Having a website for your business, blog, organization, or anything is a blessing. But it can also be a curse if you don’t maintain that properly. For the internet audience, who don’t visit your business physically, your website is the store, business point, or whatever you say to the visitors. In fact, the image of your business heavily depends on your site. Any anomaly, outdated information of the products, and lack of proper maintenance can cost you big.

Scared? Please don’t be. Because, today, we will share some pro tips to take care of your website properly. No matter the type of site you have, these actionable measures can help you improve the site performance without spending a dime.

Taking care of your Joomla sites is so easy. You don’t have to work so hard to do this. With our detailed guide, you will know some proven ways to maintain your Joomla sites and improve the overall performance.

8 Pro Tips to Take Care of Your Joomla Site

Maintaining a Joomla website is more like following the best practices. You can take care of your Joomla sites in different ways. Following the tips below will not only improve site performance but also speed up your site to a greater extent.

Update Joomla to the Latest Version

The first and foremost maintenance tip is to update your Joomla version. To equip you with new functionalities, fixes, and improvements, Joomla is updated regularly. You need to update your Joomla version to the latest one. In fact, if outdated versions may pose a security threat to your website. In this case, updating the Joomla version is so crucial. Here are some key benefits of having sites on the latest Joomla versions.

• Offers new features and functionalities
• Fixes bugs
• Strengthen website security
• Improves overall performance
• Speeds up website
• Introduces new technologies

It's not likely that every update will bring all these above changes. But updates are basically targeted at all the above changes.

Update Joomla Extensions

Joomla helps you create websites at scale. It is rich with plenty of extensions to extend website functionality. In most cases, people install different modules and components to add new features or functionalities. People behind these Joomla extensions also bring news features, fixes and improvements. To get on board with the new stuff, you must upgrade your extensions to the latest versions.

Outdated extensions may cause issues in different ways. You should always consider updating Joomla extensions regularly to run your site smoothly.

Take Backup of Your Site and Database Regularly

You should always keep a backup of your site and database. If in any case, your website is disturbed and loses its valuable content. Restoring those content from backup is the only option to get those back. Accidents can happen anytime. There's no way you'll know about it beforehand. This is why it’s wise to keep a recent backup of your site.

There are many reasons to need to revert the site back to a previous working state. Having a backup is not just merely about accidents, a person well versed in the backup can help with smoother development of new features. Backup and restore help you create a staging website where new changes can be practiced without risking the production website.

Optimize Your Media Resources (Images, Videos)

Your website’s media resources majorly affect the page load time. If you don't optimize your media resources (images, audio, and video), your site will take a bit longer to load. In these modern days, your website speed is directly related to Google search ranking. Your media sizes and file types have an impact on page loading time.

There are different types of files for images. You can go with JPEG, PNG, WEBP, and SV. You have to know which one takes less space and loads faster. You should compress images. There are some online tools like TinyPNG to compress images without the chance of losing image quality. You could try that out. For other types of media files, you should also go with the lighter ones.

Live up to the Reputation with Updated Content

Visitors will turn their back on your website if they find outdated content on your site. There are some types of content that require constant upgrading especially if they contain information. In that case, you have to update your content in order to live up to your reputation.

Optimize Your Website to Make SEO Friendly

There’s no point in having a website that doesn’t bring organic traffic from Google (or any other search engines). It’s what every website owner wants. If you want your website to be found by the people who search for the services, products, or content you provide, then optimize your website for better Google search ranking. You can make your Joomla website SEO friendly in various ways. Some of the most common SEO practices are given below:

• Conduct keyword research and use the best betting keywords for the website.
• Make sure the title tags get the relevant keywords
• Speed up your website because Google loves fast loading websites
• Write unique titles, descriptions, content and be relevant
• Manage your metadata
• Use internal links and be consistent with them

There are also some Joomla extensions that could take care of your site SEO. You can use the JSitemap extension in this case. It is an award-winning SEO solution for Joomla! With almost 20,000 users and 200,000 installations, JSitemap is the most popular tool to manage SEO and sitemaps.

Protect Your Joomla Site by Improving Security

Security is always a big issue. You have to protect your website from potential threats. Hackers may get into your website in various ways and take control of everything from you. You can take the necessary security measures to prevent those attempts. There are some security extensions that can help you with this. You can go with Admin Tools, AdminExile, jHackGuard, JomDefender to protect your site.

Remove Unused and Unoptimized Joomla Extensions

Joomla extensions require system resources, databases, and disk space to operate. Having many extensions will increase the overall size of your website and make the website slower eventually. For that particular reason, you have to make sure that you only have extensions that are in use on your Joomla site.

You should not test plugins on a staging site. In case you do so, you should remove the plugin once you are done with it. It’s wise to clean up extensions to make sure there aren’t any unused or unoptimized extensions inside.

Be extra careful while installing an extension. Choose extensions wisely. Go through features, functionalities, and user reviews before deciding to install an extension.

Whatever the website you have, make sure you take care of that regularly unless you will end up losing traffic to your site. Your website will fall flat and perform poorly. Just by taking the above issues into consideration, you can maintain your site properly and ensure the maximum experience for your site visitors. At JoomShaper, we not only help you create beautiful, feature-rich, and functional websites but also, we make sure to fully equip your website to perform well. Thanks for staying with us.