Keeping a Drupal site working smoothly all the time can feel tricky. Sometimes, small slip-ups lead to big headaches like site crashing, getting hacked, or just running slow.
Skipping regular check-ups is the last thing you should do if you want a website to benefit your business. It can cause all sorts of problems that can make your platform less attractive to users and a pain for you to manage.
In this article, we will unveil the six most common Drupal maintenance mistakes website owners can make and will also give tips on how to avoid them. Lacking an understanding of why keeping an eye on a website is important can make it prone to hacking attacks, which threaten customer loyalty. Stay with us to learn how to avoid Drupal maintenance mistakes, or read more about support services at https://lembergsolutions.com/drupal-support-and-maintenance-services.
1. Neglecting Regular Backups
Missing to make a backup of your site can play a bad joke. If it crashes or gets hacked, you can lose all your hard work. To bring your site back without a backup can be really tough and sometimes impossible, even for a Drupal maintenance company.
This means you can lose important information, confuse customers, and damage your business’s reputation. Thus, it’s important to always keep your site’s backups up to date to avoid such issues.
How to Avoid: Implementing a Robust Backup Strategy
The most effective way to avoid website data loss is to schedule daily automatic backups. Store these backups in multiple locations, such as cloud storage and an external hard drive, to ensure reliability. Besides, it’s recommended to regularly test the backups to confirm data integrity and recovery abilities. This approach will minimize the risk of data loss and reduce downtime.
2. Delaying Drupal Core and Module Updates
Putting off updating Drupal core and modules comes second in website maintenance mistakes. It’s risky and if you ignore updating your website, it can become vulnerable to security threats. As a result, this can lead to data breaches or malware attacks, compromising your website’s security and the trust of your users. Thus, it’s important to keep up with the updates to protect your website and its users.
How to Avoid: Best Practices for Timely Updates
The most reliable way to keep your website secure is to regularly check for and apply Drupal updates. The company is focused on security and regularly releases updated versions to fix vulnerabilities. Setting up a schedule for routine checks and using automated tools is an effective option not to miss any updates. This ensures your site stays protected.
3. Overlooking Security Measures
Just like delaying updates, not paying attention to website security is another drastic mistake in Drupal maintenance. If cybercriminals hack your site, they can steal sensitive information like user data and financial details or even take control of your site. This puts your online presence at risk and also undermines the trust of your users, badly affecting your business. For this reason, website security should remain a top priority when running a business online.
How to Avoid: Strengthening Your Defenses
A good way to eliminate the risk of hacking attacks and data breaches is to implement robust security practices. This means you must regularly update your software, use strong encryption methods, and implement multi-factor authentication. As a result, it significantly reduces the risk of unauthorized access, keeping your customer data secure and your website running smoothly.
4. Lack of Staging Environment Usage
Skipping the use of a staging environment is another mistake in maintaining the Drupal website. Without it, updates or new features might break your live site, causing problems for users and potentially harming your online reputation. A staging environment allows you to test changes safely before they go live and ensure everything works perfectly. Thus, it’s important to integrate a staging to thoroughly test and tune updates, ensuring they integrate with your live Drupal site well without crashing it.
How to Avoid: Implementing an Effective Staging Workflow
To prevent your website from breaking, set up a staging environment and do all the changes there. You’ll need to create a separate, secure environment that mirrors your live site for testing. By doing so, you ensure that any modifications won’t disrupt your actual website, maintaining a smooth experience for your users.
5. Disregarding Content Strategy in Maintenance
Underrating the importance of content strategy is a big mistake in maintaining your website. Without fresh and relevant content, your site can become outdated. This results in poor user interest, which harms your online visibility, making it harder for new users to find you. Thus it’s important to pay attention to the content you post on a website and make sure it’s aligned with user interests.
How to Avoid: Incorporating Content Management Best Practices
To keep your site engaging, regularly review and update your content based on current trends and feedback. A good option is to use a content calendar for planning updates. This will ensure your website stays relevant and interesting to visitors and keep your audience coming back and help your website grow.
6. Inadequate Documentation Practices
Failing to keep the documentation in order isn’t a rare case among website owners. However, it is a bad practice in running websites. When documentation is lacking, it becomes challenging to follow what changes have been made, to fix problems, or to understand why certain decisions were taken in the past. This lack of information can cause a lot of confusion, mistakes, and wasted effort as you try to keep your site up to date.
How to Avoid: Establishing a Comprehensive Documentation Process
To avoid such issues, implement a thorough documentation process. This includes recording all updates, coding changes, and decision-making reasons. Regularly updating these records ensures anyone on the team can understand what has been done with the website and why.
