Best Wordpress Maintenance Solution

Updates are rarely an emergency

If you spend enough time using and reading WordPress, you will surely hear a lot about how to keep your sites up to date. Of course, updates to the WordPress core, themes and plugins are important for maintaining compatibility and security.

Awareness of the problem is vital. It is never a good idea to ignore new versions when they come out. However, it is usually not necessary to apply updates immediately.

The websites we build are becoming increasingly complex. And they often rely on many disparate pieces from various third parties, not to mention the custom code we add to that mix. The more complex a site, the greater the chance that something will go wrong.

Unless an update directly affects the security or functionality of your site, it's okay to wait a while. Look at the change logs and support forums and see if others have problems. When you are satisfied that things appear stable, go ahead and update.

No two websites are alike

One of the great things about WordPress is the fact that you can set up a site in so many ways. Do you want to add some SEO features? You have a lot of options. Do you need a fantastic portfolio theme? There are many to choose from.

However, there is a downside to this whole choice. It leads to a certain level of unpredictability in terms of how a site will react to change. Software updates may cause problems. Continued use of an old abandoned plug-in may continue to work, until it does. There are many other factors that can come into play.

All this makes maintenance even more difficult. Since each site has its own complexities, it is important to know everything that is possible about them and keep the documentation.

For example, documenting information about plug-ins, theme customizations, and the hosting environment is a useful habit. Keep everything in a text file and it will serve as a useful reference with the aging of the site

There are some things we can't control

As a website designer, we put our heart and soul into the things we do. We build websites with the aim of helping our customers reach theirs. When things don't go as we hoped, we can take them personally. It is especially serious when a situation goes beyond our ability to rectify it.

A prime example of this is finding out that a theme and / or plugin are not working properly. Many times, it is the combination of two different pieces that conflict with each other. The result is that a specific feature or functionality is interrupted.

Always the technological superhero, try to collaborate with the developers of the offensive products. Provide details about the bugs and maybe even give them access to your installation. But, once in a while, it seems that all this effort is futile.

These vendors don't necessarily see things with the same urgency. They may or may not fix it. They may tell you that they will research the problem and you will no longer hear from you. It is frustrating and can make you feel like you are disappointing your client.

While it's never ideal, the reality is that there are indeed some things that are beyond our control. In these cases, the best thing to do is to collect and move on to finding a solution that will work - with or without a particular product.

And it's also worth noting that while there will be times when your efforts to get a bug fix don't work, there will be a time when they will. This alone makes it useful.

Tools and processes can help

If you run some WordPress websites, keeping up with their needs isn't too difficult. But as your wallet grows, your chance of losing something also increases. This is natural, since you cannot be everywhere simultaneously.

Fortunately, there are some fantastic tools to help you. For example, a unified dashboard service such as ManageWP, InfiniteWP or Jetpack (among many others) will allow you to manage each of your WordPress sites through a single user interface. Update plugins, make backups and in general you know exactly where you are. If you are a designer who manages many sites, this type of system can be a real cure-all.

But tools are only part of the equation. Developing processes to manage your websites is equally important.

Sometimes, it's easy to be a little scared when someone mentions a "trial". But don't worry, it doesn't have to be complicated. Simply having a routine day and time to search and update is sufficient for most situations.

You will learn as you go

Maintaining a WordPress website development is a greater responsibility than it may seem at first glance. Simply clicking the update button every now and then is not enough. It also takes some careful thought, research and planning to do it well.

But the more sites you deal with, the more opportunities you will have to learn best practices. Not only that, it is also the opportunity to discover the most efficient ways to develop a maintenance workflow.

In the end, it's about keeping up to date and doing it as easy as possible.

Digital communication consultant. I deal with Strategy and Digital Communication. Web & Digital Manager, SEO, eCommerce, Content, Social Media. Songwriter, Guitar Player, and then anyway I look at everything.