Sixteen years after its release, WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS) in the world and currently powers around one-third of all sites on the web. As WordPress become more popular, it increasingly draws the attention of hackers who are eager to access the valuable information contained within a website, which in turn makes WordPress increasingly risky to use. 

According to an ongoing study and analysis conducted by EnableSecurity founder and CEO, Sandro Gauci, more than 70% of WordPress installations are vulnerable to cyber attacks. There are two main reasons for this:

1. Users continue to use outdated WordPress software that is not equipped to handle the latest cyber threats.
2. Users do not install any type of security measures to protect their websites from hacks. 

There can also another reason why WordPress sites are vulnerable to attacks. Users often install apps that do not provide full protection against destructive online activity. Developers may implement malware detection or a virus protection app to help with the security of the site, but these types of protective apps do not provide complete protection from all cyber threats and they do not actually prevent an attack. Instead, these apps typically work by dealing with the attack during or after its occurrence. 

What can WordPress site builders do to increase security while developing a WordPress site? 

Let’s explore some options below.

1. Use a virtual private network (VPN)

The best way to protect a WordPress site is to use a VPN service.

What is a virtual private network? 

A virtual private network (VPN) is at its core, an encrypted connection over the Internet from any IoT (Internet of Things) device to a private or public network. There are several ways a VPN provides this protection, ultimately preventing unauthorized users from accessing any device throughout the network. If a hacker cannot access a device or break the encryption, then they are unable to break into the WordPress site. 

Virtual private networks are widely used by individuals and companies alike because it is by far the most effective way to secure a network and all the digital assets and users contained within it. The main features of a VPN include:

• Endpoint security through virtual tunnelling – Data is encapsulated and untraceable or unreadable.
• IP masking – The WordPress site IP address (or user IP address) is given a different location in a remote area, while the actual IP address is hidden from the hacker.
• All traffic and data are encrypted so that a hacker or other entity cannot read it.
• All developer activity on the WordPress site during development is untraceable since the VPN keeps no records or logs of activity.

2. Find a reputable hosting provider

The simplest way to protect a site is to find a reputable hosting provider that also utilizes multiple strategies for security. Many hosting providers use VPNs to keep their data and users safe. 

Users should take care to avoid cheap providers that offer eye-catching savings. While the user may save money on the front end, the cost of using an unsafe provider could be devastating in the long run. A users WordPress data could be vulnerable to ransomware, spyware, viruses, or phishing. 

There are several options for choosing a safe WordPress hosting service. Experts and users generally recommend the following hosting services:

• HostGator
• A2 Web
• DreamHost
• Hostwinds
• Liquid Web
• 1&1 Ionos

3. Install a top WordPress security plugin

WordPress offers a wide range of security plugins from third-party providers that can add an additional layer of security to the site. Plugins can regularly monitor the site for strange code or unauthorized access to the account. They also offer such features as:

• Audits for suspicious activity
• Monitoring the integrity of files
• Malware scanning & detection
• Monitoring for blacklisted items
• Tightening security in certain areas of the site
• Hack detection & response
• instant alerts & notifications
• Website firewalls

Many of these plugins should only be used as a supplemental security measure. While they may be reliable, they do not prevent hacks. They only monitor the website and act as an intrusion detection system (IDS). A VPN is a better option for actually preventing a cyber attack. 

4. Create an impenetrable password

Most passwords manually created by users are weak. Why is this? They are often predictable, too short, or they contain a logical sequence of letters and numbers. For instance, most users create passwords that start with a capital letter, have 8 to 11 letters which is then followed by 2 to 4 digits. This combination of letters and numbers makes it relatively easy for hackers to figure out the password.

The best passwords are at least 10 digits long and use a jumbled combination of numbers, symbols, and letters that make no logical sense and have no connection with the user. The more complex the password, the more secure the WordPress site. 

5. Get an SSL certificate

No website should exist without a secure sockets layer (SSL) certificate. But what is an SSL certificate? 

An SSL Certificate is a small data file that attaches a cryptographic key to the website / company details. Once the SSL is installed on the web server, it activates a digital ‘padlock’ or HTTPS protocol which virtually guarantees a secure connection from the server to the browser. SSL certificates are valuable for WordPress site builders who plan to operate an eCommerce store, engage in substantial data transfer, or create a site that will host lots of interactive features. 

SSL is mandatory for any WordPress site where the owner requests to store private or sensitive data such as account setup or payment information. SSLs also prevent data from being delivered in plain text, which would make it much easier to hack. 

With all the security threats that endanger websites today, WordPress site developers should take multiple precautions for securing their sites. Start by using a VPN to create a barrier around both the site and the network. From there, developers can use practical methods such as finding a reputable host, using sensible passwords, and utilizing security plugins. Every bit helps to ensure that a website is safe for all who visit.

Add two factor authentication and UpdraftPlus plugins

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In previous years, we’ve shared some favourite versions of the classic Christmas carol, “O Holy Night”. It’s time for another! This is a beautiful Celtic version, with a beautiful voice, harp and violin. A happy Christmas 2019 to all our users!

Behold your king, before him lowly bend

David Anderson (lead developer)

The post Merry Christmas 2019 appeared first on UpdraftPlus. UpdraftPlus – Backup, restore and migration plugin for WordPress.

Virtual reality (VR) continues to rise in popularity as the previously prohibitive expensive hardware needed to run it becomes more affordable. Companies are investing heavily in its expansion and increased appeal by creating dedicated media, games and building rich marketing experiences that utilize the technology. With each passing year as computer processing and internet speeds become faster, VR comes closer to fulfilling its awesome potential, with the next leap in the technology promising to be the most significant.

Augmented reality (AR) is even farther down that path. AR has been a viable platform and has been in use for quite some time to often huge success with smartphone apps such as the massively popular Pokemon game. AR can also be used to preview physical products in real-world environments, provide informative overlays for directions, or even participate in the use of shared digital environments.

At the other end of the spectrum is something that’s been mainstream for years: WordPress. A website platform with incredible versatility through its robust feature set and wide-ranging flexibility. WordPress can be used to construct the most basic beginners blog, all the way up to a super professional high-end business website. WordPress users of all types love choosing from the countless available plugins and themes to customize their sites and experiment with new tools and methods.

But what happens if you want to bring these two things together? Enhancing the fantastic WordPress experience with some AR or VR content sounds like a good idea in theory, but it raises a vital question: Such as, does AR/VR currently fit and work on a WordPress site? Let’s take a look:

What VR and AR content actually involves

Before considering how well AR/VR works in WordPress, it’s worth thinking about what they actually encompass. Given that VR is still essentially in the development phase with relatively low levels of ownership and a surfeit of confusing options (even those who do own a VR headset, only uses it occasionally), you might wonder why it’s worth the time to invest in this new sector – as such we need to find a satisfactory answer.

First let’s look at the VR/AR divide. A clear distinction is commonly made between VR and AR, with VR aims to replace the world around you while AR adds to it. But it isn’t quite this simple. What if you have a VR environment that draws from real world elements? Is this VR and AR? In truth, the future of VR lies in AR headsets, so AR content is essentially VR content.

This is a lengthy way of establishing that it’s easier to place a variety of content types under the broad “VR” umbrella, including 360-degree video, AR stickers, and instructional overlays.

What AR and VR can bring to WordPress

Some CMS developers have been vocal about investing in 3D content for VR and AR. In the eCommerce world, Shopify is a prime example of this, even announcing native 3D model storage for its store hosting system in early 2018 ( coupled with a rich lineup of existing video editor integrations). In addition to this, there has been plenty of progress elsewhere.

You might assume that progress is limited to hosted platforms, but what if existing plugin development could make WordPress (extended through WooCommerce) a more captivating prospect? As it happens, we can say exactly that – because it’s true.

The VR Shop is a new site, that while still in the early stages of development, allows the creation of a completely virtual store to be explored using a VR headset. While it’s compatible with various platforms, it already works with the WooCommerce plugin due to the massive popularity of WordPress.

Given that so much of the web runs on WordPress and how unlikely this is to change in the near future, it makes total sense that any company that aims to get ahead with VR website functionality would ensure it worked smoothly with WordPress.

If you want to use other VR related features such as 360-degree videos in your WordPress site, this can already be achieved by using suitable VR plugins (the same can also be said for AR previews). Since it would be foolish for VR content creators not to specifically cater to such a popular platform with such a large market share, it’s clear that the future for VR content on WordPress is exceedingly bright.

There’s even a full WordPress theme entirely dedicated to AR for eCommerce: it’s called Ozisti, and it uses an attached plugin developed for WordPress to enable the use of AR previews. If you want to give it a try, the AR service starts with a 14-day free trial for you to explore. Alternatively you can stick to the 360-degree video route and use a suitable plugin to position it on your homepage and set it to auto-play for maximum effect.

Conclusion on the future of VR and AR on websites

As previously stated, one of the biggest uses of VR online outside of traditional media and gaming will be creating virtual stores to bridge the gap between brick-and-mortar retail and eCommerce. The current WordPress VR Shop is merely a hint at what’s to come. One day people will be able to use powerful AR and VR interfaces to visually browse virtual stores and place items into their home to both preview and order them.

There’s also the matter of accessibility however as many VR systems are prohibitively expensive and require high end PCs to use all the features as intended.

Should you add VR and AR content/features to your WordPress site? Absolutely – With the system’s continued growth in popularity, you can rely on VR and AR companies to bring the medium into the new decade. Keep an eye on available plugins and to follow updates regarding AR and VR. The next decade should be interesting!

The post Using AR & VR content on a WordPress website appeared first on UpdraftPlus. UpdraftPlus – Backup, restore and migration plugin for WordPress.

UpdraftPlus is always searching for new and reputable partners that we can recommend to our users. With websites and databases getting larger and larger, reliable cloud storage is one of the most important factors to consider when setting up your site. 

Linode is the largest independent open cloud provider in the world, with 10 global data centres worldwide that serve over 800,000 developers and businesses and offers valuable cloud services to new innovators, growing teams, startups and larger enterprises.

The company has taken the lead in open cloud provider services and has been at the forefront of innovation, making cloud services more simple, affordable and accessible. It also works well with UpdraftPlus as you can use Linode S3 compatible Object Storage for all your WordPress backups, big data and data archiving needs.

They offer a wide range of object storage and pricing plans for your needs, ranging from just 250GB, up to 10TB.

For in-depth details on how to use UpdraftPlus with Linode Object Storage, please read this guide.

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It’s that time of year again; when Black Friday shoppers start to check websites and seek out the best deals available. 

So this Black Friday shopping season, we highly recommend you avoid the packed shops and high-streets and take the significantly safer alternative of staying home and ordering your favourite items online.

With such high demand for these deals and following the massive success of our Black Friday event last year, UpdraftPlus have decided to extend our Black Friday offer so that it now starts on Monday 25th November and runs right through till the end of the month, making our massive Black Friday offers a week long event!

We have put together a whole host of amazing deals and for one week only, everyone can now get any or all of the following Black Friday offers:

20% off UpdraftPlus Premium subscription. Use the code: BFUDPlus20Site

20% off MetaSlider Pro: Use the code BFMetaSite20

20% off Easy Updates Manager: Use the code EUM20SiteBF

20% off WP-Optimize: Use the code: WPO20BlackFridaySite

20% off UpdraftCentral: Use the code: CentralSite20BF

20% off UpdraftClones: Use the code: BFClone20Site

All discount codes are valid until the end of November 2019.

The post The massive UpdraftPlus Black Friday sale starts now appeared first on UpdraftPlus. UpdraftPlus – Backup, restore and migration plugin for WordPress.

Choosing the right theme for your site is a vitally important part of creating a great website. Visitors will judge your site immediately based on how it looks, functions and responds to different screen sizes and types. So what are your options for getting a great theme?

You could create your own custom theme of course. There are numerous plugins that can help you tweak your WordPress theme so you can add your own graphics and design elements. While this gives you the most creative freedom, it is also the most difficult option to go with.

Another option you could go with would be to purchase a WordPress theme from a reputable developer, which can be a great choice if you have a decent budget for your website and prefer to get your site up and running as quickly and efficiently as possible to a really high standard. Going with this option also gives you the benefit of having a built-in strong and reliable customer support system, which can prove quite useful for troubleshooting issues.

The final option when creating your WordPress site is to use a free WordPress theme. There are thousands of free themes available online, but should you really use one? To evaluate the possibility of using a free WordPress theme, we must first consider the pros and cons.

Are free themes really good enough?

Typically when we hear that something is “free” in a business sense, it typically suggest that the product is either not good enough justify a fee, or that you will receive a shell product that forces you to upgrade to the full, paid version. When a product is made that is something users would really desire, it stands to reason that the owners will monetize this product to capitalize on customer demand. 

Lots of great developers create WordPress themes as side projects and offer them to users for free. This is typically due to the creator to generate more interest in their broader portfolios. Users just need to be discerning and fully evaluate any free theme of interest before use

Free themes are less likely to be updated

A theme doesn’t necessarily need updates in the same way that a security plugin would as a theme is more about the look of a site and as such is less affected by changes to functionality. Despite this, there is a good chance that a theme could eventually run into problems due to a future WordPress update. This update could potentially change a core part of the navigation system, or cause an installed plugin to have a conflict with the updated theme.

Theme creators that charge for their work with paid themes are typically invested in the theme’s continued success and positive feedback. If an update to WordPress or a conflict with a plugin cause the theme to break, the developer will typically take action to fix it very quickly in order to maintain positive feedback and ratings. Since theme developers who give away themes for free do not collect any revenue, there is very little reason to continue to work on them. This allows the developer to simply ignore the free theme if they do not feel it was worth any further time and money to fix it. Due to these issues, using a free theme can carry some element of risk to it.

Changing themes

It is not unheard of for a premium WordPress site theme to cost up-to several hundred dollars. If you choose to make this kind of investment, you should ideally use your purchased theme for a long as possible -making the cost worthwhile. So what do you do if an update comes along and objectively makes your website and it’s theme worse? Or say for example, you want to update the company theme as your sense of style has developed and you want something more modern?

If you have a paid theme that is no longer performing to the standards you need, you can either try to make the most of your investment and stick with it (generally a bad idea), or you can bite the bullet and replace it and spend more money on a new theme. If you are using a free theme however, you do not have to justify moving away from your paid investment/spending more and have the freedom to change themes for any reason.

It’s harder (but not impossible) to stand out

Coming up with a design for your site that makes it stand out is an essential part of building a memorable website. The standard website formula is everywhere, which generally means you won’t want to deviate significantly, but will need to do something special to catch the users attention. If you are using a free theme, you will almost certainly be using a theme that has a style and format that is accessible to everyone and has been used by many sites.

However, given the sheer amount of free themes available, it is still possible with some through research and digging, to find a great-looking theme that hasn’t been overused by other sites. If you are working on a budget, it is still possible to get a slick and attention-grabbing theme that stands out, while while adhering completely to your brand’s design guidelines at zero cost.

Experiment with themes safely

When you apply a new theme to your site (be it free or paid), it can possibly cause issues with plugins that are installed and running on your site. We have all heard horror stories of someone updating a theme that completely destroys their site, with no ability to restore the site back to an earlier version. This is a great reason to install a plugin like UpdraftPlus.

By making regular backups of your WordPress site (something you should be doing regardless), you will not have to worry about theme changes causing any issues. Simply activate your new theme to test it. In the very unlikely event that it causes a problem that can’t be resolved simply by disabling it, you can just restore your site from a backup before the installation.

If you can afford to purchase a premium theme from a reputable developer, this should always be your first option as it will provide you with continued security, development and customer service. However if you are on a budget and feel that your website can be properly serviced by a standard free theme, then just ensure that you obtain it from a reputable vendor, has a good user rating and has no history of clashing with WordPress plugins.

The post Should you use a free WordPress theme for your website? appeared first on UpdraftPlus. UpdraftPlus – Backup, restore and migration plugin for WordPress.

Our goal this year has been to make restores great again – and as part of that goal, we have now added the ability to restore “more files” backups (files that are not part of your WordPress install, but that you may still wish to backup, such as directories on your web-server). Some time ago, UpdraftPlus added the feature to backup more files, however this has always been a manual restoration task. But now, thanks to the latest version of UpdraftPlus, these backups can now be automatically restored. 

With the imminent release of PHP 7.4, we have added support for PHP 7.4 to UpdraftClone, allowing you to now easily test your themes, plugins and other changes on a 7.4 clone before upgrading to your live server. 

With WordPress 5.3 also being released soon, we have updated our clone process, allowing the new 5.3 release to be tested using UpdraftClone. We have also made it easier to create clones of your sites by adding the ability to use existing remote backups for your clone; so now there is no need to create a new backup for a clone if you feel there is no need.

In addition to these new updates, we have also made various tweaks and fixes to keep UpdraftPlus running smooth and compatible with future WordPress and PHP releases.

• FEATURE: Add support for PHP 7.4 in UpdraftClone
• FEATURE: Added the ability to restore “more files” backups
• FEATURE: Add OneDrive Germany compatibility
• FIX: Failure to send existing translation version with update checks (on paid versions) resulted in redundant translation updates
• FIX: Deal with a BackBlaze “first chunk too small” error correctly when doing chunked uploading
• TWEAK: Block any updates from occurring during a restore
• TWEAK: Force the predecessor Amazon S3 SDK to use virtual-hosted style bucket identification instead of path style
• TWEAK: Refactor the remote storage logging code in Addon base v2
• TWEAK: Removed the Keyy notice (Keyy now has a new owner)
• TWEAK: Add WP 5.3 support in UpdraftClone
• TWEAK: On paid versions, possibly adjust the daily update check time to favour overnight hours
• TWEAK: Get UpdraftClone supported WordPress versions during authentication
• TWEAK: Added the ability to use backups stored in remote storage for UpdraftClone
• TWEAK: Small PHP 7.4 deprecation tweaks in the Google and legacy AWS SDKs

The post UpdraftPlus release latest 1.16.20 (free + paid) version – Includes ability to restore “more files” backups appeared first on UpdraftPlus. UpdraftPlus – Backup, restore and migration plugin for WordPress.

How to Increase Website Speed with WP-Optimize Plugin

Faster website speeds can play an important role in the success of your website. The faster your website’s speed, the higher it can rank in search engines; which can attract more visitors, reduce bounce rate and help increase visitor to customer conversions. As a website owner, the speed of your site should be right at the top of your priority list.

To increase website speed there are a few techniques you can apply, including image compression, caching and database optimization. There are no end of plugins available that can individually help compress your images, optimize the database and cache your site. In the past you would have needed to install a separate plugin for each of these tasks as there was no single plugin available that did all these jobs.

Thanks to WP-Optimize, this has now changed; You can now get all the above features in one handy plugin. No more headaches from using and maintaining several different plugins and hoping that they have no security problems. With WP-Optimize, you can just install a single, secure plugin on your website and increase your site’s speed dramatically.

Before using the WP-Optimize plugin

To measure the site’s speed before and after optimization on our test website, we will use the Google Pagespeed Insights and GTMetrix speed measuring websites. When our test website is run on these services before using the WP-Optimize plugin, we get the following scores.

Using the WP-Optimize plugin

To start the optimization process, first install and activate the WP-Optimize plugin on your website. After activating the plugin, go to WP-Optimize->Database. You will find several default options selected by the plugin that should be optimized. 

As with all optimization procedures, it is always recommended to first take a backup of the database backup before running the database optimization option. Once the backup is complete, press the ‘Run all selected optimizations’ button. The plugin will now start removing orphan records from your database, resulting in reduced database size and better server response time.

Next, head over to WP-Optimize->Images. Turn on ‘Automatically compress newly-added images’, to make sure any image you add later will be compressed. Under the compression options, you will find 3 choices where you can select your preferred compression choice. For the purposes of this test, we will choose the most popular option – ‘Prioritize retention of detail’, which saves space, but maintains higher image quality.

If you scroll down the page, you will find a list of your uncompressed website images. Image compression will reduce the size of the images, resulting in a smaller page size and thus a higher page speed score. 

Click ‘Select all’ and then press the ‘Compress the selected images’ button.

The WP-Optimize plugin will start optimizing your images using the external service reSmush.it or Nitrosmush. You can choose either service from the ‘Show advanced options’ drop-down. By default, reSmush.it will be the service selected.

When you check the site score on Pagespeed Insights, you will notice the recommendation for ‘Defer offscreen images’ – the recommended lazy-load technique. 

Lazy-load is a technique that defers the loading of non-critical resources (images, video) during page loading. These non-critical resources are instead loaded at the point when they are needed (e.g. when the user scrolls down the page). If possible, this technique should be employed as it will definitely speed up your website.

To enable this feature in WP-Optimize, go to the ‘Lazy-load’ tab and select the checkbox for ‘Images’ and ‘iframes and Videos’ (should you have any on your site) and press ‘Save settings’.

Next, set up the cache feature within WP-Optimize. To start, go to WP-Optimize>Cache. Within the ‘Page cache’ tab, turn on ‘Enable page caching’ and select the option for ‘Generate separate files for mobile devices’, if your website has a mobile specific theme. 

Don’t forget to save the changes

The following Gzip compression and static file caching should be done before enabling cache. Gzip compresses the requested resource before sending it, resulting in smaller file sizes and faster loading. Enable this option in the ‘Gzip compression’ tab.

Finally, enable the browser static file caching settings in the ‘Static file headers’ tab. By doing this, it advises a visitor’s browser to cache non-changing files for a period of time so that it doesn’t attempt to retrieve them upon every visit.

After using the WP-Optimize plugin

Now we are done setting up all the WP-Optimize settings, let’s check our test site’s speed score on Google Pagespeed Insights and GTmetrix again. This will evaluate your site’s performance and should give a better score compared to pre-optimization results.

Conclusion

With just these few optimization techniques, the test site’s Google page speed has improved from 48 to 65, while the GTmetrix score has improved the PageSpeed score from 34% to 49%, YSlow score from 53% to 75%, fully loaded time from 4.2s to 3.7s and total page size from 4.04MB to 3.10MB.

When it comes to WordPress, site optimization is a hugely important step to perform before your launch your site. A properly optimized site will not only give your visitors a better user experience, but also help you succeed online. 

By using the WP-Optimize all-in-one plugin, you can get all the essential features needed for optimizing your WordPress website. Get a copy of WP-Optimize today and increase your website speed and let us know your feedback in the comment section below.

The post How to increase website speed with WP-Optimize plugin appeared first on UpdraftPlus. UpdraftPlus – Backup, restore and migration plugin for WordPress.

We have been hard at work on a new update for the most popular WordPress slider on the market – MetaSlider. 

We are continually making the effort to improve all aspects of MetaSlider, from adding new ways to navigate slideshows, to adding extra checks for REST enabled sites. 

Be sure to check out the change-log below for a full list of features, tweaks and fixes in this new release. 

Check out the change-log below. Other new features for this new release also include:

Change log

3.15.1

• FIX: Adds better check for slide image thumbnails and count
• FIX: Updates $ to jQuery on the admin settings screen

3.15.0

• FEATURE: Adds a new way to navigate slideshows
• TWEAK: Adds various accessibility enhancements to FlexSlider
• TWEAK: Adds extra checks for REST enabled sites
• TWEAK: Updates notices
• FIX: Updates various RTL language styling issues
• FIX: Fixes bug where new slides wouldn’t crop until pressing save
• FIX: Fixes various layout breaks from other languages

The post New slideshow navigation with the latest MetaSlider update appeared first on UpdraftPlus. UpdraftPlus – Backup, restore and migration plugin for WordPress.

You’ve created a wonderfully designed WordPress page. But as good as it may look and feel, if it’s sluggish and takes too long to load, you can kiss your conversions goodbye and say hello to higher bounce rates.

In a world where the average consumer is busier, savvier, more demanding and less patient than ever, site performance really matters – a lot. According to Google research, more than half of all mobile site visits are abandoned if a page takes more than just three seconds to load:

Faster pages, on the other hand, see better conversion rates, longer engagement and generate more revenue for their owners:

Every element of your website takes up space and memory, all of which increase your upload time and decrease your page speed. The more memory you use, the more sluggish your website is likely to be.

For WordPress site owners in particular, this represents a real challenge.  WordPress sites are built on a basic shell, which is modified by choosing a theme, layout template and then adding in various plugins. Each extra element means extra database queries and additional HTTP requests, every one of which slows down your page speed and diminishes a website’s performance.

Most of us might not even notice these tiny, incremental decreases in speed when we view our own websites, but even fractions of a second can add up, especially for mobile viewers. And considering that just one second can make the difference between an engagement or a bounce, improving the page speed is critical.

Fortunately, there are some easy steps you can take to reduce database space and speed up the loading time of your WordPress site, none of which require technical knowledge or coding skills.

We’ve come up with the following ways to improve your WordPress sites speed and optimize its performance without compromising on design:

Remove Unnecessary Assets

When building a WordPress site, you’ll invariably end up with things you thought you might use, but later discover that you don’t really need; like that picture you had to add three times to get the sizing right, or that extra theme you installed but then changed your mind about. All of these extras can add up, so it’s important to do a bit of cleaning up:

1. Start by going through your media library with a fine-tooth comb, removing any image files, videos, audio clips or other media files that you no longer need. If you have a huge library to go through, consider using a media cleaner plugin to make the job quick and easy.

2. Remove any unused plugins. This is one of the fastest and easiest ways to reduce the size of your database and speed up your site performance. Rather than just deactivating them (which basically turns them off but leaves them in the database), it is worth going through and deleting them properly:

3. Next, remove any unused themes. If, like most people, you built your own WordPress site, you probably tried a few (or many) different themes before settling on your final design. And all of those themes remain in your site’s database, hogging space and slowing things down. Get rid of them by clicking on Appearance > Themes then click on Theme Details for the theme(s) you want to remove. Then click on Delete in the bottom right corner.

One word of warning though – be careful not to delete the default WordPress theme, Twenty Fourteen:

“The reason is,” explains Rich Plakas from Connected Systems, “if one of the other 3rd party themes gets corrupted, either from a bad update or from you modifying theme files, you will experience the ‘WordPress White Screen of Death.’ Leaving the default theme gives you an easy way to get the site running again.”

4. Finally, delete all unnecessary HTML and extra code. If you have a pretty good understanding of how site coding works, there are a number of plugins you can use to clean up your code. But only those who know what they’re doing with HTML should use these plugins. Otherwise you may permanently change things you didn’t want to change.

Keep your WordPress site Updated and Secure

Updating may seem like a small thing, but it’s one of the most overlooked elements of site performance on any WordPress site. Like a smartphone, it requires these regular updates to ensure its operating system and applications stay up-to-speed and offer the latest features.

WordPress automatically pushes out updates on a regular basis. Each update provides new features and mends underlying security issues and bugs. Your WordPress theme and plugins may have regular updates, too; check in on your Dashboard frequently, and be sure to update whenever prompted. Failure to do so may make your website slow, unreliable and vulnerable to security breaches.

To  keep track of your WordPress updates and do it all from one convenient dashboard, we recommend using UpdraftCentral. UpdraftCentral is a highly efficient way to manage, update and backup multiple websites from one place for sites on which UpdraftPlus is installed. 

To help optimize your site, WP-Optimize can automate the otherwise technical and time-consuming task of cleaning up your WordPress database by removing old revisions, spam and trash. WP-Optimize also comes with a cache feature that loads your WordPress posts and pages as static files, thus reducing the processing load on the web server. With minimal configuration, it can help to improve your website’s speed and performance. Further optimize your site by compressing large images using WP-Optimize’s cutting-edge lossy/lossless compression techniques, allowing large images to be uploaded in an instant.

Relying on the WordPress updates alone is not really enough to keep your site protected in the event of a crash, hack or other system melt-down as WordPress is notoriously vulnerable to security problems.

To give you an idea of how big a problem this really is, check out WPScan’s vulnerability database, which lists real-time reports of current vulnerabilities in the WordPress core code, plugins and themes. As you can see from the nearly 15,000 vulnerabilities in the screenshot below, an unprotected site is at constant risk:

With that kind of risk exposure, many experts recommend using UpdraftPlus – the top rated and most popular WordPress backup plugin that can protect you from hackers, server crashes, bad plugins, and even user errors. If anything goes wrong, you’ll be able to easily restore WordPress from a backup and get your site to full working order.

Adopt a CDN

When optimizing for speed, it’s important to consider the distance your potential viewers are from your server. If you have a global audience with visitors coming from anywhere in the world, you’ll probably want to install a Content Delivery Network (CDN).

CDN is basically when you have a lot of highly optimized servers that span the planet, that allow you to hit the server that is closest to your location.

CDNs are used to prevent the issue of latency, which is an irritating delay that happens from the point when you request to load a web page to the point where the content appears onscreen. Latency, as you may have guessed, slows site loading speed down and has an adverse impact on site performance.

Installing a CDN on your WordPress site will help to ensure that it continues to perform well and load quickly, keeping visitors happy and reducing bounce rate, wherever they happen to be. You can find CDN plugins on WordPress.org; or, check with your hosting provider. Many of them provide CDNs at no or minimal costs.

Good site performance begins with cleaning out your assets, keeping your software updated, and using a good CDN for fast delivery. Once you get these basics down, you will be on your way to maintaining a high quality user experience and building a long-lasting relationship with your audience.

Dvora Goldstein – professional blogger and content marketer

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