Here is a quick look at the various activities involved in administering your WordPress site. Some of these may need to be done daily, while others can be done weekly, monthly, or less frequently. It depends upon your blogging activity level and the intent of your WordPress site.

Daily Tasks

Login and Write

Most people begin by logging into their WordPress site because they have news, information, or a story to tell. So they head straight for the Administration Screens > Posts > Add New. There, the title is set, the information is entered, categories and tags chosen, and any other minor details noted, and with a click is published.

If you have any new images, movies, or music, to upload to your site, you can easily to that when writing the post or switch to the Administration Screens > Media > Add New Screen and add any other images to your WordPress site. Then, you can either add these to your new posts, or visit the Administration Screens > Posts > Posts screen and click Edit to edit the post in which you now wish to add an image. Again, click SAVE and it is released to the world.

Also, there are those Drafts sitting up at the top of the Write Post screen, which you can publish or move to the trash, if you’d like.

Luckily with WordPress, you have some options for dealing with all those posts. They don’t all have to be released today. Many people work ahead with their blog content, setting the dates into the future. When the day and time arrives, WordPress will automatically release the post, without any additional effort from you.

Checking Comments

After you have cleaned up the content on your site, it is time to find out what they have been saying about what you say. On the Administration Screens > Comments Screen, you can inspect the comments posted to your site. If a comment has been marked for moderation approval, it will look lighter colored than the rest of the comments. Click Edit Comment to access the comment and set it to be approved. Click Delete Comment if you want it removed.

The Moderation Screen will segregate the comments awaiting moderation from the rest of the comments if you have set your Administration Screens > Settings > Discussion to moderate all comments. This allows for quick and easy comment moderation.

Determining which comments to keep and delete is a challenge. Be aware that often nice comments like “I really like your site. Keep up the great work.” and “It shows you put a lot of time and effort in this. Thanks.” might be benign comments, or more likely comment spam. To help you determine and check on what might be comment spam, and how to increase your protection against comment spammers, check out the following documents:

• Introduction to Dealing with Comment Spam
• Moderating Comments
• Combating Comment Spam
• Denying Access to Comment Spammers with .htaccess

Users and Authors

If you have set your site set up to allow users to register and submit articles, stop by your Users Screen to check on those who have registered and make any adjustments to their User Roles and Capabilities as needed.

If you do allow users to post articles, be sure to check the Administration Screens > Posts > Posts screen for any newly posted articles in the Drafts or Pending status awaiting your review and release.

Check the Dashboard

At this point, your daily tasks are almost complete. Your site is up-to-date and on its way to entertaining and educating the world. But, there is one last task you might want to check. Stop by your WordPress Administration Screens > Dashboard > Dashboard screen and check to see if there are any new activities going on in the WordPress Community, especially any announcements about upgrades.

While there, take advantage of your handy “To Do List” featured on the Dashboard. This lists your most recently released posts, the next batch of scheduled entries, recent comments, blog stats, and incoming links (referrers). This helpful information lets you know what has been released to the public from your site, what is next on the list, and shows you, at a glance, to view the most recent comments.

The blog stats and incoming links give you different information. The Stats give you information about how many posts, comments, and categories are on your site. While this may not be critical information, you can use it as a general scoreboard or counter. The incoming links information tells you who has pinged or trackbacked your site. This helps your link popularity for your site and gives you an idea of who thought your site’s material was worthy of praise.

At the bottom of the page, you will see a list of your Drafts, waiting to be done.

Administration Tasks

As the administrator or site owner, there are a few more tasks you should add to your schedule. These do not have to be done daily, but they still need to be done on a regular basis. Many of these are outlined in the articles WordPress Housekeeping and WordPress Site Maintenance. In general they are:

• Updating WordPress
• Check for Dead Links Throughout Your Site
• Check in with WordPress for Changes and Information
• Backup Your WordPress Site and Database
• Update Your Site’s Content and/or Look
• Update Plugins and Themes
• Check for Validation Errors
• Optimize Your WordPress Site

More Administration Resources

• Administration Screens
• What Registered Users Can Do
• Manage Categories
• Roles and Capabilities
• Manage WordPress Settings
• Manage Discussion Options
• Using Permalinks
• Moderate Comments
• Manage Plugins
• Manage Themes

When a new version of a plugin or theme is available, an alert bubble is displayed in your WordPress Admin Menu and the corresponding theme or plugin is highlighted on Themes and Plugins Screens.

There are several places where you can manage themes or plugins updates:

• WordPress, Plugins, Themes and Translations updates can be managed on the Updates Screen located in Dashboard > Updates sub menu.
• Themes updates can be managed on the Appearance Screen.
• Plugins updates can be managed on the Plugins Screen.

Since WordPress 5.5, websites Administrators can manually opt-in for automatic updates theme by theme and plugin by plugin.

Enable auto-updates for themes

On the Appearance Screen, click on a theme thumbnail. In the theme modal, right below the author of the theme, an “Enable auto-updates” action link is available. Click on this action link to enable auto-updates for this specific theme.

Once enabled, auto-updates can be disabled at any time, using the same toggle link.

Themes auto-updates have to be enabled/disabled theme by theme.

Enable auto-updates for plugins

Navigate to Plugins Screen. For each plugin, there is an “Automatic update” column with an action link used to enable/disable auto-updates plugin by plugin.

Click on this action link to enable auto-updates for each specific plugin.

Once enabled, auto-updates can be disabled at any time, using the same toggle link.

Bulk enable/disable plugins auto-updates

Plugins auto-updates can be bulk enabled or disabled for several plugin at one time by using the bulk action selector. Select plugins using the checkbox located in the first column of the plugins list table and use the bulk action selector located on the top of the table to enable or disable auto-updates. Then click on the “Apply” button to bulk enable/disable auto-updates for the selected items.

When do Themes and Plugins auto-updates happen?

By default WordPress runs auto-updates twice per day. If updates are available for plugins or themes with auto-updates enabled, the time until the next scheduled update will be displayed below the enable/disable auto-updates action link.

The time until next auto-updates is also displayed in the Dashboard > Updates Screen for both Themes and Plugins:

Email notifications after plugins and themes auto-update attempts

By default WordPress sends email notifications to website owners to inform them that plugins and themes were automatically updated. These email notifications are sent when:

• One or more plugins or themes successfully auto-updated
• One or more plugins or themes failed to auto-update
• Some plugins or themes were successfully auto-updated, and some of them failed

Advices & Troubleshooting

Perform regular automatic backups of your website

Before enabling auto-updates on your plugins and themes, you may want to make sure you’re able to rollback to a previous version of your website in case things go wrong.

Various plugins exist to take automatic scheduled backups of your WordPress database and files. This helps to manage your backup collection easily. You can find automatic backup plugins in the Plugin Browser on the WordPress Administration Screens or through the WordPress Plugin Directory.

• List of Backup Plugins

Auto-updates are not available

If auto-updates controls are not available on your Plugins/Themes Admin Screens, please check you are running WordPress version 5.5 or more. Plugins and themes auto-updates were introduced in WP 5.5.

If you are running WordPress 5.5 or more and those controls are still unavailable, it probably means the feature was partially or completely deactivated by your hosting company or by a plugin.

Auto-updates are not working

Depending on your server, your installation or on the plugins your website is running, auto-updates scheduling may not work correctly. Indeed, they rely on WordPress Cron tasks to actually perform the update.

To check if WordPress Cron tasks are running correctly, go to Tools > Site Health and search for any error message.

More resources

• Developer note: Controlling plugin and theme auto-update interface in WordPress 5.5
• Plugins and Themes auto-updates core merge announcement

You should always update WordPress to the latest version. When a new version of WordPress is available you will receive an update message in your WordPress Admin Screens. To update WordPress, click the link in this message.

There are two methods for updating – the easiest is the one-click update, which will work for most people. If it doesn’t work, or you just prefer to be more hands-on, you can follow the manual update process.

If you are updating across multiple versions, follow the procedure at Upgrading WordPress – Extended Instructions

Back up WordPress

Before you get started, it’s a good idea to back up your website. This means if there are any issues you can restore your website. Complete instructions to make a backup can be found in the WordPress Backup.

Automatic Background Updates

For WordPress 3.7+, you don’t have to lift a finger to apply minor and security updates. Most sites are now able to automatically apply these updates in the background. If your site is capable of one-click updates without entering FTP credentials, then your site should be able to update from 3.7 to 3.7.1, 3.7.2, etc. (You’ll still need to click “Update Now” for major feature releases.)

One-click Update

WordPress lets you update with the click of a button.  You can launch the update by clicking the link in the new version banner (if it’s there) or by going to the Dashboard > Updates screen. Once you are on the “Update WordPress” page, click the button “Update Now” to start the process off. You shouldn’t need to do anything else and, once it’s finished, you will be up-to-date.

One-click updates work on most servers. If you have any problems, it is probably related to permissions issues on the filesystem.

File Ownership

WordPress determines what method it will use to connect to the filesystem of your server based on the file ownership of your WordPress files. If the files are owned by the owner of the current process (i.e., the user under which the web server is running), and new files created by WordPress will also be owned by that user, WordPress will directly modify the files all by itself, without asking you for credentials.

WordPress won’t attempt to create the new files directly if they won’t have the correct ownership. Instead, you will be shown a dialog box asking for connection credentials. It is typical for the files to be owned by the FTP account that originally uploaded them. To perform the update, you just need to fill in the connection credentials for that FTP account.

Whether your files are owned by the web server user, or not, will depend on how you installed WordPress and how your server is configured. On some shared hosting platforms, it is a security risk for the files to be owned by the web server user and not a FTP user. See the tutorial on Changing File Permissions for more information, including how to configure file permissions so that multiple FTP users are able to edit the files.

Failed Updates

If you see a “failed update” nag message, delete the file .maintenance from your WordPress directory using FTP. This will remove the “failed update” nag message.

If the one-click upgrade doesn’t work for you, don’t panic! Just try a manual update.

Manual Update

These are the short instructions, if you want more check out the extended upgrade instructions. If you experience problems with the Three Step Update, you may want to review the more detailed upgrade instructions.

For these instructions, it is assumed that your blog’s URL is http://example.com/wordpress/.

Step 1: Replace WordPress files

1. Get the latest WordPress zip (or tar.gz) file.
2. Unpack the zip file that you downloaded.
3. Deactivate plugins.
4. Delete the old wp-includes and wp-admin directories on your web host (through your FTP or shell access).
5. Using FTP or your shell access, upload the new wp-includes and wp-admin directories to your web host, in place of the previously deleted directories.
6. Upload the individual files from the new wp-content folder to your existing wp-content folder, overwriting existing files. Do NOT delete your existing wp-content folder. Do NOT delete any files or folders in your existing wp-content directory (except for the one being overwritten by new files).
7. Upload all new loose files from the root directory of the new version to your existing WordPress root directory.

NOTE – you should replace all the old WordPress files with the new ones in the wp-includes and wp-admin directories and sub-directories, and in the root directory (such as index.php, wp-login.php and so on). Don’t worry – your wp-config.php will be safe.

Be careful when you come to copying the wp-content directory. You should make sure that you only copy the files from inside this directory, rather than replacing your entire wp-content directory. This is where your themes and plugins live, so you will want to keep them. If you have customized the default or classic themes without renaming them, make sure not to overwrite those files, otherwise you will lose your changes. (Though you might want to compare them for new features or fixes..)

Lastly you should take a look at the wp-config-sample.php file, to see if any new settings have been introduced that you might want to add to your own wp-config.php.

Step 1.5: Remove .maintenance file

If you’re upgrading manually after a failed auto-upgrade, delete the file .maintenance from your WordPress directory using FTP. This will remove the “failed update” nag message.

Step 2: Update your installation

Visit your main WordPress admin page at /wp-admin. You may be asked to login again. If a database upgrade is necessary at this point, WordPress will detect it and give you a link to a URL like http://example.com/wordpress/wp-admin/upgrade.php. Follow that link and follow the instructions. This will update your database to be compatible with the latest code. You should do this as soon as possible after step 1.

Don’t forget to reactivate plugins!

Step 3: Do something nice for yourself

If you have caching enabled, clear the cache at this point so the changes will go live immediately. Otherwise, visitors to your site (including you) will continue to see the old version (until the cache updates).

Your WordPress installation is successfully updated. That’s as simple as we can make it without Updating WordPress Using Subversion.

Consider rewarding yourself with a blog post about the update, reading that book or article you’ve been putting off, or simply sitting back for a few moments and letting the world pass you by.

Final Steps

Your update is now complete, so you can go in and enable your Plugins again.
If you have issues with logging in, try clearing cookies in your browser.

Troubleshooting

If anything has gone wrong, then the first thing to do is go through all the steps in our extended upgrade instructions. That page also has information about some of the most common problems we see.

If you run into a request for FTP credentials with trying to update WP on a IIS server automatically, it may well be a matter of rights. Go into the IIS Management Console, and there to the application pool of your blog. In its advanced settings, change the Process Model Id into LocalSystem. Then on Sites, choose your blog, right click, click on Edit permissions and on security tab add authenticated users. That should do it.

If you experience problems after the upgrade, you can always restore your backup and replace the files with ones from your previous version from the release archive.

Other options

If you have some knowledge of unix shells you should check out wp-cli.

Just as with your house, WordPress requires a little housekeeping once in a while to keep it working right. Here is a list of things you should do on a regularly scheduled basis to keep your WordPress site running smoothly.

Upgrade WordPress

If a new release of WordPress is out, we recommend that you upgrade. These new releases often include new and improved features and fixes. It is recommended to check in with WordPress for updates and upgrades at least every three months, six months at the most. Check WordPress.org or WordPress Downloads for latest version available.

Plugins

Plugins are an exciting feature of WordPress. They add functions and features to your WordPress site such as adding customized post listings to featuring a local weather forecast on your site.

With the hundreds of plugins available, it’s fun to test drive them, trying out different ones to see what they will do, if you need them, and if they really add to your site or clutter things up. Once in a while, you should do a little housekeeping on your plugins.

Upgrade Plugins

Every three to six months, check for the latest plugin version. This is easy to do from the Administration > Plugin Screen. If an update is available, WordPress will notify you with a banner below the plugin. Just click the “upgrade automatically” link, or click the “Download” link if you would prefer to upgrade manually.

Delete Old or Unwanted Plugins

To uninstall a WordPress Plugin:

1. Go to Plugins screen.
2. Find the Plugin you wish to deactivate and uninstall.
3. Click Deactivate.
4. Click Delete.

The Plugin will initiate the deactivation and deletion.

Most WordPress Plugins have an option to completely uninstall themselves, though not all. If you wish to remove a WordPress Plugin permanently:

1. Check the WordPress Plugin instructions in the Details readme file on how to properly uninstall the Plugin.
2. If the WordPress Plugin required the addition of code to the WordPress Theme, manually edit the Theme files to remove it.
3. Deactivate the Plugin and remove it manually through your FTP program.
   1. Login to the site via your FTP Program.
   2. Go to the Plugin directory and find where the Plugin is installed.
   3. Delete the WordPress Plugin folder and/or files from your server.

New Plugins

WordPress plugins are being added constantly. Every three to six months search the Internet or visit the WordPress plugins repository to see if there are any new plugins available that will improve your site. There might be a new plugin that will do what one of your older plugins do.

Theme Housekeeping

Just like plugins, many users love test driving all the different WordPress Themes available. Some users might have twenty or more Themes in their theme list. If you aren’t using them, why not do a little housekeeping on your themes?

To remove a theme from your WordPress site:

1. Log in to the WordPress Administration Screen.
2. Select the Appearance screen then Themes.
3. Select Theme Details for the theme you want to remove.
4. Select Delete near the bottom-right corner.

Get a New Theme

Tired of your old theme’s look? Maybe it’s time to do a little presentation housekeeping and change the look of your WordPress site. Thanks to WordPress’s support for themes, changing your site’s look is easy.

Check out the various resources for WordPress Themes. If you find one you like, install it and then activate it.

Don’t worry, your old theme will still be there. Test drive the new one for a while. You can always go back to the old one. If you are really determined to turn your theme housekeeping efforts into some serious work, check out the article on Theme Development to create your own unique theme.

Unwanted Images

Many users upload a lot of graphics to their site that they end up never using. If you find yourself with a lot of unused graphics and images, consider going through them and cleaning house by deleting them.

If you aren’t sure you will never need them again, but you aren’t using them now and want to remove them from your site if server site space is limited, move them to a folder in your hard drive WordPress folder called backupimages or something similar and store them there, just in case.

Database Optimization

Over time, your WordPress database can generate what’s called “overhead.” This condition is similar to a defragmented hard drive. There are some plugins that optimize your database (e.g. WP-Sweep)

Maintenance Schedule

In the article, Lessons: WordPress Site Maintenance, we cover website maintenance, but take a moment now to go through this list of WordPress housekeeping chores and add them to your calendar so you can clean up your site on a regular basis, keeping your WordPress site a lean and clean site to visit.

Getting a WordPress Tune Up

To keep WordPress working healthy, there is some site maintenance we recommend you do frequently.

Begin by creating a calendar of WordPress Maintenance procedures to remind yourself to get a maintenance job on your WordPress site on a regular basis.

In the article on WordPress Housekeeping, tips and resources are given to clean house in WordPress. These include cleaning out old plugins, upgrading WordPress, and other helpful tips for cleaning up and optimizing your WordPress Site.

To ensure you keep your WordPress site up-to-date and working in prime condition, consider adding these Housekeeping steps to your calendar, typically every three to six months.

Update WordPress

WordPress is quickly growing and expanding as more features and functions are included and perfected. It is recommended that you check in with WordPress for updates and upgrades at least every three months, six months at the most. Check WordPress org and Download WordPress for information on the latest version available.

Note: For WordPress 3.7+, minor and security updates are automatically applied in the background process.

Check for Dead Links

One of the most complained about aspect of using the Internet is the dead link. This is a link on a page or search engine that goes nowhere. It results in the 404 Page Error – Page Not Found. These can come from links to external sites that have changed their address or closed, or it can come from internal links. When you link between posts in your post articles, you might have misspelled a permalink address or put in the wrong post-ID, resulting in a page not found on your site. If you’ve recently made a change in your permalink structure, you might have some 404 page errors that might need cleaning up.

Add to your WordPress maintenance list regularly scheduled visits to your site’s statistic logs to check on reports of 404 errors on your site, and take time to run a links check on your external, and internal, links to make sure everything is still connected. Dependent upon the site and number of links on your site, you should check your site for dead links every six months to a year.

• W3C free check link free utility
• AnyBrowser’s Link Checker
• HTMLHelp Valet Link Checker
• Squarefree’s Bookmarklets – javascripts for checking links
• KeepNI’s link check (14 day evaluation, $299.00 US)

Check In With WordPress

The WordPress Dashboard, part of the Administration Screens, help to keep you up-to-date on the WordPress Community and activities, but check the WordPress website to find out if there have been any upgrades, news, events, or information you may need to know as a WordPress user.

If you aren’t an active participant in the WordPress Forums, check in once in a while to see what is going on and what topics are being discussed. There might be a topic that might interest you or news you should know.

Also visit the WordPress Documentation here to find out if there is new documentation, events, information, or resources that will help you better run and manage your WordPress site.

Delete Spam Comments

If you are using one of the many different Comment Spam WordPress Plugins with your WordPress blog, spam can collect in your database. Comment spam is stored in the database as a “just in case” so you can restore a comment incorrectly marked at comment spam. It also serves as a resource to track down recurrent comment spammers, if you need to.

In general, while some plugins will delete comment spam from your database after a specific period of time, not all do. These entries are dead-weight and unnecessary, and they can accumulate. To delete all current comment spam entries run this query on your WordPress database with phpMyAdmin in the SQL page:

DELETE FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_approved = 'spam'

Back It Up

Make it a part of your regularly scheduled maintenance to backup your WordPress site, both on the website host server and on your computer. For detailed information see WordPress Backups. Consider scheduling this, depending upon the volume of new posts or articles you add to your site, three to twelve times a year.

Backing Up Your Database describes how to save a backup copy of your database tables that contain all your blog data, and Restoring Your Database From Backup guides you through the process of restoring data using one of your backups should you ever have to do so.

Update Your Site

If you haven’t been adding posts or articles lately, make a schedule to remind you to add new material on a regular basis. If you have, then take a look at what you’ve posted in the past and maybe do a little checking for proper grammar, bad spelling, information that needs updating, rewriting and editing a little, checking for any adjustments that should be made to make the information you’ve released to the public better.

Website looks change with time and maybe you are tired of your old look. It might need a little tweaking to improve its presentation and performance, or maybe it’s time for a new WordPress Theme.

Schedule site updates, depending upon how frequently you post new posts and articles, about every six months so your site will stay fresh and alive.

Validate Again

Make it a website maintenance policy to validate your site after making any code or style sheet changes. This way, you can keep on top of guaranteeing users won’t run into problems and trouble that might be brewing under the surface.

You can also regularly schedule validation tests on your site to keep it in top working condition and keep up with any changes or deprecations of the CSS and HTML standards. Typically, this should be done about once a year or when you make significant modifications to your site.

Other Maintenance Tasks

For the serious blogger or website administrator, there are some site maintenance tasks you should do to keep up with your site based on site statistics data so that it improves hit ratio from search engine. Here are some suggestions to keep your site in top shape.

• Check Your Website Statistics : Who is visiting, where they are visiting from, which pages are the most visited…check in regularly with your website statistics to find out where the action is on your site, where the dead links are, and where users are coming from. This information can help you better fine tune your site to meet the needs of your users and increase your web visibility. You should check site statistics at least monthly if you have an active site.
• Check Your Linkability : There are many link popularity tools on the Internet that will check to see who is linking to you. This is part of the puzzle that search engines use to rank your site. Dependent upon your site’s activity and need to grow in search engine rankings, this should be done monthly, or at least three times a year.
• Site Submissions : If you have a desire to make your site rise in search engine rankings, regularly schedule activity surrounding your site’s submissions to search engines and attracting new users. Take care to limit your submissions to the same search engine too frequently, as that can penalize you, but check in with your site submissions once or twice a year at a minimum.
• Update Advertising : If you have included advertising in your site, check with your advertisers on a regular basis to make sure they haven’t changed their techniques, pricing, and process. Dependent upon site activity, this could be as often as once a month or several times a year.

Site Maintenance Calendar

We’ve put together a sample calendar for your site maintenance to help you schedule time to keep your WordPress site tuned up and running smoothly.

Important: Please note that this is not a support page. If you seek help with your specific problem, please refer to the Support forums.