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Over the past several years of working with small business owners and WordPress, we are often asked, “How often should I log into WordPress?” or related statements that begs the question.

I.e. If I’m not blogging or otherwise updating content, why would I have to log into WordPress on any regular basis?

Let me share with you some reasons as to why you should be logging into your WordPress content management system — CMS — or blog as often during the week as you are able to practically do so.

  1. First and foremost, if you use a backup plugin, is it working? How would you know?
  2. Secondly, are there any updates available for your plugins, themes, or WordPress itself?
  3. Are there any other notifications for which you need to take some action?

For backup, I strongly recommend BackWPUp. It connects with the Dashboard so that when you login, you can see a recent list of successful as well as any unsuccessful backups.

If you have backup covered, in my experience you still want to check on a regular basis for updates.

Now, if you have WordFence or a similar plugin installed, you will get email notifications of updates. Outside of such notifications, logging into WordPress will allow you to see if there are updates available.

If there are updates available, I do encourage you to read the change log first prior to applying the update; and, to backup (including the database) prior to any update.

Here’s why. We use Relevanssi as a replacement to the WordPress search function; it had a recent update. If I would have just upgraded, I would have missed the important instructions in the change log telling me to deactivate and then reactivate the plugin after the update to apply important WordPress database changes the plugin needed to make.

The bottom line is you should have it on your calendar, recurring at least once a week, to log into WordPress as an administrative user.

What are your thoughts for how often the steward / manager of a WordPress site should log in as an administrative user?

Comment and let us know.