You manage WordPress sites. Maintenance isn't optional.
If you run an agency, freelance, or manage more than one WordPress site, you know the drill. Every site needs regular attention: plugins updated, images compressed, broken links caught, revisions cleaned up, backups taken. Skip it for a month and you're dealing with a bloated database, a PageSpeed score that dropped 15 points, and a client asking why their site feels slow.
The problem isn't knowing what to do — it's the friction of doing it. Each task lives in a different screen. Plugin updates in one place, media library in another, database cleanup requires a separate plugin entirely. A proper maintenance pass across one site takes 30-45 minutes of clicking around. Across 10 sites, that's a full day gone.
Here's a routine that takes 15 minutes per site — or zero minutes if you automate it.
The six-step routine
Each step is one command in the TrueCommander navigator. They can run independently or be chained into a single macro.
What this covers
After one pass, the site has:
- A fresh backup ready to download
- All safe plugin updates applied
- New images compressed (smaller page loads, better Core Web Vitals)
- Missing alt texts filled in (better accessibility, better image SEO)
- Broken links identified with edit links to fix them
- Database trimmed of unnecessary revision data
Six areas of site health covered in six commands. No switching between admin screens, no separate plugins for each task.
Automate the whole thing
Running six commands manually every week is fine for one site. For 5 or 10, you want automation.
Build a macro. Chain all six commands into a single Macro. One click runs the entire routine in sequence. The macro runs each step, waits for it to complete, and moves to the next.
Or go fully hands-off:
Schedule it. Add the commands to Cron Schedules. Set them to run every Sunday at 3am. Monday morning, you check the results — or don't, because everything is clean.
The backup command has a -remove_old flag that deletes previous backups before creating a new one. Add it to your scheduled run and there's always exactly one fresh backup on disk, not a growing pile of ZIPs eating storage.
For agencies: scale to 10+ sites
The routine works per-site. If you manage 10 client sites, you have two options:
Macro per site. Each site has the macro set up. You log into each site, trigger the macro, review results. 2 minutes per site instead of 30.
Cron per site. Each site runs the routine on a schedule. You do nothing. Check in weekly or monthly to review any flagged issues (broken links found, plugins needing major version updates).
For agencies billing maintenance retainers, this is the difference between maintenance being profitable and maintenance being a time sink you undercharge for.