Website Maintenance Checklist: Weekly, Monthly and Yearly Tasks.

A website is not finished on launch day. Software needs updating, backups need checking and forms quietly stop working. Most website problems we are asked to fix come from sites that were built well and then left alone.

Use this checklist to keep your site secure, fast and bringing in enquiries. It applies to any site, with a few extras for WordPress.

Weekly

• Check that backups ran. Make sure your latest backup completed and is stored off-site, not only on the same server.
• Review security alerts. Scan for malware and review any warnings from your security tool or host.
• Apply security updates. Install urgent security releases for WordPress core, plugins and themes.
• Glance at uptime. Check your uptime monitor for outages you did not notice.

Monthly

• Update everything else. Install remaining plugin, theme and core updates, ideally on a staging copy first, then check the live site.
• Test your forms. Submit every contact, quote and booking form and confirm the email actually arrives. This is the most common silent failure we see.
• Test the checkout if you run a store: place a test order end to end.
• Check speed. Run your key pages through a speed test and look for new slow images or scripts.
• Look for broken links and fix or redirect them.
• Check Google Search Console for new indexing errors, security issues or manual actions.
• Remove what you don’t use. Delete unused plugins and themes; every one is something that needs updating.

Quarterly

• Test a restore. Restore a backup to a staging site. A backup you cannot restore is not a backup.
• Review user accounts. Remove old staff and freelancer logins, check that admins use strong passwords, and turn on two-factor authentication.
• Review your content. Update prices, team members, opening hours, services and anything else that has changed.
• Check mobile layouts on a real phone, not only in a desktop browser.
• Review analytics. Which pages bring enquiries, and which lose visitors?

Yearly

• Renew your domain and hosting, and turn on auto-renew so a lapsed payment never takes your site offline.
• Check your SSL certificate renews automatically.
• Review your legal pages: privacy policy, cookie consent and terms.
• Audit plugins and hosting: are you still on the best setup for your traffic and features?
• Plan improvements based on the year’s analytics and customer feedback.

WordPress extras

• Keep PHP up to date through your host; old versions are slower and unsupported.
• Limit login attempts and hide or protect the admin login.
• Choose plugins that are actively maintained and widely used.
• Use a staging site for anything larger than a text change.

Do it yourself, or hand it over?

If you have someone technical on your team and the time to follow this list every week, you can maintain a site yourself. Most businesses would rather spend that time on their customers.

Our website maintenance plans cover backups, updates, security monitoring, speed checks and content changes, so the list above is handled for you. Wondering whether your current site is due a rebuild instead? Read how much a website costs or get in touch for an honest review.

FAQs

1. How often should a website be backed up?

At least daily for sites that change often, such as stores or blogs, and weekly for sites that rarely change. Keep copies off-site, and test that a backup actually restores.

2. Is it safe to turn on automatic updates?

For minor security updates, usually yes. For major updates to themes, plugins or WordPress itself, test on a staging copy first, as they can occasionally break layouts or features.

3. What happens if I never maintain my website?

It slowly breaks: plugins go out of date and become security risks, forms stop sending, pages get slower and search rankings drop. Fixing a hacked site costs far more than maintaining it.