At WordCamp Mannheim I gave a talk about automation, and afterwards a few people asked me the same thing: can’t WordPress maintenance just run itself?
There’s an assumption behind that, one I hear a lot: that automatic updates already count as maintenance. They are only a small part of it.
A lot does run on its own. Backups, small updates and monitoring happen in the background once they are set up. What automation can’t handle is the case where an update breaks something, and that is usually the expensive part.
Automating is not the same as WordPress maintenance
Installing an update tool takes five minutes. What takes longer, and what most people skip, is the part after: checking that everything still works once the update is in, and having a way to roll it back if it doesn’t. Without that, everything keeps running automatically, but nobody notices when something stops working.
An example I see again and again
An update switches off the contact form. The site still loads normally, so no one spots it. Two or three weeks later someone wonders why no enquiries are coming in. In the meantime, people wrote and never got an answer.
How I do it
Before every update there is a backup. The update is tested away from the live site first, and afterwards I check that the homepage, the form and everything else still work. If something breaks, I roll back to the previous state in one step.
Why me
I help build WordPress itself, the software your site runs on. That is why I usually know months ahead what a bigger update will bring, and I can get sites ready before it lands. On top of that: 15 years working with WordPress, a book about it, and I train developers.
“Kreo Pulse has supported us for many years and has become a fixed part of our digital projects. Benjamin makes sure our WordPress installations run cleanly, stay stable and perform reliably even under heavy load.
What makes the collaboration special is his eye for detail and his understanding of what we actually need in day-to-day operations.”
André ReineggerOwner | Reinegger.net
Is it worth it for you
Whether it is worth it depends on your site. If it is basically a business card, you can let most of it run automatically. If enquiries, appointments or revenue come in through it, someone should be responsible when something stops working. That is what I take care of at Kreo Pulse.
If you want to know where your site stands, I will take a look and tell you what I notice. It costs nothing and it is not a sales pitch.
Credit: Christoph Daum & Manja Neumann
