Why it's important to maintain your Joomla website and keep it up to date

Joomla is an excellent tool for building websites, and once your website is up and running, sometimes it’s easy to forget that you need to maintain your software. Without maintaining your CMS, your site may be slowed down by unnecessary files, out-of-date modules and clutter in your database.

If you can’t remember the last time you performed maintenance on your Joomla website, it more than likely needs some attention. If you don’t maintain your site regularly, your website may start to slow down (Why is my Joomla website slow and what can I do about it?), components and modules may break, and you’ll expose your site to potential malware or hackers.

We offer Joomla website support services where we maintain your site regularly, or you can simply do it yourself - here's how:-

Take a backup of your site

Before doing any maintenance work on your Joomla install, it’s always a good idea to take a backup first. This way, if something goes wrong when you’re updating modules/plugins, you’ll be able to revert back to the latest version of your website.

The best backup extension we’ve found is Akeeba Backup. Here’s how to install it:-

• Download Akeeba Backup from the Joomla Extensions Directory
• Go to Extensions > Manage > Install in your Joomla administrator area
• Select the .zip file you’ve just downloaded
• Click on Install
• Enable the Akeeba Backup extension

Once your backup extension is installed, go to Components > Akeeba Backup, then click on Backup Now.

 
Clearing the cache

Cached files are temporary files created to improve the performance of your website. As you make changes to your website, cache files may become out of date. To avoid any potential issues caused by out-of-date cached files, it’s best to delete them – often referred to as “clearing the cache”.

Your website may run a little slower after clearing your cache, but it’ll soon be recreated by Joomla to be up-to-date.

How to clear your website cache:-

• Go to System > Clear Cache
• Select the items you want to clear – alternatively, select Check All Items
• Click Delete All

Updating Joomla version

The Joomla content management system (CMS) developers are always working on security updates to fix bugs and improve general performance. It’s crucial to keep your version of Joomla up to date to ensure your website has these security fixes and to keep your site running as smoothly as possible.

Here’s how to easily update your version of Joomla:-

• Go to Components > Joomla update
• If there are updates available, select Install the Update

Always make sure you take a backup of your website first.

Updating extensions

Once you’ve updated the core software of your website, the next step is to check your extensions. Most developers will upgrade their extensions for compatibility with the latest version of Joomla, so typically, if there’s a Joomla update, you’ll find multiple extension updates are available too.

If you leave it too long without updating your extensions, this can open your site to security vulnerabilities, and you may find things start going wrong with your site as the outdated extensions may conflict with other extensions – or even the Joomla software itself.

Here’s how to update your Extensions:-

• Go to Extensions > Manage > Update
• If there are any extensions listed here, you can tick the box next to them and click on Update

Sometimes developers will stop supporting a particular extension. This is usually the case if you find one that hasn’t had an update available in the last six months. In this scenario, it’s a good idea to stop using outdated extensions as they can pose a security threat to your site.

If it’s an extension that is actively in use on your website, you have a few options:-

• Replace it with another up-to-date extension
• Use different functionality to perform the same job on the site
• Delete the extension altogether

Deleting unused or out-of-date extensions

Here’s how to disable/delete an extension:-

• Go to Extensions > Extension Manager
• Click the checkbox next to each extension you want to delete, then select disable

Once an extension has been disabled, you can select it again and choose Uninstall to remove it completely (make sure to disable it first before uninstalling them). You can tell when an extension has been disabled as it will show a red X instead of a green check.

If you’re not using particular extensions, it’s usually best to remove them completely from your website – this helps you gain a clean, mean install and will help free up space on your server.

We can maintain your Joomla site for you

Regular maintenance is crucial to protecting your Joomla website and ensuring it runs smoothly. Maintaining your site will protect it from viruses and hackers and keep it running at optimal speed.

If you don’t have the time or the resources to update and maintain your Joomla back end regularly, don’t stress – we're a Joomla website maintenance company so we can do it for you!

Visit our website maintenance packages page for more info, or if you’d like to chat about how we can update and maintain your site, give us a call on (07) 3882 3375.