Many believe that once their WordPress site goes live, they can live happily ever after, when actually, that's when updates start to happen and various issues arise they've never considered. Here are some things that will make your life easier, especially if you prepare for them in advance. This topic is a bit technical, but can benefit anyone serious about their website.

1. How to manage your
site’s lifecycle like a boss
Gal Baras
Get Business Online Consulting

2.  Introduction
 Time is money
 Code quality
 Security
 Accessibility and Usability
 Speed

3.  Who I am and what I do
 Why not knowing about WordPress
website operation can really hurt
◦ What?! I was supposed to do THAT too?!
◦ My website’s ready. Why is nobody calling?
◦ Um, is my site there?
◦ OMG, my site is gone! Now what?!

4.  "Poor man pays twice”
 You don't know what you don't know
 Learning takes time and mistakes are
expensive
 Premium components save time
 The value of making sales 6 months earlier
 The cost of a site going down or being hacked
 What's a second of page loading time worth to
your business?

5.  Get professional help
◦ Do this first!
 Get good hosting: service, availability,
location, phone support hours, security
 Choose (buy) high quality
components

6.  Continuous maintenance (updates, bloody
updates)
 New web tech, e.g. responsiveness
 Compatibility: playing nicely with the other
kids
 OMG, end of life!
 Always think of the
long term!

7.  Choose a high quality theme/framework
◦ Genesis, Cherry, Thesis, Canvas (WooThemes),
Headway, Divi (Elegant), Builder (iThemes)
◦ Responsive
◦ Accessible
◦ Only the basics: user plugins for sliders, page
builders, shortcodes, shopping cart, etc
◦ Long history, large user base, good reviews
◦ Well supported: active forum, mostly resolved
threads, quick replies

8.  Always use a child theme
◦ Update-proof
◦ Efficient: only the customisations you need
◦ Tailored features (good for business)

9.  Choose high quality plugins
◦ Long history, large user base, good reviews
◦ Reputable source
◦ Personal favourites: Yoast SEO, Contact Form 7,
WooCommerce, Redirection, WP Fastest Cache,
iThemes Security, Jetpack, Media File Renamer,
Regenerate Thumbnails, EWWW Image Optimizer

10.  Get someone to maintain your site
professionally
◦ InfiniteWP (also for backups)
 Check updates before applying
◦ Wait at least 2 days
◦ Look at the early adopters’ score
◦ Read the change log
 Check the mix of fixes and new features
 Never apply a .0 version

12.  Keep software up to date, especially with
security patches (even when deactivated)
 iThemes Security, WordFence
 Monitoring and alerts: Uptime Robot
 Backups (cloning): BackupBuddy, InfiniteWP
 Offsite storage: Amazon S3, Dropbox, G Drive

13.  Be nice
 Increase your reach
 Good for SEO and conversion
 New device tech

14.  PHP Opcode Caching
 PHP options: more RAM, longer execution time
 PHP 7
 Query Monitor
 InnoDB: http://www.get-business-
online.com/wordpress/wordpress-database-
optimisation/
 “autoload” index
 WP Fastest Cache: simple and fast alternative,
exclude store pages

15.  Merge Google Fonts and other scripts
 Change literal inclusions (link tags) to
enqueues
 Move inline scripts to separate files and
enqueue
 Optimise images: EWWW Image Optimizer
 Dequeue, deregister, register in footer,
enqueue
 Better WP Minify: move included files to footer,
remove redundant files

16. function defer_script( $url ) {
if ( FALSE === strpos( $url, '.js' ) ) { // not a script
return $url;
}
return "$url' defer='defer"; // Must be a single quote!
}
function defer_scripts_in_footer() {
add_filter( 'clean_url', 'defer_script', 11, 1 );
}
add_action( 'wp_footer', 'defer_scripts_in_footer', 1 );

17. Gal Baras
gal@get-business-online.com