Why You Need to Monitor Your WordPress Website Regularly
Reading Time: 5 minutes 
When you think of “monitoring” your website, you probably think of uptime. However, that’s only part of the monitoring process you must implement.
There is No Set-and-Forget
You could put up a static HTML website back in the day and forget about it. There were only a few scripts, usually used for unnecessary animations or to process your contact form. Once in a while, a rare update.
Now, sites are dynamic. They aren’t static HTML files; like WordPress, they execute PHP and JavaScript in response to user actions, supporting multiple users, plugins, and innumerable scenarios. Plugins are processing, themes are displayed, and processes are accumulating. Performance has degraded.
This is why you need to monitor everything regularly.
The goal is to have your site and every page load in under 3 seconds. Crazy, right? Also, how do you know whether your site is not contributing to your ROI without monitoring?
Old code = vulnerabilities. Hackers are always on the prowl for code they can compromise. It is common for bugs to be discovered, requiring an immediate update, only after users report actual “out in the wild” usage.
Beyond that, code updates for performance and security are made constantly. Every single WordPress and plugin update includes security hardening. Why risk your website being compromised and its performance degraded by failing to monitor and update promptly?
Updates Update
In addition, when plugins update, settings can change. Or, due to a conflict, the plugin may not update and terminate properly, leaving your site in perpetual maintenance mode. This does happen.
After updating anything on your site, take a quick run-through on the front end. This ensures your site is operating correctly and displaying as it should. For example, if you update your contact form plugin, go to the front end of your site and use your contact form to confirm everything is working.
After processing updates, run a performance test to see if any variables that can negatively impact performance have surfaced.
It is common for WordPress website owners to be blindsided by unexpected changes in metrics. Therefore, mark your calendar to run regular checks for any changes that need to be addressed.
Reviewing Plugins
Part of the ongoing monitoring of your site includes monitoring your plugins. I mark my calendar to do a plugin audit once each quarter.
Besides the essential plugins, I’ve seen many websites where site owners add plugins on a whim. Before you know it, you have duplicate, unnecessary plugins that result in a sluggish website and unnecessary conflicts.
The maximum number of plugins allowed varies. It all depends on the combo of plugins and their quality, the theme being used, hosting, and other variables that, when combined, will determine how your site loads.
Check that your plugins are up to date and tested with the latest version of WordPress. If they are not, find an alternative. This approach minimizes the potential for conflicts or incompatibility-related problems.
Checking the Data
You also want to log in to Google Search Console regularly to check for any issues that could impact your rankings. I recommend that you take a quick look at the Google Console once a month to check for any warnings. Then hop over to Analytics to see any traffic issues of concern (such as dramatic drop-offs).
When performance or user issues are detected, Google can penalize your site in the SERPs (search engine results pages).
Links, Downtime, and Monitoring
When your site is down, you want to know about it immediately. Uptime monitoring can help you work with your hosting or development partners to identify the issue as close to the time of impact as possible.
If you link to off-site content, those links can change without notice. In addition, internal links on your site will break when you delete a page or change its URL. Therefore, running link checks to eliminate the poor user experience caused by broken links should be part of your monitoring duties.
Websites are not infallible. There are endless reasons your site could go down, be unavailable, or not work correctly. The last thing you want to happen is to find out from users that your site’s been down or producing errors for an extended period. The sooner you know of any possible problems, the sooner you can address them.
Many hosts are not proactive in this regard. Rare hosts will send an email to let you know they are aware of the problem and are addressing it. That is where subscribing to services that check these variables on schedule is worth every penny.
Website Monitoring Wrap-up
This is why you need to constantly monitor your website. Failure to do so can affect your rankings and, more importantly, your user experience.
If you have a WordPress website, you cannot avoid or ignore these tasks. Have an honest conversation with yourself to determine whether you are willing to take the time to learn and then implement all this yourself.
If you cannot manage all the data, reports, and services required to perform these tasks, it may be time to subscribe to a service that does everything for you.
Then, all you have to worry about is running your business.
At your service,
