Best Practices For Taking Over Your Wordpress Site

Making the transition to caring for your own site might make you a little apprehensive at first but here are some tips from us to make it easier for you.

Optimize Your Images

The number one change you will likely be making to your site is adding or replacing images. You may think all you have to do is find that perfect image to stick wherever you want. If you don’t keep best practices in mind, there are a couple things you will start to notice. Your site will become slower and slower, and your media tab will become filled with images, sometimes duplicates, sometimes triplicates of the same exact image. The solution is really simple. optimize the images.  That 3MB picture of a tasty restaurant item will look even more delicious when your customers can see it. Try to aim under 250KB to keep the quality, while reducing load times. There are a couple ways to do this, the fastest and easiest would be to use and online image compressor. They are easy to find, just google “online image compressor”. If you are confused on how to do this, reach out to us at marian@wearetribu.com.

BONUS TIPS: Try to remember that you do not have to upload the same image if you are using it on another page. Also, remember to delete your old images. If you’re not using it anymore, it doesn’t belong in the Media section.

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Start Creating Backups

This is a very easy way to ensure the safety of your site after it is out of our hands here at Tribu. If you are using WPengine chances are we’ve already set up daily backup points for you. This might seem like enough, but what if their website goes down, they have a breach, or you accidentally delete a save or two? On WPengine you can download a saved backup and you can manually backup the site at any point in time and even name it so you remember why. We recommend doing this once a month or any time after you’ve made a big change to your website.

If you are not on WPengine we still recommend hard copies of your backups. You can do this by going into the CPanel of whatever hosting service you are using and clicking on what is often titled “Backup Wizard”. They usually have straightforward instructions or helpful forums online, but if you get stuck don’t be afraid to call your hosting service. This is a valuable skill to learn and you’ll regret not doing so only when it’s too late to turn back time. Think of it as free website insurance.

There are some plug-ins that can create backups as well, but if you have an error on your site and cannot get into your dashboard, these will become useless.

Do Not Download Too Many Plugins

The maximum we recommend is no more than 10. Any more than this and it will start to slow down your site, or the plugins will start conflicting with each other. Do not download a plugin that hasn’t been tested with the latest version of WordPress or your theme. If you do it might cause the site to break. Make sure that you read up on trusted plugins that are well reviewed and widely used before trying one out yourself. When in doubt, backup the site beforehand.

Keep Plugins and WordPress Up to Date

Always, always, always make backups before updating. ALWAYS. You never know what the new version of a plugin or of WordPress, in general, might do to the layout of your website. That being said, it is really important to keep all of that information up to date to prevent hackers or malicious bots from getting into your site.

With these tips in mind, your transition to becoming the sole editor and web maintainer will be a smooth one!

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