Chas Newport

How to Make Your Website Run Itself Chas Newport

Once upon a time, I had six websites... and time to write content for them. Then one of them was hacked! As bad luck would have it, it was one with a lot of hand-written content... and no recent backups.

I'd made a fundamental error not promptly applying updates to the WordPress core and some of the plugins. You can't afford to scrimp on updates because they often fix security vulnerabilities. Automatic daily backups for active sites should be a bare minimum.

So I became paranoid, spending an hour or more every evening logging in and out of sites just to check on them, run a backup and apply updates. I was syndicating a few bits of attributed content to keep the sites active, but now had no time to write anything original. I needed a better way...

First, I found an automated backup plugin and set it to run once a day, storing the backup in the cloud, not in my sites' webspace. Next, I looked for a way to automatically update the core and plugins. To my surprise, I found a plugin to do it... years later WP can do all this but back then these were real time savers.

Then I started looking for ways to stop another hack... and found an amazing plugin which shares attack pattern information from all installed copies to generate an evolving blacklist. I was hooked... I spent the next decade looking for ways to automate my sites.

At one point my site count was up from six to SIXTY. But I still had time to write because they pretty much run themselves... near-zero admin. Auto Defence with Learning CapabilityAuto Backup with One Click RestoreAuto Update of WP Core and PluginsAuto Content Generation (Optional) Auto Social SharingAuto Tuning and HousekeepingReal-time Performance WarningsBulk Installation of New PluginsAssisted Formatting of hand-crafted pages

All by simply choosing the right plugins... we'll suggest one or two for each function and tell you how to evaluate others for yourself.