Managing Multiple Wordpress Sites for Free

If you happen to be managing multiple WordPress sites then you probably know how frustrating it can be to keep every site updated and you definitely don’t want the client having to call you in case their site goes down. Here’s what we do to keep all our sites updated and ensure that the client doesn’t have to come to us in case their site goes down.

For updating all of our sites at once we use WPRemote. It’s super easy to setup on all our sites, just requires their maintainer plugin to be installed and you’re set. Once you’ve added all of your sites you just have to refresh them to check on whether or not they do have updates and if they do all you have to do is select whether you want to update the Theme, Plugin or Core. Be careful. This app does not backup your site first, before doing anything major always download a backup of your site (This app does provide an easy way to download a backup).

To monitor our sites for downtime we use Uptime Robot. It’s free for your first 50 sites, and it can either do basic checking (such as just plain http) or keyword or port checking also. It will check every 5 minutes (or later) and if a sites goes down it will email you immediately. Besides the dashboard being a little less extravagant then it could be it does the job alright.

Managing plugins on multiple sites can also be a pain, reinstalling the same plugins on every site can get tiresome. For that we have WPCore. It allows you to build your own set of plugins you want installed, all you have to do is install their plugin on your site and the collection key and you’re set! Here’s the link to one that I have setup that I’ve found has been really good.

Between WPRemote, Uptime Robot and WPCore we manage about 35 WordPress sites with minimal effort and for Free. However if you don’t mind spending money you can always default back to ManageWP, which will handle all of these things and better if you’re willing to pay.