WordPress is the most popular CMS on the Internet. It powers over 30% of sites and grows every day. But, different clients mean different kinds of sites. As your agency grows, one site turns into five, five into ten, ten into 20…and can quickly become too much to manage. Not to worry! There are plenty of ways agencies, freelancers, and even IT service providers can stay organized and manage multiple sites with ease. Here are five of our favorite tips.
How to Manage Multiple Websites
1. Stay Organized
Managing a website takes a lot of work. From updates to development work and day-to-day maintenance, one site can be enough to keep a developer busy, let alone 20+. The best thing you can do to ensure your success is to keep organized.
A clean dashboard makes all the difference. At Pressable, our team prides itself on creating a quality user interface that allows you to manage multiple websites with ease. Keeping track of your sites, their stage of development, and what updates need to be done are key to staying organized and managing multiple sites.
You should also look for a project management tool that you like to help keep your tasks in order. There are tons of them out there. Our favorite is Asana. It helps us track projects, manage deadlines, and keep our priorities straight.
2. Don’t Forget to Update
Updates keep our platform safe and secure, helping mitigate hacking attempts and improving overall functionality. But when you’ve got 20+ sites to take care of, updating can feel like you’re falling down an endless rabbit hole.
There are plenty of services available to help organize updates, too. Jetpack Manage is an extension of <a href=”https://pressable.com/2018/11/20/what-is-jetpack-demystifying-jetpack-features/”>Jetpack</a> that allows you to manage plugins installed on multiple websites at once. Jetpack comes with tons of other great features, too, and you’ll get access to Jetpack Security Daily for free with your Pressable hosting subscription.
And plugin updates are just the tip of the iceberg. You’ll also have to update the WordPress core. At Pressable, we make managing multiple sites easy by taking some of those updates off your plate. Our expert team updates the WordPress core for you. We’ll also take care of WooCommerce updates! It helps keep our platform safe, and ensures your sites are working at peak performance.
3. Take Advantage of the Latest and Greatest
Speaking of updates, you might remember a little update that came out in 2019 called the Gutenberg Editor. This was a major change to the WordPress site editor that gave more functionality to the WordPress interface. Through the use of blocks, Gutenberg allows users of all skill levels to create beautiful websites on WordPress with ease.
At Pressable, we always update the WordPress core to the latest version as soon as it releases. That way our servers remain safe and secure, and sites on our platform are always on the cutting edge of what WordPress can be.
4. Automate Where You Can
Automation is the next big thing, not just in tech, but in all facets of life. There might be a few kinks to work out still when it comes to things like autonomous vehicles or mechanical production, but the WordPress industry is miles ahead of the curve. Services like Staging Pilot take the stress and worry away from updating multiple sites. They’ll manage, test, and push updates to all your sites for you. They even alert you if a certain update would cause a change in functionality. That way, you can keep up to date with plugin versions and ensure your sites are safe and secure.
Host your sites with Pressable and get access to tools that make old processes effortless, like one-click cloning and automated migration tools. You read that right: one-click cloning. No more jumping through hoops to get a clone ready to test changes or updates on. Just clone the site in your dashboard and you’re ready to go.
Our automated migration saves time, too. Download our migration plugin from the WordPress plugin repository and follow the prompts. Or, if you’d rather have us take care of it for you, just submit a migration request form and our support team will have your sites moved before you know it.
5. Ensure You Have the Best Support
A must-have for multiple websites on any platform is support because let’s face it, sometimes things happen. It doesn’t matter whose fault it is, whether it’s your host or a clumsy developer staying up a little too late editing code, a support team should be able to handle anything you can throw at them.
Pressable’s support team is available 24/7 to take care of you and your sites. When we’re not problem-solving, we’re learning, keeping up to date with all the latest WordPress news. We’re also constantly updating and analyzing our platform, looking for ways to improve and optimize our platform. And you won’t find automated chatbots here.
Get Expert Help with Managing Multiple Websites
We’re just a team of real WordPress experts looking to provide expert support. You won’t find that anywhere else.
Want to learn more about managed WordPress hosting for managing multiple websites on Pressable?
Zach Wiesman
Zach has 12+ years of experience with WordPress, from creating and maintaining client sites, to providing support and developing documentation. A knack for problem-solving and providing solutions led Zach to pursue a job with Automattic providing customer support in 2015 working with WooCommerce support, and now Zach has recently joined our team here at Pressable. Outside of work, Zach enjoys spending time with his family, playing and watching sports, and working on projects around the house.
