A website is no different to a car. You need to maintain to keep it:
- Working well
- Secure
And, like with cars you can:
- Pay someone to do it for you
- Learn how to do it yourself
There is no ‘best option’. Rather it comes down to your interest and time vs your budget. Yet, there is one wrong option, doing nothing.
This guide will show you how to keep your website working well yourself.
Backup Before Beginning
Before doing any maintenance on your website, you should create a new backup. This way, if anything you do creates an unexpected problem (e.g. the white screen of death). There are two ways to backup your website:
- Through your hosting company’
- Using a plugin like Updraft
You don’t need to do both. But do one of them before doing any maintenance on your website. Personally, I find it easier to do using the UpdraftPlus plugin, so I will explain that way first. But, I will also explain how to do it through your hosting company.
