just about ANY type of website! One of the best habits you can learn, regardless of the type of website you run, is keeping your website lean and clean of all the clutter that is no longer in use! With WordPress, it gets easier with every new release!
This post is a part of our week long series of posts, Spring Cleaning of your Niche Websites.
Spring Cleaning of your WordPress Sites
The first step in cleaning up a WordPress driven site is the one thing most of us are guilty of not doing regularly… Back it up! On almost all of my own sites, backing manually up is a 2 step process!Before someone says it… yes, you can backup the entire site with your cPanel every day. I prefer not to do this as the files are very large and clutter up my email system! I choose to backup files locally and use a WordPress plugin to send me daily backups of the database.
Backing up the Files
In order to backup all of your files, connect to your host with your ftp software, and download a copy of all the files onto your local system! You should ALWAYS keep copies of your files on your local system in case the server ever has a catastrophic failure, or worse, a cancellation of your hosting account. Even though HostGator and other major hosting companies build plenty of redundancy into their servers for backup purposes, you can never be too safe when it comes to your files! In the worst case scenario where the server dies or the company goes out of business, at least you have local copies to move it to another host in a seamless fashion, with little to no downtime!
Backing up Your Database – Daily!
Your data is the backbone of your site.. without your MySQL database, you literally don’t have a website! If you are not already getting automatic backups of your database DAILY, you need to get this setup today! Go and grab the WordPress Database Backup plugin, get it installed and start using it today! Setting it up is a breeze and every morning you will wake to find a fresh backup of ALL your data sitting in your inbox.
Update to the Latest Version of WordPress
The next logical thing you want to do, is make sure you are using the latest version of WordPress! If you have the nag screen at the top of your administration, chances are you need to upgrade! Beginning with version 2.7 of WordPress, there is an automatic update utility built in which makes it super easy to stay current. If you have an older version of WordPress, grab the WordPress Automatic Update Plugin to handle everything. Its super to use and updates your setup to 2.7 in less than 2 minutes!
Once you update to 2.7+ with this plugin, disable it in your plugin manager screen… the latest version of WP has a similar function built in!
Update Your Plugins
After you have updated to WP 2.7 or higher, you will find that your plugins are super easy to update now as well! Visit your plugin page and each plugin with a new version will have an “Automatic Update” link if there is a newer version available!
Deleting Themes and Plugins you Don’t Use or Need
Make a quick run through your themes and plugin folders. If you aren’t using it… delete it! I generally find 1-2 active plugins I no long use, almost each time I cleanup! Many plugins, even when not being used, will still call certain functions within the <head> of your site. This slows the load time as well as running things that are not needed.
Plugins can be deleted and removed from your hosting account directly within the WordPress administration area with a few mouse clicks! Themes on the hand, still require you to delete them within your cPanel. (There may be a plguin for this, I just don’t have it)
Go into the theme section and make yourself a note of the theme you are using on your site. You DO NOT want to delete this! Once you have your current theme noted, go into your cPanel > file manager, and navigate to your site folder > wp-content > themes. To delete a specific theme folder, click on top of its name, and from the main file manager menu, choose delete.
Delete the themes you do not use now, or have no intent on using in the future!
How Else Do You Cleanup WordPress?
Previously Published Articles You May Like to Read:
- Spring Cleaning of your Hosting Account
- Spring Cleaning Week at The Niche Store Builder!
- Spring Cleaning of your Domain Inventory
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I have been doing my part to "Build the Internet" since 1994, when I built my first website! Since then, I have built hundreds of niche websites for myself and many others, focused on design, applications, ecommerce, search optimization and internet marketing.
Love the database backup plugin!
Mark,
I make regular backups but have not used the backup plugin. My concern is if you’re backing up all of your sites individually that the email would get out of control quickly.
Is there a way to set it up so that you only have the last X days files on your gmail account? Or another way to do it?
Jeff
Thanks for the Backup plugin.. I needed to get that installed and did last night after reading the post here… I should have already done it but had forgot until you wrote this …thanks
Good to see you again Pedro & Otis!
@ Jeff –
I have a filter in gmail to put all my dbase backups under one “heading”. About once a week, I delete all the “Older than 2 days” backups from gmail.
Mark
What sort of strain does the back-up plugin put on your server , especially if you have a couple of blogs running?
Why is it so important to keep wordpress updated to the latest version?
@ Doug –
I haven’t noticed any issues at all… and have it running on 25-30 different sites! Each backup runs as its own process and takes only seconds to complete.
@ Solid Names –
The most important reason are security related. Secondary would be that new plugins and utilities for WP are usually designed for the latest version.
On this site – I am guilty of not keeping it current, and still running an older version. The reason of not updating this site is due to some custom coding I have in place and just don’t want to take the time to recode.
Mark
Doing backup is like pulling teeth for me. The plugin should help, Ive been depending on Hostgators weekly backup.
Thanks Mark
Great article – been aiming to set up regular back ups looks like the plugin is the way to go with adding a filter to your email – great tip – thanks
backing up your blog is the most important thing you can do. Without a backup you may lose your entire site. I don’t not agree that you should delete old themes it doesn’t effect the wordpress blog from running and it allows you ro keep a backup of templates that you could use at a later date.
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