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It took me time to write another post on this website, partly due to a shift in interest and seeing the website traffic significantly decline starting in October 2024. But personal circumstances have prompted me to go back and revive not only my interest in writing but also optimize the website to reach a wider audience.
While doing website maintenance work that includes tweaks in the virtual private server or VPS, I was forced to restore—not only once, but four times in a row, for that matter. I spent almost three days trying to address issues like “Origin Unreachable,” dealing with “Forbidden” notices, and “website could not be found” errors.
It’s unnerving and frustrating at times seeing these notices and figuring out ways to resolve them. Thankfully, there are many resources to consult online—if you know what questions to ask.
The articles and videos I found online could not fully provide answers to my queries because the VPS hosting I subscribed to is intended for website experts. I am a webmaster at a certain level, but I know I have learned significantly from the experience.
I write below 5 lessons learned from this experience. The specific content management system (CMS) of concern is WordPress, which is an excellent platform for writing blog posts.
Hence, the lessons learned here are applicable primarily to this CMS platform. I write these lessons as my reference for future updates as part of regular website maintenance as well as to help others like you who read this post to avoid committing costly and time-consuming mistakes.
5 Lessons Learned in Website Maintenance
1. Avoid Updating WordPress and Plugins Right Away
WordPress and plugin updates are important, primarily for website security. They also address bugs or errors on the website that can prevent it from reaching its intended users. These updates can also improve website loading speed, among other benefits.
Thus, it is good practice to always update a website, but I would say wait a week or so to make sure there isn’t another bug in the update. I have encountered such instances, so I avoid making the updates right away when they become available.
And—very important—DO NOT set the plugins to auto-update. Setting them to auto-update can bring problems. It can break the site due to compatibility issues. It’s better to update manually, making sure that it is 100% compatible before deploying it.
2. Always, Always Make a Backup
I emphasize the “always” in the subtitle because it is an indispensable tool to revert to the previous state of your website when a certain update or tweak you did in the server breaks the site.
Before writing this post, I had to restore the backup copy of this website four times (!). Thankfully, I have set the backup to make a copy of SimplyEducate.me at least once a week.
I once relied on the UpdraftPlus plugin to create the backups automatically for me. However, during those times I needed to restore my old posts, something went wrong. It is not a foolproof way of backing up a website. There should always be another backup available from the hosting provider.
3. Update Using WordPress Instead of the Server
Reading some articles on how to update a website as part of a website upkeep practice, and given that I have two options to update the website—through VPS or inside WordPress—I learned that it is better to update using the latter. That’s because the updates are intended primarily for WordPress and its plugins.
Indeed, this is very true in my experience in website maintenance. I broke my website many times while making updates using the hPanel in the VPS.
4. Study the Website Issue Thoroughly Before Making Changes
I am a fast learner when it comes to technological matters like website development. And I have that tendency to make changes right away once I learn something new. But the impact of my actions caused some problems. Unexpected results happened—not as I expected.
I committed a costly mistake, because when I migrated the website and tried to create a staging website to test the compatibility of plugins and themes, I unwittingly created a duplicate website. Website traffic suffered significantly because duplicate websites dilute the search engine optimization efforts I made. It’s bad for search engines.
Essentially, there were two uniform resource locators (URLs) on the website that pointed to the same content. And I indexed both URLs, perhaps confusing search engines with the duplicate content.
So, this is the reason why for many months, while using Google tools and monitoring website traffic, I kept receiving the duplicate content notice. It took me time to figure it out.
Again, the classic old rule stands: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
5. Audit the Website Using ChatGPT, Google Search Console or Similar Tools
Taking advantage of free AI services, I engaged ChatGPT to audit my website. It was a good decision because its suggestions made sense. Upon giving the site’s URL, one of the suggestions given was to use Google Search Console. I am thoroughly familiar with this tool, having spent years trying to apply all recommendations to improve website traffic.
Related to this, I received an email from the Console that the robots.txt file needed to be revised. That’s because some pages were not indexed by the Google search engine. ChatGPT suggested entries to the robots.txt file that I copied and pasted. Reviewing the entries, I know they should work.
Doing these things somehow relieved me of my anxiety in keeping the website running. While it’s too early to say what the effects of my actions will be—perhaps weeks or months (or even years)—I can already see significant changes in the amount of traffic to the website. Fingers crossed.
Surely, the lessons I learned these past few days can save you the headache of having to troubleshoot website problems. I wrote these tips not only to share them with fellow website developers but also to serve as my handy reference in the future. I tend to forget what I did before, so I set this as a milestone to keep the website running smoothly.
It’s nice to see my website running blazing fast once again. Website maintenance is a crucial activity to keep it in shape.
