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10 Routine Blog Maintenance Checklists
Nwosu Mavtrevor
Running a blog is not just about posting f resh contents always; there are blog maintenance routines I
carry out daily or weekly on my blog to keep it running smoothly. To keep any system running smoothly,
one must ensure to always perf orm routine maintenance on such system to keep it perf orming optimally.
If you are a blogger and you do not have routine maintenance f or your blog you may run into an
“avoidable” problem someday so that is the reason why I have decided to share my routine blog
maintenance activities with you on this post. Routine blog maintenance won’t take you much time, once
you have decided on the routine you simply ensure to observe it and your blog will run smoothly without
the f ear of running into troubles someday.
I know you may be thinking when will I have time to carry out routine maintenance on my blog? You may
already have been carrying out such routine maintenances without knowing. And I want to also state that
carrying out routine blog maintenance f or your blog is one of the best blogging practices every blogger
should practice.
Routine Blog Maintenance Checklist
1. Backup your blog regularly: Blog backup is
def initely the most important blog maintenance routines
f or every blog, backup your blog weekly or at least
monthly.
2. Check for Broken Links on your blog at least
weekly, I use Online broken link checker to search my
blog f or broken links. Af ter reading Enstine’s “How
CommentLuv Plugin is Damaging Your SEO!”, I decided it
will be nice to compile my routine blog maintenance
checklist and share with you.
3. Update your blog plugins: WordPress plugin
updates are always available and sometimes out of our
busy schedule we may not take f ew seconds to update
our plugins to its latest versions, please always ensure
your plugins are up to date by updating it.
4. WordPress Optimization: WordPress optimization is a necessary routine blog maintenance practice
every WordPress blogger should perf orm. The WordPress auto-save saves revisions or articles
whenever you are typing an article so you won’t lose your write up, these revisions build up and consume
memory and may slow down your blog, I normally use a plugin called WP-Optimize to keep my database
clean by removing the post revisions and spam. With this plugin you can run optimize command on your
WordPress core tables.
5. Get rid of spam comments/trackbacks: Blogging and spam comments are like Bonnie and Clyde.
Except you have ensured serious measures against spam comments and trackbacks and have kept them
to its barest minimum on your blog, take some time out to clean up your spam comments.
6. Database Optimization: Take some time out and optimize your blog’s database f or better
perf ormance. You can read Babanature’s post titled “Optimizing Your WordPress Database For A Better
Perf ormance” f or more on this.

2. 7. Image Optimization: At least every weekend, I try to optimize the images I used during the week on
my blog f or better perf ormance. Check out some “Online Tools f or Image Compression and Optimization”
I of ten use f or my image optimization. These tools help me reduce the image f ile sizes and improve
perf ormance of my blog in general.
8. Linking within my blog: As I publish new articles I may not have the time to immediately start looking
f or related old articles on my blog to begin linking them, it’s easier when you link a new article to an old
one, but linking an old article to a new one will involve you digging up your archives and searching f or the
articles, so I mostly perf orm this routine maintenance during weekends. I simply dig around and look f or
old posts on my blog and link them to related new posts.
9. Revisit Old posts: Over time one tends to improve in knowledge and writing skills, so take some time
out and revisit your old posts and give them a touch, improve your grammar, correct your typos, carry out
SEO tasks on them etc.
10. Eliminate unused plugins/Themes: Take a visit to your plugin section, access the plugins you have
on your blog and eliminate those plugins you don’t necessary need to run your blog. Deactivate those
ones you don’t of ten use. Same with themes, delete any theme you may have installed that you are not
using any more on your blog.
Do you think I f orgot any important routine blog maintenance on my checklist? Please help me by adding
it on the comment section below, remember to subscribe to my RSS f eed.