DIY WordPress Health Audit: Catch These 10 Issues Before They Crash Your Site

If you’re running a WordPress site, chances are you’ve crossed your fingers after updating your plugins in bulk, hoping for the best. Or worse—forgotten to update anything for months. Sound familiar?

Bulk updating plugins or enabling automatic plugin updates without taking precautions can be dangerous. If things go wrong, it can be difficult to tell what caused the issue. Even minor problems, such as broken plugin functionality or styling gone haywire, can require a lot of time to debug. Before those small issues turn into full-blown disasters (like downtime, broken layouts, or malware), it’s time to give your site a proper health check.

Here’s a 10-point DIY WordPress health audit you can run in under an hour. Or—if this feels like a chore—skip to the end and let’s talk about how we can do it for you.

🧰 1. Check Your Backup System (Yes, Seriously)

What to look for: Are backups running daily? Can you quickly restore with a single click?

If your backups are stored on the same server as your site—or worse, aren’t happening at all—you’re one plugin conflict away from losing everything. Many people are shocked to discover that their hosts don’t provide backups or charge extra for them. Don’t assume – check and test. Even hosts that do provide backups sometimes store them on the same server as your website, which can be a problem if the server goes down. We’ve even seen reliable, off-site backup solutions fail.

✅ Use proven backup solutions plugins like UpdraftPlus or BlogVault
✅ Check: When was your last successful restore test?

🧪 2. Test Your WordPress Core, Plugin & Theme Updates

What to look for: Outdated core, plugins, or themes. Known vulnerabilities.

Go to Dashboard → Updates and make sure everything is current. This will reliably show when a WordPress core update is available, but you’ll sometimes need to check the Themes and Plugins pages individually to be sure you’re seeing all available updates there. Remember, some themes and plugins won’t show updates if you don’t have a valid and active license key.

🚫 Avoid updating your live site if you haven’t backed up first
🧪 Pro tip: Use a staging site to safely test major changes

🐌 3. Run a Speed Test

What to look for: Slow load time (>3 seconds), bloated images, render-blocking scripts

Run your site through https://pagespeed.web.dev/ or GTmetrix.

📉 Common offenders: Sliders, giant images, clunky page builders (here are the fastest WordPress themes we’ve tested lately)
✅ Optimize with tools like WP Rocket and Perfmatters

🔐 4. Scan for Malware

What to look for: Unexpected redirects, strange admin users, injected code

Use free tools like https://sitecheck.sucuri.net/ to do an external scan.

👮 Bonus tip: Tools like Wordfence and iThemes Security don’t add a lot of value, as they either don’t have up-to-date protection for free users or don’t offer real-time detection. WordPress security is more complicated than a simple plugin. Reach out to learn more.

🚨 5. Review Admin Users & Permissions

What to look for: Inactive admins, weak passwords, excessive permissions

Go to Users → All Users. Delete old users. Downgrade accounts to appropriate roles. Be sure to assign content to an appropriate account if you delete an old account! Backup first!

✅ Use 2FA where possible – we recommend this Two Factor Authentication plugin
✅ Install login attempt limiters like Limit Login Attempts Reloaded

🔗 6. Check for Broken Links, redirects, & 404 Errors

What to look for: Broken menu links, outdated internal URLs, deleted media

Tools like Broken Link Checker or Ahrefs Webmaster Tools can help. An SEO agency like Barrel Roll can give you better, actionable data.

🚧 Pro tip: Do you have a 404 page? Make it useful, not embarrassing. Check by visiting a URL that doesn’t exist on your site.

🖼️ 7. Optimize Media Library

What to look for: Large image files, unused media, missing alt tags

Install EWWW Image Optimizer to bulk compress images and pay for an API key to get better results (it’s not expensive). Learn more about image optimization in WordPress here.

🎯 Bonus: Add alt text to images for accessibility and SEO.

🧩 8. Audit Plugin Bloat

What to look for: Duplicate functionality, abandoned plugins, low-star ratings

Less is more. Disable and delete anything you don’t use. Check plugin reviews—especially after major WP updates. If the plugin hasn’t been updated in a while, it may be abandoned by its developer. That can present security and compatibility issues – find a replacement.

🔥 Ask: “Does this plugin still solve a real problem?”

📊 9. Review Analytics & Search Console

What to look for: Traffic drop-offs, crawl errors, indexing issues

If you’re using Google Analytics 4 and Google Search Console, check for:

• Pages not indexed

• High bounce rates

• Mobile usability errors

🧭 Not using either? That’s audit item #9.1: Get them set up.

🛟 10. Test Your Contact Forms & CTAs

What to look for: Forms not submitting, broken Captchas, and missing email alerts

Test your forms. Did the email come through? Did you land on a thank-you page?

📥 Missed leads are worse than downtime. Test monthly.

🚀 Want This Done For You?

Let’s be honest—auditing your WordPress site isn’t fun, and even a single missed update can turn into a five-alarm fire.

At Barrel Roll, we offer proactive WordPress maintenance for businesses that don’t want to worry about:

• Plugin conflicts

• Backup failures

• Malware

• Broken site forms

• Or explaining “what went wrong” to your boss

🎁 Book a Free Site Audit Now

We’ll run a free audit for you—and show you exactly what’s holding your site back.