Why it is Worth Hiring a Developer to Maintain Your WordPress Website

WordPress makes the process of creating websites much easier. However, after you first create your website, you still have to maintain it. Not only in terms of adding new content, but mainly in terms of keeping the website running. If you run your site on WordPress platform, you probably already know that WordPress plugins update frequently. Unfortunately, not all of them are backward compatible and therefore a plugin can break your site when you’re updating it.

Plugin updates

Plugins are developed independently by various developers outside of WordPress. When WordPress is updated, a developer has to make sure that the plugin is up to date. Before choosing to install a plugin, you have to make sure that it updates regularly and that it matches your WordPress version. After that, you have to assure that you update plugins as developers upgrade it to make it compatible with new WordPress versions.

You have to keep your plugins up to date not only to keep your website running, but also in order to keep your site secure. If you do not, you are opening yourself to a huge security risk. WordPress is run on 25% of the world’s websites and people are constantly searching for vulnerabilities that are not patched up. If your site or a plugin breaks and you wait a week or two, you are opening yourself up to trouble. In addition to security risks, you webpage’s loading time might increase and search engine rankings might be declined.

Back-ups and Security

Another important part of website maintenance are back ups. There is no built in automatic backup in WordPress, so you need to purchase a paid service like VaultPress to backup your site automatically. However, you have to make sure that your site is also backed up manually and all of your content is saved in a separate place.

You have to regularly monitor security and assure that there is a full recovery of your website available in case that a hacking attack happens. If it does, you also need to take care of getting your website back up and working.

Why is it worth hiring a developer?

You can easily get stuck in a situation where you must constantly maintain your website. When you do that, it brings up problems because of how certain themes and plugins interact. This is a downside of WordPress.

Buying a maintenance plan makes this so much simpler. First, a professional has likely seen the exact problem that comes from each plugin and theme. Plugins do break often and you can spend hours on different support forums to solve the issue, but you probably still will not be able to succeed. Plugin updates require a developer to fix them.

Second, we do it properly by migrating the live site to a staging site, testing to ensure the site is working properly. Fixing any bugs that come up, and then migrating it back. Another advantage of having your site professionally maintained is that it will always be backed up and secured.

In addition, we maintain the website and make sure it is loading fast and that the basic SEO of your site is flawless to avoid any crawl errors.

We understand that taking care of your clients and developing your business is a more important task for you as it is something you get paid for. Hiring a developer to maintain your WordPress website will allow you to fully focus on your business while having one of the most important tools, your website, running smoothly and safely.