My blog maintenance routine is basically a proactive approach to avoid problems with my blog before they ever happen. As most of the community here knows, Basic Blog Tips is a very active blog with loads of fresh content, attractive high-quality images and plenty of social sharing options to choose from. I always try to limit the number of plugins that I install on the blog but there's always a new one that comes along that it seems like I can't live without. When the blog seems to lag and perform poorly or if something isn't working as it should, I can usually hone in on the problem. Here's what I'm doing to keep things running as smoothly as possible.
Blog Maintenance on Basic Blog Tips
- Backing up the blog – for this I don't mess around with any free solutions. I use BackUpBuddy and as far as I know it's the only tool that creates a full and complete backup of your blog AND provides a way for you to restore or migrate the blog if necessary. If you are using a different method for backing up your blog do yourself a favor and find out how you're going to use those backup files to restore your blog when the time comes. If you have the technical expertise to figure out how to do it, good for you, if you're like me and you can't even begin to think about doing it on your own, go to the iThemes site and get BackUpBuddy. You can download this free ebook Getting Started with BackUpBuddy
FREE EBOOK!
- Optimizing the images – because I like to have high-quality images that complement the high-quality content here, most of the time I use iStock photos. The only down side to using them is that the file sizes are pretty big. When I first started this blog I was using Blue Host at the time, and my blog was really slow and and as a result, Blue Host would “throttle cpu usage” (what ever that means lol). Bottom line, my blog was going offline two and three times a day and I searched high and low looking for the cause. That's when I found out about WP Smush-it“Reduce image file sizes and improve performance using the Smush.it API in WordPress.” This is a free plugin and now that Pinterest is all the rage, I suggest you install this one and save some file space.
- Building the internal links – this is one of the easy SEO strategies that my friend Mitz told me about (yes I do a little bit of SEO from time to time). I'll take a look at Google Analytics or Google Webmaster tools before I decide which posts I want to link send links to. This is a matter of my own personal choice and you can decide for yourself exactly what anchor texts you want to link to and which specific posts, I'm not going to go into details about strategy, this is simply a reminder that you should spend some time building internal links and you can read more the on page SEO process here.
- Pretending I'm not me – don't laugh at me. I know what you're thinking, if I'm not me, who else would I be? The answer is simple and here is what I mean. I try to be impartial and scrutinize my blog just like I do every other blog I visit for the first time. I ask myself – is it easy for me navigate this blog to find what I need, is the font big enough to read, is the blog cluttered with ads, do I even know what this blog is about in the first place, etc. I find myself doing this a lot more lately because it seems like the longer I blog, as time goes by I'm becoming more critical of other blogs I read when I'm researching or meeting new bloggers on social networks. I have to stop myself sometimes and say “remember when you didn't have an About page”? Been there, done that! My point is this – give yourself a blog audit every few weeks and tweak things as needed.
My ultimate weapon for blog maintenance
WP-Optimize plugin to the rescue! I absolutely love this plugin and it has already saved me lots of headaches and help keep my WordPress database organized. One day I ran into a little snag when I was backing up my blog. I asked my friend Chuck from CyberSmartWebMarketing to give me a hand and mentioned that most likely I was holding on to a lot of post revisions that I needed to get rid of. He recommended that I give WP-Optimize a try and he was so right! The first time I optimized my database I discovered over 6,000 post revisions! I'm not kidding. This all goes back to the problem with Blue Host (btw I'm using Host Gator now and I'm very happy with their hosting) and I would be so worried that the blog was going to go down when I was in the middle of a good thought! Well thanks to Chuck Hines for introducing me to this plugin because I can honestly say, that I don't hear too many people talking about it. Here's the video from Chuck showing how quickly you can perform blog maintenance and repair your database with WP Optimize.
What about you, what steps do you take for backing up your blog and making sure the images are compressed? Do you have a regular schedule for blog maintenance?
Its interesting what you have to say about optimizing your images, I hadn’t really thought of that before although I do always get the best images I can for my work. Thanks for the advice!
Harriet, image files can be really huge depending upon where you’re getting the images from. WP Smush-it reduces the file size during the upload process which is really a cool feature.
Greate Article Ilean. Am Doing Manual Backup for my blog which is quite tough. Yes am using Smush it and its really awesome after using it my sites Google Page speed become 95 :).
WP-Optimize plugin this is new tool for me i would like to give a try. Is it Free Plugin or Paid?
Hi Amit, Good job on getting your page speed to a great score! WP Optimize is a free plugin. You can get it from the WordPress repository at the link in the post.
Thanks for your comment.
Ilean Can i use it with W3Total Cache? I have already Installed W3TC.
Amit, yes you can use this one also. Let me know how it goes.
Hi,
I’m glad I read this because I’ve been looking for a good backup system. I also have been looking on how to cut back on the maintenance of the blog. Such a good article. I’m going to check out the back up system you mentioned (backupbuddy). Sally
Hi Ileane
I tried to buy the backupbuddy, but it didn’t take me to a site to purchase. I was going to buy the lowest price one since I only have one blog, but not sure what the problem was. Oh, well, if you know what I did wrong, please let me know. Thanks Sally
P. S. I agree with the WP Optimize plugin. I use it as well and love it.
Hi Sally, The page the link takes you to is has a “Buy Now” button on the right hand side. Try this link BackupBuddy – WP backup, restore, migration plugin
Happy to see we use many of the same tools and plugins, Ileane; I must be on the right track! 😉
Hi Sharon! You certainly are on the right track my friend. Great to see you.
thanks Ileane. really great tips here on optimizing your blog performance. I sometimes pretend to be you… (but don’t quite have your awesome Divaness down yet…:D)
LOL! You are too funny James. Thanks for walking in my foot steps.
Thank you Ileane for sharing the WP-Optimize plugin. My blog is so much faster now that I’ve installed and used this plugin. Once again, thanks for letting us know about it. 🙂
Hi Kevin, that’s great news. I noticed an improvement in speed also when I installed WP Optimize. It’s a free plugin but I sent the developer a donation right after the first time I used it.
I know those revisions can really pile up. They can consume a lot of wasted space and clutter the database up. I recently set revisions to none because they were starting to get out of hand. I do need to remove some of the old revisions that still reside and the wp-optimize plugin tool looks like it might be worth the time to clean it up a bit.
Ray, please come back and let me know how you make out with using WP Optimize. It’s nice to get rid of all those post revisions in one click.
I use smush it as well to optimize my images. Also a great way to reduce the file size of the image is to scale it to a smaller size. I find that I often don’t display my images at their full size, so I scale them down a bit to reduce file size. Other than that I backup daily using my vps backup server. And I check to make sure my plugins are all up to date and my site is running normally.
Hi Richard, nice to see you have a vps backup server. Good for you. Who did you get that from? Is it expensive?
Hi Ileane. I moved my blog over to a vps earlier this year and I purchased my backup vps server through them as well. My provider is Hostigation.com.
They are really reliable and super reasonable. My hosting is $6 a month and the backup vps server is $4 a quarter.
This is an unmanaged VPS, so that’s the only downside. I have a friend who helped me set up the server a put wordpress on there for me and he helps me out with any maintenance needs. If you know your way around setting up a VPS server, then Hostigation is a really good provider.
Ah! It’s always great to have friends isn’t it? Most bloggers don’t have the technical skill to maintain a server – well at least I know I don’t. But having a friend with those skills is like “owning a piece of the rock” LOL!
I’m off to install WP Optimize however I’m hoping there’s not a lot of clutter in my database! I tend to write my posts in Evernote wherever I am for the day and then paste them into WordPress when I get home so finger’s crossed that it does very little at the moment 🙂
Hey Rosemary Jayne,
Let me know how you make out after you install WP Optimize. Best wishes!
Hi Ileane !
I think backing up blog is very important part, because I read alot things like i’ve lost my data and all posts and somethings similar to this.
This is really good point in maintenance.
Hi Faria, let me know if you have any questions about BackUpBuddy. It’s always important to have a backup, even when you’re first starting out.
These are really a helpful tips, based on my experience, updating our own site is a must, for us to receive good benefit from others, we can raise traffic immediately. so we need to freshen up our site regularly.
Thanks for this information. Sorry for my bad english… Regards from Guatemala!
I agree, WP-Optimized plugin is one of the best tool. Not only organized our database
but also help me to manage my site.
Quite profitable tips for blog maintenance. Because there are millions of blogs on internet and if one stops maintaining then it’s of no use. Your tips are really helpful to keep the blog alive and improve it’s visibility. Thanks a lot.
Hey Ileane,
I love the idea of being the third person of the blog! Yes, I ask my mom to look at my blog from time to time and be the critic! Though it is usually tough to have moms judge you (she always has nice things to say!) but yes, after a little persistence she does say what she doesn’t like and it helps me work on it better!
I like the point of optimizing images; haven’t really worked on that! That is something I will have to look in to!
Thanks for this Ileane! Hope you have a lovely day! 🙂
Hi Hajra, Mom is always a good person to ask. Believe it not, they will tell us if it stinks 🙂
It’s a simple SEO tip to build those internal links and I like how SEOPressor helps with that too.
Chat soon Hajra!
hi ileane
nice post.
maintaining your blog is an important thing which every blogger should do …
and the plugin you suggested here is really awesome..
because manual maintainance is tedious
thanks for your post
You’re welcome prabhat.
Loved the info Ileane!
I totally agree about WP-Optimize plugin being the one click magic for your blog, and truly does wonders as well! However, I do check out the spam folder often as sometimes those who are first time commenters or leave a 1-2 line comment, their comment gets marked off as spam.
I still have to work out a way to get the back up for my blog done- never really gave it a thought till I read about it now! Off to give it a look right away 🙂
And I loved that link for optimizing your images, though I mainly use the ones that are free to use on your sites and require a credit alone. Need to check out that as well 🙂
And yes, just as you scrutinize other blogs, I do the same, but am forever critical about my own blog and keep thinking about how I can make things better!
Thanks for a wonderful source once again 🙂
Hi Harleena,
I’m the same way. I don’t remove spam comments with WP Optimize. The only thing I check off is post revisions and optimize database.
Please take a look at what BackUpBuddy has to offer so you can protect your content by creating the full and complete backup. It also allows you to migrate your site if you ever want to change domains.
Hi Ileane, I love your “Pretending I’m not me” and I’m not laughing because it’s excellent advice. Great insights as always, thanks for sharing – Niall
Hi Niall,
Thanks for your comment and for not laughing at me too!
One of the BEST share, Ms Ileane!
I do back up regularly. Yeah, I’ve to do it manually.
Thank you for sharing what you do.
Abhi, with a Blogger blog, the only time you need to backup the template is before you make changes to it. This way if you make a mistake in the new code you add, you can bring the blog back from the dead. But actually Google is backing up your blog for you since they are your host.
Yeah, but I make a hard back up as well (Export Blog). And I make a back up every time before I start playing with my template code.
Good for you!
Yes backing up the blog is essential one. Optimizing the images and building interlinks I usually do these things. Yes, these are really helpful….
thanks for sharing it…….
Thanks for the comment and the +1 Prakash.
Seems nice plugin for blog maintenance, I have write down the name of this plugin. I’m going to start my new blog on wordpress by next week, and I’m sure I would need this plugin in coming days.
Hi Ileane. This is a great routine indeed and it is something that everyone “must” always do, most important being making a “backup”, which is the only thing that truly gives me a peace of mind. Obviously the other “stuff” here are important too and they all play an important role in having a good and well maintained website. Thumbs up 🙂
Hi DiTesco, I know that since you have a lot of sites, you can speak from experience on backing up as well as migrating sites. Thanks for sharing your expertise my friend.
Btw – on another note about the Video XML Sitemap. I did send a message to Amit over on Facebook and he asked for a screenshot from Webmaster tools and my sitemap url. Hopefully he can find the error and maybe this is a problem other’s are having as well. I’ll keep you posted.
Hi Ileane. You are right, with so many sites that I manage, I would go nuts if a problem does arise. Hopefully, for now, the only problems I encountered were minor and they were easily fixed just by restoring the backup and upgrading some bugs like the TimThumb.
As for the Video XML, I would love to know what Amit will say. Still don’t understand why you are having problems since we both use the same theme. Maybe it is an incompatibility issue with a plugin.
first of all thanks for publishing about your work routine . really its inspiring me to do more 😉 BTW some thing problem with your host i think .. loading very slowly now ..
Sai, Thanks for the heads up. I think there was a problem with the Digg Digg plugin because they issues 2 updates in the same day. LOL.
the very first thing I did in backing up my site was put a CD-RW into the CD-RW drive, and make sure that the CD was blank. After that, I used my FTP program to completely backup my site and put the backup copy on the CD-RW. After that was complete, I log into PHP my admin, selected the correct database, click the export button, scroll all the way down, check the box that says save as, and then click the go button. From there, I was able to back up a copy of my MySQL database. I backup my database every day, sometimes 4 to 5 times a day. This way, I have everything on hand, if anything happens to my dedicated server.
I see you have the YouTube video channel subscribe widget added to your blog now, my friend 🙂
And, is it possible to use images from iStock to create YouTube slideshow videos? Would you happen to know by chance? 🙂
Thanks so much for doing what you do. keep the inspiration flowing abundantly 🙂
Drewry, I’m glad you have a great routine for creating and storing backups.
I’m not sure when you first noticed the YouTube widget but it’s been there for months! I think I added it in November and this is a chance for me to give a shout out to Stacia Hopkins who showed me how to do it in this post (you can see I left her a comment on Oct. 1st) http://staciahopkins.com/video-marketing-tips/how-to-install-a-youtube-subscribe-box-on-your-blog/
Maintenance is the dreary part of running blogs, and any tools that can help are more than welcome, I’d also not given much thought to optimising pictures.
Thanks to Chuck for the easy demo on using WP-optimize ! Gonna try this …Lets see how many post revisions and auto-drafts do I discover (hope for a big number ;))
Great share Ileane !
Chuck is an awesome trainer and WordPress coach. Let me know how you make out.
Using Wp-optimize, I discovered & removed around 900 post revisions along with 4 auto-drafts !
Thanks again for the share …
Salman that’s great! Your blog will move a little faster now too. I’m so glad you gave WP Optimize a try.
Hi Ileane, Nice routine, I also use most of the plugins mentioned though I have learned it in a hard way (didn’t had a backup when I required it). To make the process easy I have just started WordPress Installation and Maintenance Services at Makewebworld, have a look..
Sanjeev, you’re doing a great job and I’m sure many will be interested in your services. How much do you typically charge for services?
For Maintenance Services plan starts from $19.95 per month, For one time Installation setup and other tasks it is different, but I have tried to make it reasonable for each kind of requirements.
Sanjeev, that sounds very reasonable. Nice work.
Love this post Ileane. I love the WP-Optimize WordPress plugin because it saved my blog when the database was a bit corrupted. Thanks for the other tips as well about smush.it images 🙂
Hi Kharim, the WP Optimize plugin is a big lifesaver! I’m glad it helped you out too.
Hi Ileane,
These are some great plugin tips. The only one I’ve heard of is Backup Buddy. My site is still new, and I should look into this one especially since I use BlueHost.
This is my first post here, so it’s great to meet you.
Janet
Hi Janet! Welcome and great to see you here. Backup Buddy is a worth while investment and the 30% off coupon is good for the next two weeks. Best wishes with your site!
Thanks for this part two video of WP-Optimize plugin. I think I should have this plug-i to my WP, this must be a great help for the maintenance of my blogs. Thanks for the info…
Ileane, these are not only amazing tips but amazing resources you’ve given us, so thank you for that! I have never backed up my blog post and that is a huge bad on my part. So I’m going to get on that quick, cause I know how it is to lose a blog (actually, I’ve lost several websites for one reason or the other and have always had to rebuild…I never learn, LOL)
I’m really interested in the on-site optimization that you mentioned and will be utilizing that as well.
Thanks so much!
Hi Morgan, please start taking backups! As time has gone by you’ve learned so much and I would hate to see any of that get lost (again) LOL! Thanks for your comment Morgan and I can’t wait for your next guest post here. Chat soon!
Thanks Ms. Ileane I really appreciate your help in this one, I never even knew about this.
Hi Michael. You’re welcome. Nice to see I helped introduce you to blog maintenance.
I never thought about backing up your blog but I can see why that would be so important! Optimizing your images is also very important and it’s something I always try to do when posting pictures. Thanks for the great tips!
Tisha, WP Smushit takes care of optimizing the images really nicely. Thanks for your comment.
Great post, Ms. Ileane. I especially love the part, “Pretending Not To Be Me..” So glad I’m not the only one who does that 😉 LOL -Deborah
Deborah, it’s a cool little trick that keeps us grounded. Now you know you’re not alone. LOL!
Very nice methods Ileane, I like the fact that backup is at the top of your list. WP-Optimize plugin is new to me so thank you for sharing; I’m going to check this out now 🙂 I use the Better Delete Revision plugin to remove unwanted post revisions on my blog, this plugin also has an optimize database option, it works a treat.
Hi Fabrizio. I haven’t heard of Better Delete Revision but it sounds really similar to WP Optimize. What are you using for blog backups? I hope you’ll check out BackupBuddy. it’s awesome! Thanks for stopping by, chat soon.
CPU throttling is the act of slowing down the site to reduce the amount of CPU that is being used. The central processing unit (CPU) carries out the instructions of a computer program. Since you were using a shared account there were probably 100’s or thousands of sites using the same cpu, so the host slowed down your site because you were using more than your portion.
Basic definition and now you know what it means.
– Josh
Hi Josh, Thanks so much for the explanation. In the long run I can’t understand why they have so many sites on the same CPU and how do they expect to give customers good service if they need to to throttled. I’m not having this problem with Host Gator so does that mean they don’t have as many customers? Or that they have more awesome CPU’s?
Let me know if you have any insights on that. You’re welcome to do a guest post on the topic if you want. Just let me know. Thanks!!
Hostgator has a bunch of servers. So it might be that the other company is just trying to get the most money they can by squeezing as many people as possible onto one server.
Or your blog was just getting too much traffic that was causing the cpu to spike.
And to answer the “I can’t understand why they have so many sites on the same CPU”. They do it because people don’t want to pay $30 a month for shared hosting and so they pack a bunch of people on a server to:
1. Be able to pay for their equipment
2. Bring the price of hosting down.
Adeline, I use SEOPressor and that will give me (and my guest bloggers) a warning if an internal link is missing from a post. I know there are some other plugins out there but that’s the only one I’ve used. Thanks for your question Adeline.
a awesome post, Ileane, I think we all should use WP-Optimize to optimize WP database and make our blog loading faster. Thanks for sharing your experience on maintenance a WordPress blog effective.
Hi Trung, I like that idea. WordPress should include an optimization feature in the core. I also think that Subscribe to comments should be part of core too! Let’s start a movement ok? LOL!
Ms. Ileane,
Another great post. Post revisions can be a headache. That is why I like to increase the time in-between autosaves and decrease the number of revisions stored in the database.
Hi Arelthia, I forget where to adjust the auto save time. Please remind me where I make that adjustment.
In my case 90% of my revisions are ones that I created manually because I didn’t want to lose my work. Blue Host had me really paranoid. I’m getting much better service from Host Gator though. Thanks Arelthia.
You are welcome Ileane.
The autosave interval is not available in the admin area. You change it by defining a value in the wp-config file. Here is a video that explains how to change the autosave interval.
first of all thanks for publishing about your work routine . really its inspiring me to do more 😉
I use smush it as well to optimize my images. Also a great way to reduce the file size of the image is to scale it to a smaller size. I find that I often don’t display my images at their full size, so I scale them down a bit to reduce file size.
I have seen that people only create blog and never ponder over for their maintenance. Your this post has raised us towards success in blogging.
Having a Backup of the Blog is really important and is the first maintenance for your blog. I dont optimise the images daily but I build internal links for my blog.
Well, I just learned about WP Optimize and it cleared out 4MBs of post revisions over the years that I had no idea even existed, 813 of them; interesting find. I stopped backing up my blog because the file’s are too big for my host to even allow me to add them back, which is a major shame. Might have to think about that one of these days, with all the content I have.
Mitch, I have an external drive that I offload my backups to. The cool thing about BackupBuddy is that you can send the files to Amazon S3, Rackspace Cloudfiles, Email, or FTP as well.
Nice to see that WP Optimize was helpful for you! Thanks for stopping by Mitch, it’s always great to see you. 🙂
That’s not what I mean Ileane. The last time I backed up my file it came to 4.8MB. My host will only allow me to load a backup file of 2.5MB. So it does me no good to back it up because I can’t load it back onto the server.
Sounds like you’re referring to a partial backup considering the small file size. Is there any reason why you don’t want to switch hosts so that you can have a chance to back up your work? I hope you can work it out somehow.
Yeah… been with the same host almost 7 years now; I don’t like change unless someone’s irked me. lol
Those are some solid tips Ileane!
I compress my images manually, but sometimes it messes with the quality and I end up getting a not so crisp/sharp image.
Wordpress plugins make it so much easier.
I need to have compressed images on my dad’s website but it’s just an html website and I still don’t fully understand Dreamweaver. But it does make me appreciate WordPress even more 🙂
Hi Danny, maybe one day your Dad will migrate to WordPress too. I have no Dreamweaver skills and I’d be lost without WordPress.
hi Ileane,
thats really a wonderful tips normally i dont use to do any think like this as in few months i use to take care of this this now i know where i am lacking behind 🙂 and about wp optimize i think its now time to give it a big try
Rohit, don’t forget because I will be checking up on you soon to make sure you’re doing your blog maintenance! 🙂
Thanks for stopping by Rohit.
I… I… Captain 😛 yep from that day i installed wp optimizer and its active now
Good for you! I haven’t seen anyone yet that didn’t benefit from installing WP Optimize.
For those of you who are installing the WP Optimize plugin just to remove revisions, you do realize it might be a lot easier just for you to just run an occasional SQLQuery? The one below will drop all revisions in the database:
DELETE a,b,c
FROM wp_posts a
LEFT JOIN wp_term_relationships b ON (a.ID = b.object_id)
LEFT JOIN wp_postmeta c ON (a.ID = c.post_id)
WHERE a.post_type = ‘revision’
Josh,
I see nothing easy about running a SQLQuery – even spelling the word is a 10 on my “difficulty” scale! LOL
Plus it’s super scary. I would definitely need someone to hold my hand during this process. What can be easier than checking off 2 boxes? That’s what I do in WP Optimize.
Those are some great tips. I like how you put the WordPress backup tip first. BAcking up your blog is probably one of the most important tasks when it comes to managing and maintaining your blog.
I try to optimize my images where I can, but incase I haven’t done the best job, I also use WP-Smush-it as well.
The weakest part of my blog maintenance is definitely building internal links. I haven’t really gone back and applied many internal links – although I do know that I really should make the effort.
Paul, creating the internal links can be time consuming on one hand. But it’s also a good time to clean up some things that might otherwise go unnoticed. For example, I have quite a few Facebook posts that I need to go back and add links to the new Facebook tutorial because the old ones still get traffic but the information is totally outdated! I wish I could set a timer just for the Facebook posts so they would update every time the platform changes! (I know, I’m dreaming right) LOL!
I’ll certainly need to focus more on making sure my sites are maintained properly. I do back them up occasionally, but probably not enough. I’m getting better at image optimization in terms of actually uploading the image in the dimensions I want to use, etc.
Thanks for this post Ileane! Very helpful!
Hi Tim,
Thanks for stopping by and I’m glad you found the post helpful.
Cheers!
Hi Ileane! This is great information. I’m going to give WP-Optimize a try. Thanks!
Hi Doug, let me know how you make out. I hope you can get rid of some unnecessary files.
Hi Ileane! I activated WP-Optimize on both of my sites, and according to the the plugin’s numbers, I got rid of several thousand unnecessary files. Every little bit counts! Thanks again for the tip!
Woot! Now that’s what I’m talkin’ bout! Cheers.
Hi Ileane 🙂
I dint know WP Optimize plugin till now, from now on I should use it for my blog. Thanks for sharing this article.
Hi Rahul!
I’m more than happy to introduce you the this fantastic plugin. I hope your blog moves faster after optimizing your database with WP Optimize.
Hey Ileane,
Pretending I’m not me and looking at my blog objectively is hard to do, but I’m getting better at it and tweaking things every few weeks like you suggest. Also thanks a bunch for the tip on the WP Optimize plugin.
I also recommend the W3 Total Cache plugin for improving the speed of your blog and total user experience. It helped my blog quite a bit.
Liz 🙂
Hi Liz, I’m not using a caching plugin right now, but hear great things about WP Total Cache. In the past I used WP Super Cache, but it was conflicting with some other more important plugins at the time. Thanks for sharing your feedback and let me know how you make up with WP Optimize.
I do partial backup of the database weekly and have the theme files and all with me. When you are on a long term VPS plan like me, I don’t see use of backing up every other things other than database files. But it will depend on individual to individual.
Hi Bishwajeet, the vps plan seems to cause less concern for backups, based on the other comments here from some others.
Are you using a plugin to help with the internal linking? I know you have a lot of content on your blog.
Thanks for your input.
We used a plugin way back , but that wasn’t a success so reverted back to related posts plugin as of now. Will try again and see whether it helps or not,coz many times a plugin would link some texts which it shouldn’t have linked and it looked quite weird for the users.
thnx for the post .. pls can you tell me something about ,WP-Optimize plugin
You can watch the video and learn all you need to know. OK?
I feel a little behind; I don’ t have a maintenance plan. I guess it’s time to start one.
Marcie, now is a good a time as any to get started! You have a lot of sites too, so it’s even more important that you keep them all safe. Let me know if you need help with anything.
Yes, WP-Optimize is a great plugin Illeane. I didn’t know about it until one day one of my guest bloggers wrote an article about it and it was really good. It can optimize your database and remove spammy comments easily. Real good plugin for beginners as well. 🙂
Hi Ricardus. Thanks for the feedback.
Hi Carly. I’m glad you learned something here.
Excellent tips Ileane! I love well, YOU and WP Optimize, both have been great for my site and I cannot say thank you enough!
Smush it is great for my landscape site, we take photos of our constantly and this plugin does exactly what it says. As far as Pinterest, shoot you have not invited me, so my photos are stuck on idle for now..lol
Be you, that is who we love! ! ! Or maybe it is the music in your videos? Naw it is YOU!
Bryan for President!! You are too cool my friend. I want you on my team any day of the week. (btw – sent you the Pinterest invite this morning).
I do not know if I would want that job Ileane! Thank you for the invite, I have done some exploring and will find you on there sooner or later. Oh I would except being on your team any day of the week too!
At the present I am on the way to learn to build internal links.We can get good performance of our blog if we do proper care of it.
Azam, internal linking is very important for your blog and I hope you get started with it soon.
Hi Ileane,
Great to know that you’re proactive in terms of backup of your blog. I use directly the backup of the entire site via Cpanel, but I know that BackUpBuddy is a good tool.
Try to use images but not huge, so I diminish the size of them, before post it.
I use WP-Optimize from time to time, to reduce the DB and like you, the revisions are tons 😉
I’ll pin it on my brand new Pinterest account – testing there. Tell me later how it goes in terms of traffic 🙂
Cheers,
Gera
Hi Gera,
Good to see you know about WP Optimize already, I guess it’s starting to become really popular these days among folks with a lot of content on our blogs. Thanks for stopping by Gera and for the pin!
I honestly don’t optimize my images. But you gave me a good idea about this one. And next time I visit my blog, I’m gonna pretend it’s not me. 🙂
Spatch Merlin
How to Blog Guide
Great tips. I never use wp smush plugin but reading your article I will certainly starting using this plugin for my blog.
Secondly, I want to ask a question regarding “WP OPTIMIZE” plugin, is that safe to you use the plugin or to do it through cpanel. I confuse in it.
Thanks for the blog and what an excelent tips.. I will really have a great performance..
I think you can setup a Cron Job service for timely backups rather than using a paid software. I use that only after WP DB Backup failed to work due to host migration and all.
WP Optimize is a brilliant tool. Saves a lot of space. I’ve been using it for more than an year now.
Hi, Thank you for the helpful information. Have you ever had blog visitors that sign in as administrators and post their blogs?
I’m learning more more each day not only about blog maintenance, but also about how to maintain a large database, while being counter productive in content creation efforts 🙂
keeping your site backed is a very important investment, and the tool mentioned here looks rather good, i myself have looked around and have not found many useful ones, but i might take a look at this one
thanks
I keep my DB backed up often, so that anytime i need to make adjustments, or edit anything in the DB, i always have the original backed up copy on hand =)
backupbuddy is really good plugin . i am using it and happy with it . You other points are really good .. Will try to follow them and will try to pretend I’m not me 🙂
There are quite some good tips and tricks and of course I will use that tool for optimizing the images, right now I am using on of the greatest optimizing tool and that is RIOT for my blog, You can grab RIOT easily its totally Free !! Thanks for useful tips..
thank you for this great post it is full of information and tips that will help me with everything i need to get up to date with everything to do with my blog.
Great tips Ileane! I’ve heard great things about BackUpBuddy. I host with Rochen Host and they have their own proprietary software called Backup Vault. They’re backing up my system twice daily onto off-site servers. They’re not the cheapest hosting around but I swear by them. Their tech support is superb and having their backups to rely on gives me a lot of peace of mind.
Hi Sherryl, thanks for letting me know about Rochen Host. It’s always good to have options 🙂
I am going to check into WP Optimize and see if it will be any good for my blog. I have never backed up my blog either and backup buddy sound like something I could rely on in case I lose data. Thanks for the list.
Hi Dennis, you have to be proactive about backing up your blog. Please don’t wait until you have problems because you will kick yourself for not getting BackupBuddy ahead of time. 🙂
Ileane this has helped me so much. Your tips are all fantastic. For me, at this time, it was a great reminder to get back into iStock Photos. I have not been focused on using my visuals correctly. Now with Pinterest all the rage, I do need to focus on the visual.
I also like when you say that “I pretend not to be me.” because I often do that. Sometimes I come to such a great blog content, but there are ads flashing in my face, there are so many click-able banners, and so on. It makes me dizzy! It doesn’t look clean and doesn’t brand the person well. The message I get from these crowded blogs is “buy me” and that is always a turn off.
Thanks again for these great tips!
Donna
Hi Donna, I’m a big fan of iStockphoto. I get a lot of value for the price and I don’t have to worry if the file is going to be taken down and I always find quality images there. When Pinterest first got my attention it was because someone had pinned some of those iStock images and they were sending traffic to my blog.
Thanks for finding this post and leaving a comment Donna! I appreciate you.
Blog maintenance is a very crucial factor in the blogging world because it redefines how blogs can be further polished to make them better.