By Sadia Rai

The Monthly WordPress Maintenance Checklist I Use for Client Sites

3D illustration of a wrench and gear for WordPress maintenance

Websites are not “set and forget”. Every month, unpatched plugins get exploited, backups silently fail, and small issues snowball. This is the exact checklist I run for every site on my maintenance plan.

1. Take a fresh backup — and verify it

A backup you have never tested is not a backup. Confirm the backup completed and that you can actually restore from it.

2. Update WordPress core, themes and plugins

Apply updates on a staging copy first, check the site still works, then push live. Never update a live site blind.

3. Scan for malware and check uptime

Run a security scan and review uptime logs. If the site went down, find out why — hosts rarely tell you voluntarily.

4. Test the important stuff

Submit the contact form, complete a test checkout, check the site on your phone. The features that make you money deserve a monthly click-through.

5. Review speed and broken links

Run a speed test and a broken-link check. New content and plugin updates quietly introduce both problems.

6. Clean the database

Clear spam, revisions and expired transients. Five minutes here keeps the site snappy.

Do this monthly and your site stays fast, secure and boring — in the best way. Don’t have time? That’s literally what my maintenance plan is for.

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