Good housekeeping helps keep your website (and the planet) healthy

16th Jul 2025

Every so often, web hosting clients contact us at the end of their tether. They’ve either hired someone to create their website or made it themselves. At first it seemed fine but a year or so down the line, they’re having problems. Those problems usually relate to the speed and stability of their website. It’s slow to load or ‘falls over’ at the click of a link or they’re seeing warning messages about their site’s poor health.

Not being able to use your website and not having a seemingly straightforward fix is extremely frustrating and concerning. And, aside from the worry and disruption to the website owner, there are environmental and security implications for the website too.

After trying to get the issue resolved by themselves or by their designer (and sometimes being told that the hosting is the problem. Spoiler alert: It’s not the hosting!) the client may ask us if we can help.

A quick assessment often brings up 3 problems would have been incredibly easy to build into the management of the website from the start. Unravelling the mess they create later is time-consuming and can be costly:

1. Unnecessarily huge images – Photos that haven’t been resized or optimised for use on the website can slow down your page drastically. They take up resources on your hosting account as well as for your website visitor downloading the photo. 
    
2. Out of date software (often WordPress & its plugins) – Not updating the software that runs your website is a big issue. The environment in which your website is hosted will continue to be updated and if your software is not addressed, it will eventually cause a website to stop working completely, causing functionality and security problems along the way. 
    
3. Redundant plugins and add-ons – Letting plugins and add-ons languish unused in your website is like digital litter. They take up space and bandwidth, still running processes in the background that you don’t need, in turn using energy and resources and making your website sluggish. If you have installed plugins but later decided not to use them, give your website a clean up and put them in the bin!

Setting these three habits in place at the start of your website's life can keep it cleaner and healthier much longer into the future.