Martin TolovskiAs one of the most used WordPress themes and web-building tools, Divi is loved by every developer and blogger alike. It all comes down to the fact that Divi is easy to install, use, manage, and customize for every user, from beginner to veteran web developers.
Divi provides you with a wide range of extensions and plugins to help you build any website that you need. However, as good as Divi & WordPress are, that powerful force you’ve created your website with won’t last without a regular maintenance program.
Without it, many things can go wrong on your website all at once, generating more things to fix up in the process. To help you not reach that point, let’s check off the eight Divi maintenance tasks you must perform regularly.
Why Maintenance Matters
Divi is one of the most popular and most powerful WordPress themes to date, and the CMS is by far the most popular worldwide, with 43% of the web on top of the platform.
Running a WordPress website is like running a vehicle. You must maintain it regularly for the engine to run smoothly. The most important benefits of maintaining your Divi site include:
- Stronger Security: Hacked websites are the worst thing that can happen to a business today, which is why strong security through maintenance is one of the most important tasks that you need to perform.
- Improved SEO: Google doesn’t like outdated and poorly maintained websites. Maintenance is an important SEO aspect that helps your Divi website rank well on search engines.
- More Business: A website is more than just a business card. It’s the best place where people can learn more about your product and services and purchase them immediately. To keep growing your business, website maintenance is a must.
Now you know why web maintenance is important for your Divi website, let’s discuss the eight Divi maintenance tasks that you must perform on a regular basis.
1. Make a Full Backup
Even though WordPress nowadays can be 99% secure, at times, we come across websites that are hacked, the data from them is being suddenly removed, and some of the pages don’t work.
This is why a regular full WordPress backup is important and the number one task on your Divi maintenance checklist.
Doing this manually can be a laborious and agitating process, which is why most high-end hosting providers offer a fully automated backup of your WordPress website as an essential part of their packages.
However, suppose your hosting provider doesn’t take care of the backups regularly. In that case, you need to switch services or use a plugin, a solution for which there are many available on the market, such as Updraft Plus:
The frequency of your full backups can vary. For example, if you have a portfolio website that you don’t update frequently, a daily backup is not than necessary.
However, if you run an online store where you update your content and product information daily, you need to make a backup each day.
2. Check and Update Your Plugins
Your Divi website comes with plenty of plugins that their developers regularly update to integrate new features and bug fixes, and keeping these plugins updated is essential for your website to stay safe and in peak condition.
Make sure that you always pay attention to the plugin versions and that you’re using the latest one.
3. Update Divi Regularly
Just like your WordPress core, the Divi theme also must be updated regularly. In the best case, you need to update the Divi theme immediately after an update is released.
When a new version of the themes becomes available, a notification will appear in Dashboard > Updates, as well as within the Themes & Plugins manager.
Keeping the theme updated is also important from a WordPress compatibility aspect. Making sure that your theme is compatible with the latest WordPress version, the entire website will stay safe, and the latest Divi features will work flawlessly.
4. Filter Out Spam Comments
Spam can become a real nuisance for websites, particularly for the ones that must handle high traffic inflows. If comments are enabled on your Divi website, by now, you might’ve noticed that some of them are incoherent random comments that either try to promote a page or, worse, they’re links intended to fool users into providing their information.
This makes it difficult for actual users to interact with your Divi website, and it creates big security risks with all the malwares. The best way to delete these comments and filter them out is to use an anti-spam plugin, such as:
- Akismet: It is the number one WordPress antispam plugin, developed by Automattic. It is the most popular anti-spam plugin, and, without a doubt, excellent in combatting comment spam.
- Titan Anti-Spam: Titan Antispam & Security is a set of security features such as security scanning, firewalls, security audits, real-time IP blacklisting, malware scanning, and a feature that repairs corrupt files.
- WP Zero Spam: Through a no-CAPTCHA method, it saves users from filling out CAPTCHA and answering questions, and the plugin blocks spam on your Divi website via server and client-side JavaScript key validation to block bots.
- Stop Spammers: Stop Spammers offers over 50 configuration options and uses over 20 various spam checks to detect spam. When the plugin detects a comment or login attempt, users get a CAPTCHA screen to prevent them from blocking.
5. Change Passwords Frequently
Any WordPress website can get compromised if you have a weak username and password. But even though creating new login credentials is fairly easy, lots of website owners ignore this task, putting their website at serious risk.
A long, complex password for every login of your Divi website, hosting, and database accounts is critical. But even strong passwords can sometimes get compromised. This is where plugins come in handy again:
- WP Password Protect: This plugin offers a powerful and all-in-one solution to securing your Divi website with passwords. Whether you want to password protect WordPress categories, WooCommerce products, a few posts, or your entire website, the PPWP plugin will help you do so with ease.
- Frontend Reset Password: It allows site users to reset their lost or forgotten passwords in the frontend of your Divi website. Frontend Reset Password is perfect for sites that have disabled access to the WordPress dashboard or if you want to include a lost/reset password form on one of your custom site pages.
6. Optimize Website Forms
Forms are critical for the success of any website and perhaps are the best way to enable users to communicate with you with any questions regarding your products or services.
But, they don’t always work as they should, mostly due to hosting or email provider mishaps, and a form that doesn’t work deters away customers because you’d make it harder for them to reach you.
This is why it’s always a good idea to test your forms and ensure that everything works properly. To start, fill out the forms with incorrect information to see if you’ll get the right feedback, and then do the same, but with a legitimate email and name to make sure everything works.
If the form is the regular method of contact between your target customers and your sales reps, you need to perform this task regularly, on a weekly basis.
7. Locate and Fix Broken Links
Broken links on your Divi website may seem like a minor problem at first hand. Still, if there are more that go unnoticed, it can stop Google from crawling and indexing your pages, which means that no matter the work that you’ve put into your content, it will be much harder to rank on search engines.
To avoid that from happening, you need to regularly check for broken links across your Divi website and fix them as soon as they’re detected.
8. Conduct a Performance Test
The performance of your Divi site plays a critical role in deciding whether someone that opened one of your pages will become your customer. A fast-loading website is not just an excellent UX. It also improves your business and conversation rate, while improving your search rankings at the same time.
However, just because your Divi website loads quickly now, it would not necessarily load fast in the future, which is why testing and optimizing its performance regularly is a must. The test results will give you all the data you need to improve your website’s performance.
The best tools for the purpose are GTmetrix and Google Page Speed Insights. They’ll provide you with suggestions and best practices on how to fix an existing performance issue that slows down your Divi website.
Make sure that you run regular monthly or even weekly performance tests for your entire website.
Wrapping Up
A damaged WordPress performance can hurt how you do business with your Divi website. Perhaps you’re already performing most of the tasks above. But, if you’re not, let this article be a friendly reminder to conduct each of the tasks above regularly.
Some of them might take only a few minutes of your day, but we assure you that they will save hours or even days of work that you’d have done on an unmaintained website.
Can you think of more tasks that every Divi website owner must perform regularly? Share them with us in the comments!
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