At the Milwaukee WordPress Meetup, we discussed tools and tips for managing and enhancing your sites.

Managing WordPress

Every web site requires maintenance. WordPress is no exception. The following tools will help you maintain your WordPress site.

• When you manage multiple WordPress sites, it can be time-consuming to update each one. ManageWP helps you to manage your sites easily. You can choose a pricing plan that fits your needs.
• Not all Plugins work for your site. When you delete them, they may leave tables in your WordPress installation. You can use Plugins Garbage Collector to clean up the extra tables.
• You may have some options in Plugins that you don’t use. Options Optimizer lets you turn off unused options.
• Sometimes WordPress sites load slowly. One cause may be a plugin. You can use Plugin Performance Profiler to tell you how efficient your plugins are. Not all plugins run as well as you need them to. If you have a problem, you can use Plugin Performance Profiler to determine the troublemaker.
• To speed up a WordPress site, use WordPress caching. Plugins like WP SuperCache or W3 Total Cache.

What about SPAM?

Unfortunately, you need to deal with SPAM. In WordPress, you have a couple of options. You can:

• Turn off comments. No comments means no SPAM.
• Use a Plugin called Disqus to manage comments and discussions on your site.
• Use FaceBook comments. The comments appear on your Fan Page.

Security

WordPress continues to fix bugs, security issues and add new features. An out of date WordPress site can be open to getting hacked. We discussed two things that you can do to help make your sites more secure:

• Keep WordPress, Plugins and Themes up to date. You can use Automatic Updater to help keep your site up to date.
• Be careful when selecting themes or Plugins. Some Plugins or themes may hide malicious code. You can scan your WordPress site for malicious code by using free or paid tools.

Themes

WordPress has many options for themes. You can create your own or use themes built by others.

• Avoid searching Google for free theme. Get themes from trusted sites like Theme Forest, WordPress.org, WooThemes or Elegant Themes.
• If you want to use a theme framework, you can start with WooThemes, Pagelines, Genesis or Thesis.
• When you decide that you want to create your own theme, you can use a starter theme like Underscores, Bones, ToolBox or Skeleton.

Learning More about WordPress

When you want to learn more, where do you go? You have many options for yourself and your clients. You may want to look at:

• YouTube Tutorials
• You can go to sites like WordPress TV, WPBeginner, WP101, WPCandy, Stackoverflow, WordPress Codex, WP Tuts-Plus and more.
• For your clients, you could install WP101 Plugin. It cost $19 per month for each client. They can learn directly in their WordPress Dashboard.