{"id":646,"date":"2026-07-01T03:59:58","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T03:59:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brutefort.com\/blog\/wordpress-maintenance-checklist\/"},"modified":"2026-07-15T13:38:22","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T13:38:22","slug":"wordpress-maintenance-checklist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brutefort.com\/blog\/wordpress-maintenance-checklist\/","title":{"rendered":"Monthly WordPress Maintenance Checklist: Security and Error Monitoring"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Developer
Photo by Startup Stock Photos from Pexels<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

You only remember WordPress maintenance exists the moment something breaks. That’s normal \u2014 most site owners treat it as a fire drill instead of a routine, because nobody ever handed them a checklist to follow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This one takes about 30\u201345 minutes a month and covers the two categories that matter most: login security and error monitoring. It’s built around two free plugins, BruteFort and LogMate, so every check below maps to a specific screen you can open right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Quick Answer:<\/strong> Each month, update everything, review your BruteFort login logs, confirm your login protection settings are still active, audit your admin users, verify your backup actually works, then check your LogMate error logs for new PHP and JS errors and purge the log if it’s grown large. That’s the whole routine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Monthly Security Checklist<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u2610 Update WordPress core, all plugins, and all themes<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

This is the single highest-impact maintenance task. Most WordPress compromises exploit vulnerabilities in outdated plugins and themes. Run updates monthly at minimum \u2014 weekly if you run a lot of third-party plugins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Important:<\/strong> confirm you have a recent backup before updating. After updating, check your error log for new PHP errors \u2014 they’re common after updates and usually point to a plugin conflict that’s easy to fix if you catch it early.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2610 Review BruteFort login logs<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Open BruteFort \u2192 Logs<\/strong> and review lockout events from the past month. Look for IPs that show up across multiple separate lockouts \u2014 those are persistent attackers worth moving to the permanent blacklist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A sudden spike in lockout volume that’s new this month suggests an active campaign targeting your site. Regular log review turns the audit trail into something actionable instead of just a record of what happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"BruteFort<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u2610 Verify your login protection settings are active<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Confirm BruteFort’s rate limiting is still enabled. Test your custom login URL in a private browser window to make sure it’s still working.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Check that your IP whitelist entries are current, too. IP addresses change \u2014 if your office or home IP has changed since you last added it, update it now, before you tighten any lockout settings. Also confirm geo blocking is still configured if you had it enabled, since settings can occasionally reset after a plugin update.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2610 Audit admin user accounts<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Go to Users<\/strong> in your WordPress dashboard and review every admin-level account. Remove old contractor accounts, test accounts, or anything you don’t recognize.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Warning:<\/strong> creating a backdoor admin account is one of the first things an attacker does after gaining access. If you spot one you didn’t create, treat it as a potential compromise and investigate immediately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2610 Verify your site backup is working<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Confirm your backup plugin or hosting backup is running and completing successfully. Check that the last backup finished without errors and that files are actually being stored offsite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A backup that silently fails for three months is no backup at all. So restore a small file from it periodically, just to confirm it’s actually usable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Monthly Error Monitoring Checklist<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u2610 Review your WordPress error log for new PHP errors<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Open LogMate \u2192 Logs<\/strong> and filter by PHP errors. Sort by occurrence count \u2014 the highest-frequency entries are where you should start.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prioritize new errors that appeared this month, especially ones that coincide with an update. An error that happens on every page load points to an ongoing problem affecting all visitors; one that happened once and hasn’t recurred is lower priority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pro Tip:<\/strong> watch for deprecated function notices. They’re low-urgency individually, but a plugin generating hundreds of them is likely unmaintained and becoming a compatibility risk as PHP and WordPress versions advance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"LogMate<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u2610 Check for JavaScript errors affecting visitors<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Filter LogMate’s Logs to show JavaScript errors. These never appear in the PHP debug log and stay completely invisible unless LogMate’s JS error capture is enabled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

High-occurrence JS errors on checkout flows, contact forms, or interactive menus directly hurt conversions. A monthly check catches these before they’ve been silently broken for weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2610 Check debug log file size and run a purge if needed<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Go to LogMate’s System Info screen and check the current size of your PHP log and JS log. If either has grown significantly, run a purge from LogMate’s settings to clear entries older than your retention window.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A log file growing rapidly usually means a plugin is generating repeated errors. Identify it from the high-occurrence entries and fix it at the source.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"LogMate<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u2610 Review server environment for any changes<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Check LogMate’s System Info screen for your current PHP version and compare it against your plugins’ compatibility requirements. Hosts sometimes upgrade PHP without much notice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A version bump from 8.1 to 8.2, for example, can introduce new deprecated function notices or, in poorly maintained plugins, outright compatibility breaks. Catching this at the monthly review beats discovering it when a plugin stops working.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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