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WordPress is an outstanding system for creating and maintaining your website. And every website needs regular maintenance. The key to maintaining a WordPress website is having a system to make it easy and brainless.

1. File backup. All those images and files you upload? The plugins you modified? Those CSS tweaks… all of these need to be backed up on a regular basis. There’s several ways to do it, with lots of good information on the WordPress web site.
2. Database backup. I have database backups emailed to me periodically, I just check my email to make sure the backup is there. You can set a filter that tags each backup email for storage when it arrives in your inbox. When you file the backup email, you can check the date in your backup archive. You should see a backup for each time period you set. I set mine for daily, so I make sure I have a database backup for each day. It’s super easy, just watch for the dates in order.
3. Plugin updating. Plugin updating is easy, but it’s a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the update may implement important security fixes. On the other hand, it might conflict with another plugin. It’s smart to check out the plugin home page and ChangeLog before updating, to see what’s new and different, and see if anyone else has had any problems.
4. Check for spam comments. Easy: just click on the Spam button on the Dashboard, delete all. I don’t waste any time checking mistakes, they are few and far between, and consist mainly of “Great post!” comments which don’t add value. If the spam problem wasn’t so out of control, I have no problem with such comments though. It’s always nice to be complimented.
5. Check stats. While traffic to your web site fluctuates daily, over the course of weeks and months, your traffic should be relatively smooth. For daily stats, watch for developing trends. If you have a down day, that’s not a big deal. If you have 4 or 5 days in a row that are trending down, that’s a much bigger deal, and time to take some traffic-building action.
6. Record your search terms. If you’re serious about building traffic, keep track of the search terms people are using to find your website. Once you know what people are looking for, you can revise or extend current articles and write new articles on those topics.
7. Check your logs, especially your 404s. If you haven’t ever looked at your 404 log, you’re likely to be horrified. The HTTP 404 error indicates “Page Not Found.” That means someone landed on your web page, looking for something WordPress couldn’t find. Some of these are normal. For example, Internet Explorer is going to ask for a list of capabilities, which will return 404 from Apache-based webservers. Learn to recognize these harmless common errors, and focus on the spammers and scammers probing your website for security holes. You’ll see them. For more information, check back for a future article on this topic.
8. Check your contact form. Sometimes, plugins can interact in strange ways with each other. You should check critical functionality any time you change the configuration of your WordPress installation, say, by installing a plugin. If not, check it on a regular schedule.
9. Check your downloads link. If you use a plugin such as Drain Hole for managing downloads, make a quick run through your download links. Once in a while a plugin will stop working, and when that happens, your downloads stop working too. On today’s internet, people will just leave your site and never come back.

Weekly is almost as good

If you have a low traffic blog where you post only a few times per month, use this checklist weekly instead of daily. You may get an extra build up of spam, but that’s not a big deal with Akismet plugin installed. Just delete them all.

As you build experience with these tasks, record everything you do very carefully. Simplify ruthlessly. Over time, learn what works best and easiest. Once you have your system down cold, go one step further and generate a report… now you’re ready to outsource.