WordPress Management Automation Tips

Automate WordPress tasks and you’ll be able to cut down on a lot of the stuff you have to do to make your website purr along happily, like creating content, maintenance tasks, security checks, getting rid of malware, backups of your stuff, comments moderation and more. It’s definitely a lot to do but thankfully you don’t have to do it all by yourself because now there are tools available that let you automate WordPress tasks, making WordPress management automation available to all.

WordPress Automation Overview

Updates Automation

Software updates are there to keep your site working properly, improve functionality and keep them secure against the rising tide of malware. Chances are, when you look at your dashboard, you’ll see that there’s some kind of update available. The major ones will usually ask for you to approve them, but with WordPress 5.5, the software takes care of these on its own. This is fine if you don’t have many plug-ins and your site hasn’t been appended very much, but it’s still a very good idea to back up your site and check the change log (so you know where you are at) before you commit to any major overhaul like this.

Go the WordPress management automation route and you’ll be able to focus on your business more instead of worrying about WordPress updates.

The options are somewhat customizable, and you can use snippets of code to change the level of automatic updating.

You may also use Easy Updates Manager to turn on automatic updates either all at once or selectively. All update-related options are overridden by this plugin. It allows you to handle all changes to the WordPress core, themes, and plugins, as well as development, translation, and third-party plugin updates.

Automate WP Site and Data Backups

Backing up your stuff is just good housekeeping, and one of the main rules with it is that the more changes that happen on your site the more often you need to keep a copy so you can recover from disasters. You should also consider keeping more than one copy and storing them in different places so you’ll never be caught out. You could also intermittently check on your backups to make sure that they are being saved properly.

If you’ve paid for premium hosting then this kind of thing will be covered already, but if not then you’ll need plug-ins to automate WordPress backups.

In our opinion, JetPack Backups (previously VaultPress) is one of the better solutions. It can back up your entire WordPress installation. To have your backup schedules run automatically, simply install and connect the plugin. Backups are stored by JetPack Backups for you, but you may easily download them and save them in a secure off-site place.

WPvivid is another excellent alternative. Advanced (and comprehensive) backups, schedules, migrations, and even a staging environment are all available with this premium all-in-one backup and migration plugin for WordPress. Remote storage, one-click restoration, email reports, and assistance are included in all its premium subscriptions.

Create a Posting Schedule

Did you know that you don’t have to be signed into WordPress to post content? It can be scheduled to appear at any time.

When you’ve finished writing your most recent post, go to the post editor and select the Publish option. To tell it when you want the post to go live, use the Edit link.

The option is found in Gutenberg’s “Post” settings, and in the Classic Editor’s “Publish” meta box.

You can also reschedule posts if necessary. While you can do this for as many posts as you want, it’s not a good idea to plan too far ahead. You may need to adjust the schedule to accommodate the post’s relevancy at the time of publication.

Social Media Auto-publish

Much of what you share on social media can be automated. You may set it up so that your social media accounts are automatically updated and your content is disseminated across many social media sites. After formatting WordPress RSS feeds for social media, you may automate them.

Automating social media posting should, ideally, be integrated into your whole social media strategy. It allows you to take a break from social media without your followers noticing.

The Social Rabbit plugin is one that can help here. It automatically posts both fresh and old information to your social media accounts after a one-time setup.

Fighting Spam

Spam can have a negative impact on your SERPs. Spammers, on the other hand, are a dedicated bunch that will always try to find a way into your site. That’s why WordPress includes the Akismet anti-spam plugin with every WordPress installation.

You’ll need to activate the plugin and receive an API key after installing WordPress. Following that, the plugin scans for spam in comments and contact form entries on a frequent basis. It’s a useful way to automate WP.

If you don’t like Akismet, you should know that there are various WordPress spam-prevention plugins available, including ones that deal with login attempts, subscriptions, registrations, bookings, and more.

Compress Images

All of the high-resolution photographs on your site must be compressed before being uploaded to your media library. Image files that are large in terms of bytes can cause your website to load slowly.

Plugins such as EWWW Image Optimizer compress photos automatically as they are uploaded to the media library. They can also compress any photographs you have on your WordPress site.

Advanced picture management and optimization features are available with WP Compress. Select your preferred compression level, add lazy load, enable WebP, and more in the options. Plus, as soon as you link WP Compress to your site, it performs real-time picture optimization.

Optimizing Your Database

The database might start to bulge as you add more and more content to your website. Cleaning up your database on a regular basis is a vital element of basic website maintenance. A large database slows down your site, but a slim database responds to queries more quickly.

You can count on WP Optimize to automate WP database cleaning as often as you desire. You can specify what needs to be cleaned and how it should be configured to remove redundant data. You can set the plugin to save a backup to UpdraftPlus before optimizing your database to ensure that your data is always protected.

Content Creation

It seems impossible, doesn’t it, to put content generation on autopilot? While this isn’t always a smart idea, it can alleviate the burden of content generation for some sites that operate primarily to curate material from a variety of sources.

WP RSS Aggregator and other auto-blogging plugins can help you aggregate content and publish it automatically. It’s a simple and effective approach to share what’s fresh in your field.

You can, for example, subscribe to the RSS feeds of select YouTube channels and deliver curated material to subscribers on your site.

Broken Link Checker

Broken links on your website might make it appear unprofessional and out of date. Broken Link Checker is a simple plugin that scans your website and automatically fixes broken links and missing images. Furthermore, the plugin is simple to set up and configure, and it can be turned off when not in use.

WordPress Automation With the Help of Plesk WP Toolkit

Plesk’s WP Toolkit solution makes things even easier for people who use Plesk as their web hosting control panel. WP Toolkit is a Plesk extension that adds a variety of useful WordPress features, including an auto installer.

You may utilize the entire WP Toolkit to clone current WordPress installs, leverage the staging environment, transfer data between different WordPress instances, and install fresh WordPress instances, among other things.

In terms of automation, Smart Updates regularly monitors for new upgrades and updates your WordPress plugins and themes for you, testing the results on a clone of your website first. Smart Updates tests your WordPress immediately after running the update on a clone of your website, checking for bugs, errors, and display issues.

Summary

You’ll want to check in on your automated WordPress tasks periodically to make sure they’re still running correctly. While these plugins are excellent ways to automate WordPress and make more efficient use of your time (to do more important things like write great content), you should still double-check for plugin updates and compatibility (if you’re using more than one).

What other chores would you like WordPress to automate? Or do you have any essential automation plugins that you can’t live without? Let us know in the comments area how you manage your site; we’d love to hear from you.