Leading content management systems like WordPress have made managing websites much easier, but there are still things you still have to do manually out of the box, such as publishing content, performing backups and security/malware scans, database backups, and more.
Fortunately, some of WordPress’ inbuilt features and additional plugins can further automate your daily website tasks and workflow. And according to Website Advisor, WordPress is one of the best free website builders. Let’s take a closer look!
1. Scheduling Posts
If you’re blogging or producing a content website, then you need to spend time publishing your posts. But, what if you have a backlog of content that you want to publish at regular intervals or you have found an opportune time of day to push out your content?
Then, you need to start scheduling your posts in advance. Fortunately, WordPress has this feature inbuilt. All you have to do is change the publish date and time in the box on the right of every post editing page.
You can also find plugins with more advanced scheduling features of the basic feature isn’t enough for you.
2. Automatic Updates
WordPress will notify you in the Admin panel when there is a new version of the platform to update and there is also an option to do this automatically. For the vast majority of people, this is a perfect solution and you shouldn’t have to worry about okaying updates or doing them manually ever again.
However, you may want to tread a bit more carefully when using the automatic theme and plug-in updates, as these can sometimes wipe your content or modifications. For example, if you’ve added a bunch of code to your theme files and you aren’t using ‘child themes,’ you could end up having to do it all again if the theme is automatically updated.
3. Backing up Your Site
No matter what type of site you run on whatever platform, it is important to perform backups in case there’s a security breach or something else goes wrong. You want a clean copy that you can re-upload.
You can various backups from within WordPress manually and you can also do this server/web host side if you have access.
There are also plug-ins, such as BackupBuddy and UpdraftPlus that can perform backups automatically.
4. Image Optimization
If you upload a lot of images in your content, you probably have an optimal height (or at least width). You also probably don’t want to waste a lot of bandwidth with large image file sizes.
One option to tackle these problems is to use an automated image optimization plugin like WP Smush or EWWW Image Optimizer.
WordPress itself has come a long way and allows you to use different sizes by default and even add ‘alt’ and ‘title’ tags to all of your images for SEO purposes.
If you’re particularly concerned about bandwidth and site-load speed, you might consider a full-blown caching system like WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache.
5. Social Media Sharing
Being able to automatically share your new WordPress posts across social media platforms is a huge time saver and can be accomplished in a number of ways—the easiest with exiting WordPress plugins.
AccessPress Social AutoPost is one of the most comprehensive options, but it does require you to pay a one-off fee. It lets you link all of your major social media accounts and define which content you’d like to auto-share based on your chosen parameters (i.e. only sharing from one specific category etc).
You can also schedule exactly the times you wish posts to be shared.
Tip: Some premium plug-ins can be expensive, so you might want to consider taking out an instant approval loan if you don’t have the funds upfront.
6. Comment Moderation
WordPress now does a good job of filtering out spam comments automatically, but for more options, we recommend installing a third-party commenting system like Disqus, which has advanced blacklisting settings.
Disqus also integrates social media engagement and is less of a hassle for users, who can log-in to Disqus across multiple sites rather than having an account on your website specifically.
Do you run a WordPress Website and have further automated your daily tasks? Let us know how in the comments below!
