5 (More) Best WordPress Practices to Manage Your Website Well (part 2)

by Vipe Team in WordPress Development; Published on 21.04.2021 Last updated on 11.06.2021

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Welcome back to the second and concluding part of this series on the good WordPress habits you can easily learn to keep your website in great shape.

In the previous part, we looked at 5 such practices, and now, no surprise, here are 5 more ways to be a WordPress Web-Master in the true sense:

Give Due Attention to Your Mobile Website

A vast majority of people browse and avail of online services on their smartphones now, and how your website looks on mobile can be the deciding factor in whether people recommend it to others.

When you pick a theme or a design language for your website, ensuring that it looks and works great on mobile browsers and screens as well (such as with the use of Responsive Web Design) can be a relatively easy and effective way to retain your visitors and set them on the road to turning into fans.

Of course, this also figures into search engine algorithms and can boost your visibility, as the page load speed and smooth UX of your mobile website make you a better choice overall.

You can choose from many available themes or have a custom-made theme for you by expert developers or your WordPress agency for development.

Use Complex and Secure Logins

We’ve already talked about how any security lapses in your website can affect everything from your reputation to your revenue. Having airtight login credentials is a huge factor in managing these risks, and you would do well to keep these tips in mind:

The password for your admin console needs to be unique, at least 10 digits long, and it should use a mixture of characters, digits, and symbols.
Use a unique name for your username, and definitely avoid variations on ‘admin’ or your domain
Change the login URL from the default /wp-admin to prevent unauthorized access to even the login page
You can never go wrong with 2FA or two-factor authentication. Feel free to read our guide here

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Get Rid of Plugins and Themes You No Longer Need

When your WordPress website was in its infancy, you might have tried out a fair number of different plugins and themes before deciding on the combination that works for you now. But in the time since then, you might not have remembered to clean up the debris, so those deactivated plugins and unused themes are still there, taking up space, cluttering your WordPress dashboard, and slowing the website down.

The best thing to do here would be to uninstall every plugin and theme you do not need anymore. In the same vein, don’t use full-size raw images before compressing them, as they can slow the website down too. Once all the clean-up is done, go ahead, take a backup of the site, and run a database optimization solution to really reap the advantages of this step. Another related pro-tip; don’t edit the plugin or themes directly on the WordPress dashboard, and ideally keep this setting disabled. All code editing is better done on your local setup, tested on the staging site, and then moved to the production site.

Add a Secure Contact Form

A contact form is essential to keep yourself reachable to potential customers, to capture more leads, or receive queries that you can then answer to their satisfaction.

Why You Should Consider WordPress Maintenance Services

The WordPress Plugin Directory has a good selection of contact form plugins that you can use to create your own contact form. More importantly, once you’ve narrowed down your choice of the contact form, you’ll also need to secure it with a CAPTCHA plugin to prevent breaches and prevent automated spam.

Use Analytics and Tracking

Google Analytics is a godsend and undoubtedly the forerunner of all analytics solutions available now. Insights into customer interactions, behavior, and issues with retention, as well as a solid foundation for (re)building your marketing plans, are all benefits no modern website administrator can live without.

Signing up costs nothing, so proceed to add the tracking code to the website tag, and in no time, you’ll be set to start viewing reports on your visitors.

In a nutshell, your WordPress website is your baby, and keeping it healthy takes effort and a few good practices that we have mentioned here. We hope this series will greatly improve your WordPress administrator experience, but if there are any hiccups, feel free to get on board an established WordPress agency for development that can help you out. That’s all from us at Vipe Studio, and we’ll see you next time with more helpful tips!