Wordpress Maintenance Checklist - 2025 Guide

Keeping your WordPress site running smoothly requires regular upkeep. This checklist covers monthly maintenance tasks that will help your site stay secure, fast, and reliable.

If you run a personal blog, business site or Woocommerce Wordpress site, following this routine can prevent performance issues and security risks before they become serious problems.

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Update Core Software, Themes, and Plugins

It is important to keep the WordPress core, your active theme, and all plugins up to date. These updates often include security patches and performance improvements. Before running updates, back up your site. It is a good idea to test major updates in a staging environment before applying them to your live site to avoid conflicts or crashes.

Backup Your WordPress Site

Backups are a safety net. If anything goes wrong with updates or your site gets hacked, you need a clean version to restore. Use a plugin like UpdraftPlus or BlogVault to automate daily or weekly backups. Store your backups in an offsite location like Google Drive, Dropbox, or Amazon S3. Check your backup logs to make sure backups are completing successfully.

Check for Broken Links

Broken links damage the user experience and hurt your SEO. You can use tools like Broken Link Checker or Screaming Frog SEO Spider to identify dead links on your site. Go through the list, update URLs, remove old references, or set up proper redirects using a plugin like Redirection.

Optimize Database Performance

Over time, your WordPress database collects unnecessary data like post revisions, spam comments, and trashed items. Optimizing the database helps your site run faster and reduces the chance of performance issues over time.

Test Site Speed and Performance

Run speed tests using tools like Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, or Pingdom. These tools help you identify slow-loading pages, large image files, and blocking scripts. You can improve performance by compressing images, enabling caching, and minimizing CSS and JavaScript. Consider using a CDN if you have a global audience.

Review Security Settings and Logs

Log into your security plugin dashboard and review recent scans, blocked login attempts, and firewall logs. Update all passwords used to access your WordPress dashboard, database, and hosting account. Use strong passwords and enable two-factor authentication. If you are not using a security plugin, install one like Wordfence or Sucuri.

Monitor Uptime and Hosting Health

Your site should be available to visitors at all times. Use a tool like UptimeRobot to monitor your uptime and receive alerts when your site goes down. Review your hosting performance monthly. If your server response time is consistently high, contact your provider or consider upgrading to a better hosting plan.

Test Forms, Checkout Pages, and Key Features

Submit each form on your site to make sure it works properly. This includes contact forms, lead generation forms, and newsletter signups. If you run an online store, go through the checkout process to verify that it functions correctly. Test everything on both desktop and mobile across multiple browsers like Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Edge.

Review Google Analytics and SEO Tools

Open Google Analytics and check for unexpected traffic changes, bounce rates, and user behavior trends. In Google Search Console, review indexing issues, mobile usability problems, and crawl errors. Make sure your XML sitemap is up to date and your SEO plugin settings are configured properly. Keep your metadata fresh and optimized.

Remove Unused Plugins and Themes

Plugins and themes that are not active can still pose a security risk. Go through your list of installed plugins and delete any that are not being used. Do the same for themes, keeping only your active theme and one default WordPress theme as a backup. Reducing unused code helps improve performance and security.

Run a Mobile and Browser Compatibility Check

Visit your site on different devices to check how it appears and behaves. Use browser tools or services like BrowserStack to simulate different devices and operating systems. Look for issues like broken layouts, font rendering problems, or unresponsive buttons. Test new browser features like CSS grid layouts, transitions, or accessibility updates to ensure they are working as intended.

Review Cloudflare and CDN Settings

If you use Cloudflare or another CDN, log into the dashboard and review your settings. Check for any new features or performance tools you can enable, such as image optimization or better caching rules.

Purge your cache if you recently made significant changes to your content or site structure. Review firewall rules, security settings, and DNS records for accuracy.

Check Domain Registration and SSL Certificate

Every month, take a moment to verify that your domain registration is current and set to auto-renew. Log in to your domain registrar and check the expiration date. Make sure your contact and payment information are up to date.

Also, confirm that your SSL certificate is valid and not close to expiration. You can test this with SSL Labs or your hosting dashboard.

Domain Maintenance Reminders

• Check domain expiration date
• Ensure domain is set to auto-renew
• Confirm your registrar has updated contact and billing details
• Check SSL certificate expiration and HTTPS functionality
• Verify WHOIS information is accurate

Document All Changes

Maintain a simple changelog or maintenance log where you record updates, plugin changes, backup completions, and issues found or resolved.

This helps you keep track of what has been done and makes it easier to troubleshoot if a problem arises later. You can use a shared Google Doc or install a plugin that tracks site activity.

Comparison Table: Free vs Paid Maintenance Tools

Task	Free Plugin Example	Paid Option Example	Notes
Backups	UpdraftPlus (free)	BlogVault, Jetpack Vault	Free versions may limit remote storage
Security	Wordfence (free)	Sucuri Firewall	Paid tools offer real-time protection
SEO	Rank Math, Yoast	Yoast Premium	Premium adds schema, redirect management
Database Cleanup	WP-Optimize	WP Rocket (partial)	WP Rocket also handles caching
Broken Link Checking	Broken Link Checker	Ahrefs (external tool)	Cloud-based tools give more insights
Uptime Monitoring	Jetpack Monitor	UptimeRobot Pro	Pro plans offer faster ping intervals

Conclusion

Following a WordPress maintenance checklist like this one every month can save you a lot of time, stress, and money in the long run. It helps your site stay fast, secure, and fully functional.

Set a calendar reminder to complete these tasks and build it into your monthly routine.