So, you’ve built your website, congratulations! You’ve checked all of your links and they are working properly, and you have announced to the world your web site redesign is live.
Getting your page published is only the first step to building a successful website, so you may be asking yourself – what next?
You need to make sure that you maintain your website. Refreshing and updating your content is one way to ensure that you’re attracting new viewers and keep the old ones coming back. You need to create a strategy to implement good content on a consistent basis. One simple way to do this is the create a WordPress blog. Setting up a new blog for your website can be simple if you partner with the right web developer.
In this article, we’ll look at some of the most effective and efficient ways to keep your website completely up to date!
Web Site Content
The most important part of your website is the content. Without the content, your page would just be a mass of coding and colors, so you need to ensure anything that you post is relevant and engaging.
Your content will include any pictures and text, and will be the bulk of your page.
Different websites will have different content needs, so it’s important to consider this before you make any changes. For example, if you’re a retailer, you’ll need to keep your website up to date with any information on new products or changes. A news page, however, will allow you to keep your customers up to date with any new and emerging news – the more recent and relevant your pages are, the more likely you are to see increases in traffic.
Regularly updating your content will prevent your website from becoming stale or boring. Google does not like static sites, so create a strategy to update content on a consistent basis
WordPress
WordPress is an intuitive platform used to build websites. The platform gives you access to a variety of ‘developer’ tools that have been pre designed and built to make it as easy as possible to maintain your websites. We specialize in building and maintaining WordPress websites.
Many ‘beginner’ web developers will utilize WordPress, as it is easy to use and provides a full range of control over every aspect of your website, including layouts, colors, themes and more – while WordPress is easier to use than coding a website from scratch is, it may still take some time to familiarize yourself with the tools. WordPress Maintenance is different to maintaining an entirely custom built website, so there are some other important things to consider.
The WordPress Core
While it may sound intimidating, the ‘core’ is just a fancy term used to describe the files that make up WordPress, and what will become the admin panel, or ‘behind the scenes’ of your website. Most users will not need to look too much into this, but an understanding of the WordPress core is essential if you really want to make the most of the platform.
A helpful extract from www.wpsupergeek.com helps to frame exactly what the core does:
“Core files make up the appearance and functionality of the WordPress platform, and content files are added by the user in the form of themes, plugins, and images.”
The core is needed in order to update any plugins or themes used, so it’s important that the core is kept up to date too. One great thing is that WordPress provides an auto update for large or essential updates, so you’ll likely never need to go through a manual update. If you decide to update your core, it’s extremely important to create a full backup in case something goes wrong. If you are not comfortable updating the core on your own, let one of our experts handle that part of your business for you. If something goes wrong during an update, you will want an experienced web developer on hand to fix any problems.
WordPress Plugins
Plugins are tools that can be used to modify web content or improve how it can be viewed. Plugins need to be regularly updated as if they become broken or out of date, they may stop working and become a security threat.
An out of date plugin is vulnerable to attack, and if you don’t regularly check for updates, you may be leaving yourself open to a data breach – this could compromise your personal information or that of your customers.
WordPress will notify you whenever there is a new plugin update available – if you are logged in, a number should appear at the top of each page that will tell you how many updates are available. Alternatively, you can simply visit the update section on the WordPress Dashboard, and install any recommended changes. As with the core, you should take caution updating plugins as a failed update attempt can break your site.
WordPressThemes
A WordPress theme is more of a visual design feature than a functionality feature such as a plugin. The theme can impact your color scheme as well as the page or website layout.
