As summer comes to an end, it doesn’t mean that you can’t take a break and go on a vacation. However, before you go on that weekend adventure, it’s important to ensure that your WordPress website is set up to take care of itself. Here are some simple steps you can take to get your website ready before you leave.
A is for Auto-sharing
When you’re out enjoying your vacation, you won’t have time to update your social media pages. To solve this problem, you can install an auto-poster such as Buffer. This automated social sharing tool allows you to schedule all of your social media posts for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram ahead of time. You can even use the free WordPress to Buffer plugin to integrate Buffer with your WordPress site. With this plugin, you can enable an option to automatically share your new posts as they are published, so all you need to do is schedule a few new articles before you leave on your trip.
Another great option is Revive Old Post Pro. This plugin recycles your old content and re-shares it for you. Simply install the plugin, tell it how often you want it to post, and let it do its thing. ThemeIsle offers a premium version of the plugin that adds options for customizing your tweets and shared, the ability to track and view clicks with Google Analytics integration, options to share your posts multiple times, pretty much every social platform you can think of and more.
A is also for Alerts
While you’re out exploring, you probably won’t be on your website all day like normal. It’s important to set up a few alerts on your website to notify you of any important events. If you’re already using the popular (and free) Jetpack WordPress plugin, there are useful notifications built right in. The first is the JetPack Monitor module which checks your website every 5 minutes to make sure it’s up and running. If there’s a change in your uptime status, you’ll receive a “Bad news” email (or a “Good news” one when your site is back up). The other module you should consider is JetPack Notifications. This module sends you a push notification when you get a new comment or like. Just activate the module and install the free WordPress App for iOS or Android on your phone to have your notices at your fingertips.
For a bit more security, you could also try the iThemes Security plugin. The free iThemes Security plugin features a ton of useful notification settings you can use to stay on top of your WordPress website. First of all, you can enable local brute force protection as well as set up a notification for when users get locked out from too many failed login attempts. Another awesome feature is file change detection. You can set it up to notify you when absolutely anything is changed, or only when specified folders are touched. It’s up to you. But perhaps one of the coolest features of iThemes Security is the Away Mode option to completely disable your admin dashboard while you’re away. Just enable the option, select a one-time restriction, and then choose the start and end dates of your trip to lock out other users as well as attackers. If you upgrade to Pro, you’ll also have options for logging user activity to see what your team is up to while you’re gone, schedule malware scans, enable two-factor authentication or even appoint a temporary admin to take your place for a limited time.
B is for Backups
It’s important to have a good backup plugin installed, just in case something goes wrong while you’re away. We recommend VaultPress, which is one of the best backup plugins for WordPress. Created by the team at Automattic, it takes full backups of your WordPress site daily and stores the last 30 days worth for you. Restoring your website with one of your backups is as easy as clicking a few buttons. With a price of just $5 per month, you can’t afford not to get VaultPress.
C is for Content
Just like you need a few snacks to hold you over on a road trip or long flight, your readers need something to tide them over while you’re gone. The easiest solution is to schedule a few posts to publish while you’re away. The post scheduling feature is built right into WordPress itself. So instead of publishing a post when it’s ready to go, click the edit button to select the day and time you want it to go up. Then click to schedule. Alternatively, if you already have a bunch of post drafts ready, you can use a plugin like the Auto Post Scheduler to bulk schedule your posts for you. It has options for publishing pending and/or draft posts (or even recycle old posts), to publish by date or at random, and the ability to customize the time gap between published posts. But really if you’re only going to be gone a few days the built-in WordPress scheduler will probably work just fine.
And S is for Swag
The last bit is to bring your own swag! You never know who you’re going to meet while you’re out and about. It’s always a good idea to represent your blog or business, whether it’s with a logo-ed shirt or hat, custom stickers to hand out, free pens with your name on them or some good old fashioned business cards (VistaPrint and Zazzle have discounts practically every month making these nearly free). You can’t go wrong with a little self-promotion.
Now Go Have Fun
With these tools, you’ll be able to rest up and relax knowing your WordPress website can handle itself for a few days. Just remember – Auto-sharing, Alerts, Backups, Content, and Swag. Have any more tips or recommendations to keep WordPress running when you’re not there? Share your tips in the comments below – we’d love to know what works for you!
