Website maintenance is important if you run, in most cases, a content management system (CMS), like WordPress, Joomla or Drupal.
We outline what website maintenance is in this article here, but in short, it’s the process of updating your websites’ core and external software (commonly referred to as extensions or plugins).
Why is proper site maintenance so important? #
There are four key areas as to why proper website maintenance is vital in CMS websites, and they are:
Patching security flaws & combatting hacking trends #
Updates are released to protect against either the latest hacking trends or patch against malware (malicious pieces of software).
Fixing bugs #
It’s likely there maybe bugs (errors) in the software that can disrupt performance, we’re only human after all and mistakes are made.
Therefore software developers will release updates to fix these bugs and stop them from causing potential harm to the site.
Improve performance/ speed #
As technology develops, software in general becomes faster and better able to carry out various functions.
Speed is one key aspect as it affects a wide range of things such as:
- Your search engine ranking.
- Your visitors’ impression of you.
- The drop off rate (the longer it takes your site to load the higher the chance you’ll lose them as a visitor).
Updates are often released to bring the developer’s software inline with the latest technology available.
Improve functionality #
This is more of nicety than a necessity, but deservers a mention.
A good portion of the time updates are released to add functionality or extend the current functionality of the software.
For example: a simple contact form plugin may be updated to offer the option to send an acknowledgement email to the sender or automatically link up to mailchimp.