Did you know that WordPress offers a diagnosis of your site health?
In this session we are going to explore how to ensure you keep your site in tip-top shape.
The site health widget can be found on the Dashboard or you can make your way to Tools
and click on Site Hhealth.
And as you will notice at the top, my site health needs to be improved.
There are two tabs on the site health page, status and info.
The status tab allows you to see critical information about your WordPress configuration,
along with anything else that requires your attention.
The info tab is a granular view of the technical aspects of your WordPress website.
You can see detailed information about every aspect of your site, such as themes, plugins,
and your server setup for example.
There is also a useful export feature that allows you to copy all the information about
your site to the clipboard.
When we go back to the status tab, you will notice the two main categories are security
or performance related issues.
Critical issues refer to parts of your website that can be potential security vulnerabilities
or serious performance issues.
The critical issue coming up for me at the moment is that my site is running an outdated
version of PHP.
As the PHP version is set at the server level by your hosting company, updating involves
either going to your host's Dashboard and changing the settings there or if that's not an option
asking them to do it.
Please remember to back up your site before updating WordPress or the PHP version you
are using.
Other types of critical issues you may encounter are one or more required modules are missing.
You have plugins waiting to be updated.
Your site could not complete a loopback request etc.
When you open the accordion, you will learn more about which steps to take to solve a
specific problem.
Next we can talk about recommended improvements.
This section lists all the items that are not critical for your website but should be
modified for better security and performance.
In my case, I should first update the version of WordPress that I am using and then remove
any inactive plugins and themes.
To update WordPress, you can click on Please update now at the top of the page and this
will take you to updates.
Now you can merely click on Update to the new version and remember to back up your database
and files.
To remove an inactive theme, make your way to Appearance, open up the inactive theme
and click on Delete bottom right.
Now we will move on to inactive plugins.
Make your way to plugins and this time we can use the bulk select option by selecting
all the inactive plugins and deleting them simultaneously.
Let's make our way back to the Site Hhealth page as there is one more recommended improvement
that we need to discuss.
The last recommended improvement is suggesting that I install two optional PHP modules
that have not been installed.
You could install these in CPanel, Plesk or similar software if your web host provides
that access.
But if your hosting company has not provided you with a way to install these yourself,
you can contact your host and ask them to do it for you.
Lastly, the tests that have been passed are all the other items that are tested by the
site health tool and shows no issues.
You can learn more about this tool when you go to the site health support page.
Remember, Lee Hunt said, "The groundwork for all happiness, is good health."