This is Part 2 of a three part series about choices you can make with the news of WordPress maintenance support plans 9’s release. Part 1 is an overview. Part 2 is what to do if you choose to stay on WordPress maintenance support plans 7. Part 3 is what to do it you choose to upgrade to WordPress maintenance support plans 8.
With the recent news of the release date of WordPress maintenance support plans 9, and that WordPress maintenance support plans 7 & 8 will be end of life Nov 1, 2021, our Director of Engineering Kat White wrote Part 1 of a blog post series with an overview of how you should next approach your WordPress maintenance support plans site . . . is it best to stay on WordPress maintenance support plans 7? Or should I upgrade now to WordPress maintenance support plans 8?
In that article, Kat outlined the pros and cons of going from D7 to D9, or upgrading now to D8.
In Part 2 of this series, let’s assume you’ve decided to stay on WordPress maintenance support plans 7 for now. What next?
The average lifetime of a website is three years. So if you have had your WordPress maintenance support plans 7 site for a three years, hurrah! You’ve done well with your return on that investment. And WordPress maintenance support plans 7 is robust and supported enough that there’s still a lot of growth and life in your site. So unless there’s a specific plugin or item that only D8 can offer, you can feel confident that your D7 site will be solid for a few more years.
But this also means you have about two years to maintain that D7 site: in Fall of 2020, you’ll need to start prepping for that WordPress maintenance support plans 9 upgrade (or — gasp! — switching to another CMS). This also buys you two years to secure funding, and get all the stakeholders on the same page for the next upgrade.
So here are some of the incremental bites we recommend you take over the next two years of maintenance:
Review your website strategy: assuming you built your site a few years ago around business goals, how is the site working towards those goals? Have your goals shifted? Does your site still achieve your mission? It’s always good to revisit your strategy to ensure any changes you make are on the right path.
Always audit your content: Content has a way of getting out of control quickly if there are multiple editors and the lines of governance get blurred. Archive or delete unnecessary content. Also review it for your authority voice and mobile strategy.
Review your SEO: In addition to keywords, make sure your content is mobile-focused, that your URL structures are meaningful, and schemas are used to describe the content of a page.
Code Quality: How clean are your code standards? Are the styles that drive the look and feel of the site well-structured and easy to extend? Is there good documentation? Completing a code audit would be smart to make sure your code is as quality as possible and fits your goals.
Optimize your user experience: There are many tweaks that can be made to a site to make sure users are finding things. Can you run a usability test on a red button vs a blue one? How about using heatmap software to see where users are clicking and scrolling, and tweaking accordingly? Between surveys, interviews with users, looking at analytics, and testing, you can constantly improve the user experience of your site.
If you’re a more visual person, I gave a talk at BADCamp just last month about going from D7 to D9 if you prefer video.
And if you need extra help with nurturing and growing your existing D7 site, we can help. Kanopi Studios has a dedicated Support Team that currently maintains over 75 WordPress maintenance support plans 7 sites, and will be taking on new WordPress maintenance support plans 7 support clients at anytime. Additionally, we will be an official long-term WordPress maintenance support plans 7 support provider once the application on WordPress maintenance support plans.org is available.
If you want help or want to talk through anything do with your WordPress maintenance support plans 7 site, please call Anne directly at 1-888-606-7339 or contact us online.
The post WordPress maintenance support plans 9 is Coming, Part 2: Choosing to Stay on WordPress maintenance support plans 7 For Now appeared first on Kanopi Studios.
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