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Web Dev + WordPress + Security

Tools to check your site’s health

Perishable Press is now over 12 years old. It is a lot of work keeping everything updated, maintained, and well-secured. Fortunately there are a gazillion free online tools for checking your site’s health. Everyone has their favorites. In this quick article, I share mine.

Check Site Security

Security is priority numero uno. And while there are plenty of online scanners to check your site’s security, I wouldn’t rely solely on any/all of them. Security is much more complex than can be tested with a simple online scan. That said, here are some useful tools for getting a general idea about the overall level of your site’s security.

Check Site Performance

Performance obviously is another super important factor for your site’s success. There are many ways to measure performance, including online tools, browser extensions, 3rd-party scripts, and so forth. So you can really dive in as deep as you want and optimize every little detail as desired. To get started, here are some helpful tools for checking the performance of your web pages.

Check Site SEO

Another important aspect of your sites is SEO. The degree to which your site is optimized for search engines can play a major role in determining the ongoing success or failure of your site. Fortunately, there are scads of “free” online tools for checking your site’s SEO; unfortunately most of them are absolute crap. Here are some decent tools that I’ve found that don’t require registration, don’t push any aggressive marketing tactics, and generally provide realistic, useful SEO-related information.

Check Other Details

Beyond security, performance, and SEO, there are myriad other details that should be checked, monitored, improved, etc. Here are some useful tools for things like checking your email address against known blacklists, checking pages for broken links, and more.

Additionally, here are some collections of free online tools, services, and so forth — all great for site management and working online in general.

What did I miss? Let me know in the comments below, thanks!

About the Author
Jeff Starr = Creative thinker. Passionate about free and open Web.
The Tao of WordPress: Master the art of WordPress.
Welcome
Perishable Press is operated by Jeff Starr, a professional web developer and book author with two decades of experience. Here you will find posts about web development, WordPress, security, and more »
BBQ Pro: The fastest firewall to protect your WordPress.
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