Posting to and managing a WordPress site takes time and dedication. Everything seems to take a bit longer than you initially expected, such as uploading photos, posting to social networking sites, keeping your plugins updated and more.
When you learn to schedule and automate WordPress tasks you cut down on certain areas to free up resources for high-quality content creation and other parts of your business that require additional attention.
Let’s take a look at some areas you can quickly automate on WordPress to make your work a bit easier.
Updating Your Network of WordPress Sites
If you run multiple WordPress sites it becomes tedious to keep up with all the theme and plugin updates, along with backups and other tasks that need attention on the average site. Use a service such as WPRemote or iThemes Sync to manage multiple sites.
These services are free for a certain amount of sites, and you don’t have to open multiple dashboard to stay up-to-date.
Automatically Update all New WordPress and Plugin Versions
Why click a link to update every WordPress and plugin upgrade individually? If you only run one or two sites you don’t need a service like WPRemote. Simply modify the wp-config.php and follow the standard WordPress automation directions here.
Keep in mind that new updates might conflict with old plugins, so ensure you have a solid backup plugin in case something goes wrong. It’s up to you if you want to automatically update plugins, but if you notice something wrong you can usually test for the problem by deactivating plugins one-by-one.
Quickly Find all Broken Links
There comes a time where some links become outdated on your site. Instead of testing them all manually, use a WordPress plugin like Broken Link Checker to receive a list of your bad links. Change them out to improve your UI and help SEO.
Give People What They Need with Search Queries and Smart Contact Forms
Let’s say a person searches for a particular product from your wide selection of products on your site. You can cut down on communications and direct people to the right contact forms by using something like Gravity Forms.
If you need to find out what state each user is from before talking to them, create a checkbox and contact form for each one.
Block Out Spam
Spam is a common problem with all WordPress sites. It slows down your site and is a pain to moderate. Use plugins like Akismet and WP Ban to block spammers and moderate comments.
Scheduling Your Posts
Create an editorial schedule for your own posts or if you manage multiple writers. Use a plugin like Editorial Calendar to schedule and manage upcoming posts.
What’s in the News?
Use Google Alerts to receive emails when a topic is published about your company or industry. Use this information to cut down on the idea creation process.
Keep Automatic Backups
This is a must-have for any WordPress site. Prevent losing any site content by using a plugin like BackWPUp Free to save automatic backups to areas like Dropbox or your email.
Using Zapier or IFTTT
Zapier and IFTTT are applications that help you integrate multiple tools to automate how they work together. For example, you can automatically save a Google Drive copy after you publish a post to your blog.
Zapier is designed more for B2B software, while IFTTT offers more tools for the average consumer (receive texted weather updates or team scores.)
Let’s take a look at the best ways to use these for automating your WordPress site.
- YouTube to WordPress update
- Posting blogs from Gmail
- Automate all WordPress posts to all social sites
- Send new WordPress posts to Evernote
- Create a LinkedIn group discussion with new post
These automatons are nice because you don’t have to install plugins that slow down the site and you can set them up and forget about them after.
Let us know in the comments if you have any questions about how to schedule and automate WordPress tasks. Share your thoughts if you can think about any other ways to automate WordPress.
