Maintenance of your website is as much important as its development. To develop a website that has optimal performance, good security, and top-notch user experience is one thing, and keeping all of that over the long term is a whole different story.
Completing regular tasks regarding maintenance, both complex and routine keeps the site running smoothly and securely.
In this article, we explore how Magento website maintenance looks and we’ll do that while learning everything about Progressive Web Apps, or PWAs. PWAs are gaining more and more popularity, so knowing whether implementing PWA technology changes the maintenance processes or not and if it’s a worthy technology to implement in the first place.
What Is the Routine of Maintaining a Website on Magento?
The maintenance list is pretty long and consists of various tasks. Some must be done on a daily basis while others should be taken care of less often.
Things you to do each day
First and foremost is the monitoring of your website uptime to ensure that the site is accessible. Pingdom or UptimeRobot are some of the tools designed for that.
Another task is to check for broken links, you can go with an automated tool called Screaming Frog SEO Spider for that or find another tool that works for you. Don’t forget to check that the backups are running correctly too! This task involves verifying scheduled backups via cron jobs and storing them securely in cloud services.
Weekly tasks
Every week you must review security logs for unusual activities. In custom Magento development, Sucuri or Loggly analyzing tools are some popular options used to detect potential threats.
Update plugins and themes to ensure compatibility and security with the help of Magento’s backend or command-line interface (CLI).
Optimization of the database is also important. That means you must run maintenance scripts to clean redundant data and take action to improve overall performance. Magento itself has a built-in data optimization feature just for that.
Monthly Tasks
At least once a month your website must go through a full audit even if you don’t utilize Magento pwa. That is to identify and resolve performance bottlenecks. Use tools like Ahrefs or SEMRush to review your SEO settings:
- Check meta tags
- Alt texts
- Keyword usage
Update your knowledge of the latest security standards to avoid significant reputational and financial damage:
- Run vulnerability scans
- Apply necessary patches
- Review PCI-DSS and GDPR compliance (you can use tools like Qualys or Magento Security Scan Tool)
Website maintenance is a mix of big and small tasks
Some maintenance work is routine and simple and others require significant effort and expertise.
Tasks like clearing cache, updating content, and fixing minor bugs are relatively straightforward and are often automated. When it comes to major version upgrades or applying a big security patch, however, you have to conduct thorough testing to check if everything works correctly without causing downtime or other issues.
The History of Progressive Web Applications
Google was the first one to introduce Progressive Web Apps back in 2015 with the goal of enhancing mobile web experience. PWAs combine the best of web and mobile apps with the features like:
- Offline access
- Push notifications
- Fast loading times
PWA technology has evolved significantly over those 9 years with more and more businesses adopting it to give their users the best user experience possible.
What Are the Benefits of PWA?
Implementation of PWA technology is beneficial for both businesses and customers. It was mentioned before that PWAs load faster and provide a smooth user experience even on slow networks. And again, with Magento PWA, users have the option to access the app offline.
The next thing is the push notifications feature which does a great job of engaging users and driving traffic.
Cost-effectiveness is what comes with PWA too as this technology eliminates, or at least decreases the need for separate mobile apps.
What Technologies Stand Behind PWA?
Three key technologies make the creation of a PWA-compatible website possible:
- Service Workers. These are JavaScript files that run in the background and enable offline access and push notifications.
- Web App Manifest. A JSON file that gives various metadata about the app, such as its name, icon, and start URL.
- HTTPS. This one ensures secure data transmission and is required for service workers to function.
Does PWA change the way I should maintain my website?
Yes, a few additional tasks are added in order to maintain a PWA-compatible website properly.
As we’ve just found out, the core of PWAs is the service worker. Therefore, regular checking and updating of the service worker is necessary for a PWA to function correctly. Tools like Lighthouse help you audit your service worker and check your caching strategies, background sync, and push notifications features.
The second aspect is the manifest file management. Web app manifest must undergo occasional revision to make sure the metadata (descriptions and display settings, for example) is relevant.
PWA also adds a bit of extra work in terms of security. Due to the additional layers implemented, your security checks must be more thorough. Apart from standard vulnerability scanning, you now have to check on HTTPS in particular and conduct penetration testing to identify potential security threats that are specific to PWAs.
So yes, implementing PWA makes the maintenance of your Magento website more complex. In case you’re restricted with time or resources, you might consider hiring a custom Magento development team to optimize both the development process and maintenance itself.
How important PWA technology is these days?
The shift in user behavior made PWA technology more of a necessity for modern websites. Users now prefer mobile devices for browsing and shopping. Plus, offline access and push notifications features now stand in a “must-have” category of functionalities.
Conclusion
There are tasks routine and not so much when it comes to maintaining your Magento website. If you decide to adopt PWA technology, be ready to do even more. Don’t get desperate though. The benefits you’ll receive from maintaining your PWA-compatible website will give you the results you’ll be satisfied with.
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