Need Wordpress Advice

[SuperMan]

Well I just started a new job where the website is Wordpress based. I do have experience with Wordpress, but need a little advice here. I am by no means an expert or even advanced - I would say a novice Wordpress user.

The current site has over 60 plugins, many custom widgets, custom taxonomies, custom menus and over 5000 pages indexed in Google. In addition, there are custom scripts and alot of things happening. The person who build this is very Wordpress savvy and I am very impressed with the functionality, but now I am in a position to take over this site and am really not knowing how everything works together.

I am making grounds and slowly figuring things out, but feel like I am in over my head. And with over 5000 pages, a total redesign with all its current functionality might not be the right course of action.

Any ideas on how I should proceed in getting a handle... ??

[PhilipDunn]

I don't think you have mentioned what you are trying to do...

[claybutler]

Well I just started a new job where the website is Wordpress based. I do have experience with Wordpress, but need a little advice here. I am by no means an expert or even advanced - I would say a novice Wordpress user.

The current site has over 60 plugins, many custom widgets, custom taxonomies, custom menus and over 5000 pages indexed in Google. In addition, there are custom scripts and alot of things happening. The person who build this is very Wordpress savvy and I am very impressed with the functionality, but now I am in a position to take over this site and am really not knowing how everything works together.

I am making grounds and slowly figuring things out, but feel like I am in over my head. And with over 5000 pages, a total redesign with all its current functionality might not be the right course of action.

Any ideas on how I should proceed in getting a handle... ??

First go in and make sure you're only looking at the active plugins. Then go and delete any inactive ones. That will at least reduce the clutter.

Then make sure the WP installation and all the plugins are current. Update the ones that aren't using the backend auto updater.

Next start updating/adding pages and see what happens. Unless they are asking you to create new plugins or code new functions, you really don't have know how things work from a coding point of view. You just need to know what everything does and the only way to do that is to just test it out.

[staker2]

It sounds like you know a little Wordpress and were thrown into a lot of Wordpress. My advice is to read everything these guys have written as I had the good fortune of attending a seminar at WordCamp Toronto of theirs and was blown away. They will have the answers to every question you have, and that's not overstating it.

http://rennickmedia.com/

They've got a few ebooks you may want to pick up and I would recommend their Wordpress All-in-One for Dummies. It is more aptly titled "The best Wordpress reference book that happens to be a member of an unfortunately titled series", but I suspect that's too long for Wiley's marketing crew.

Cheers and good luck

Well I just started a new job where the website is Wordpress based. I do have experience with Wordpress, but need a little advice here. I am by no means an expert or even advanced - I would say a novice Wordpress user.

The current site has over 60 plugins, many custom widgets, custom taxonomies, custom menus and over 5000 pages indexed in Google. In addition, there are custom scripts and alot of things happening. The person who build this is very Wordpress savvy and I am very impressed with the functionality, but now I am in a position to take over this site and am really not knowing how everything works together.

I am making grounds and slowly figuring things out, but feel like I am in over my head. And with over 5000 pages, a total redesign with all its current functionality might not be the right course of action.

Any ideas on how I should proceed in getting a handle... ??

[todd@canadaseopro.ca]

BACK everything up first - If its regular plugin upkeep, like Clay said "reduce the cluter" I would out source a few pages, but what exactly are you trying to change? Content changes to 5000 pages to change is a lot of work. I have access to very affordable, reputable WP experts. Been working with them for years. Very reliable guys.

Well I just started a new job where the website is Wordpress based. I do have experience with Wordpress, but need a little advice here. I am by no means an expert or even advanced - I would say a novice Wordpress user.

The current site has over 60 plugins, many custom widgets, custom taxonomies, custom menus and over 5000 pages indexed in Google. In addition, there are custom scripts and alot of things happening. The person who build this is very Wordpress savvy and I am very impressed with the functionality, but now I am in a position to take over this site and am really not knowing how everything works together.

I am making grounds and slowly figuring things out, but feel like I am in over my head. And with over 5000 pages, a total redesign with all its current functionality might not be the right course of action.

Any ideas on how I should proceed in getting a handle... ??

[Doc]

Not sure what your area of expertise is, SuperMan, but I think a great place to start would be a forensic audit. Find out how many pages you have in the index... the 5,000 pages you mention... if that's 5,000 actual pages, but Google says you have 15K, you have some issues to take care of. I'd also suggest taking a look at your pageload, with more than 60 plugins. http://webpagetest.org is a great place to start, that can flag a lot of issues.

If the last guy was really savvy, you might not have any significant canonical issues, but with WP being as prone to them as it is, I'd suggest checking that out.

Also, does the site have any analytics installed? If not, I'd make that an early step. Without being able to look at the past, it's often very difficult to determine what's happening in the present.

If you just do these, you're likely to find enough to keep you busy for a bit, on a site such as you describe.

[a53mp]

BACK everything up first - If its regular plugin upkeep, like Clay said "reduce the cluter" I would out source a few pages, but what exactly are you trying to change? Content changes to 5000 pages to change is a lot of work. I have access to very affordable, reputable WP experts. Been working with them for years. Very reliable guys.

I would recommend copying the entire site and database to a local server (wamp, etc) and doing your messing around and "learning" on there, that way you will have a safe sandbox to play on and you wont F anything up on the live server. As PhilipDunn said you didn't really say what you are wanting to accomplish. Do you want to do a redesign or port it to something besides wordpess? Or are you just wanting to figure out the best way to get used to Wordpress and the coding? If that's the case, the best way to do it would be to jump in and see what happens (in your sandbox)

[alanf]

Good advice creating a sandbox. Just a word to the wise, it is probably best to set your sandbox domain in your locals 'hosts' file to your live domain name, at least initially. The domain name is held in the database in a fairly standard way but also some plugins hold the domain names in not so standard ways.Google also Wordpress Codex Changing_The_Site_URL (can't include a link, sorry)

[a53mp]

Good advice creating a sandbox. Just a word to the wise, it is probably best to set your sandbox domain in your locals 'hosts' file to your live domain name, at least initially. The domain name is held in the database in a fairly standard way but also some plugins hold the domain names in not so standard ways.Google also Wordpress Codex Changing_The_Site_URL (can't include a link, sorry)

Agreed.. it does take alittle work to properly move a WP site, but for testing purposes.. you are better off putting in the extra effort. One easy solution would be to set up a test environment that matches your production server.. so if you are running *nix you should set up a *nix box and put your website in the same path as your live server.. as well as the domain name. Just make sure that you have it set up correctly. This would be the most sure way of not running into path issues.

[holyhttp]

The areas you will be dealing with as a WordPress tech support person (admin) would be making sure the active plugins are up-to-date and do not put too much load on the server. Do not be impressed by the number of pages indexed but rather check to see if the posts are cached or install & active a WordPress cache plugin. Make a backup copy of the database on a regular basis - at least once a week. Now you can look into those active plugins to learn more about what each one does. You will be surprised to even find that some of those active plugins are no longer actually used and need to be deactivated.