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BUILD SITES FASTER WITH BLUEPRINTS. Flywheel's Blueprints saves you a bunch of time when whipping up WordPress sites. Wh
This is the title of the ebook

PAGE 1 | THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO MANAGING 50+ WORDPRESS SITES

As your agency starts to take off and you’re working with multiple WordPress sites, you’ll find there are tons of tasks on your plate that cost your agency time, money, and effort. From managing servers to struggling with security plugins, these non-billable burdens are pieces that you and your team shouldn’t have to manage. Luckily, with some stellar organization and a few simple tricks, you can stop managing those administrative and behind-the-scenes tasks and instead, get back to designing, coding, and creating beautiful sites. As a creative agency, you’ve probably tried a handful of hosting companies, a plethora of plugins, and a ton of tools to help streamline your process. Typically, the result of these experiments is a mess of sites across several servers and accounts, with varying levels of performance and stability. Any of these scenarios sound familiar? • Traffic spikes on one site, affecting (and hurting) the performance of others • A site goes down at a critical moment, resulting in unhappy clients • One site gets hacked, leading to wasted hours trying to clean it up • A code change breaks the live site, and there’s no backup to rely on • A new version of WordPress is released, meaning you have to update every. Single. Site. • You’re fiddling with disjointed workflows and out-of-date software tools

If you’re familiar with any of these scenarios, don’t fret – this ebook is here to help you solve all of those stressful situations so you can focus on scaling your business instead. Say goodbye to complex workflows, fiddling with server configurations, and spending nights and weekends dealing with the newest security vulnerability.

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Stay organized to ensure success Chapter 1

Headline

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First and foremost, your agency needs to have all your WordPress ducks in a row if you want to succeed and scale your business. When managing multiple WordPress sites, you’ll work with multiple usernames, passwords, plugins, themes, credentials, logos, brands…and the list goes on and on. Not to mention that some of those items should really be securely stored, instead of just laying around on a Google Sheet. For storing credentials, consider using a password management tool such as LastPass or 1Password. Tools like these will keep login information secure while also speeding up your workflow.

Now that my business is growing and I have more sites to maintain, time I spend on each of them is starting to add up. My method is to race through updates as fast as I can by using 1Password to open multiple dashboards at once (with just one mouseclick each). Melissa Zarda, Pixel Lunch LLC

Instead of shuffling through papers or performing “Command + F” to try to find a password hidden in a document, these tools will allow you to sign in with just the click of a button. As for organizing assets for your clients, you’ll want to set up a solid naming system for your folders early on. If all of your files follow roughly the same pattern for each client, you’ll be able to fly through folders to get what you need instead of trying to remember how you named something or where you saved it. This organization could be local on your hard drive, synced with DropBox, or even in a Google Drive that you share with clients.

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You should also consider creating a list for each client that details the theme, plugins, and any extra functionality you’ve built for their site. Your team will appreciate the ability to see that information all in one place, and then in a few months when that client has questions, you can quickly get caught back up to speed. Plus, you can (and should) provide this document to the client to ensure a successful site handoff.

My favorite tool for managing projects is Evernote. I create a client notebook for every project, which helps me keep important information like logins, domain information, code snippets, and past files all in one place. Each time I get a maintenance request, I add a new note to that client’s notebook and create a “to-do” list of items to be completed. Katie Price, Designer Guide Book

The last piece of the organization puzzle? Know who’s in charge of what on your team. When you’re working on a site, it’s critical to know who else is involved, so you know who to go to when questions pop up. For example, with Flywheel’s Organizations feature, we provide a real-time activity feed so you can gain valuable insight into what your team is working on. It makes it easy to see who’s creating sites, pushing staging changes to production, and much, much more. Then, when you’re not sure why someone made the changes they did, you know exactly who to ask. Every agency operates a little differently, so the perfect workflow for your team may look a little different than the agency’s down the street. Just find what works best for your group, and if something doesn’t seem to be working, invest the time to find a better solution. It’ll definitely pay off as you continue to scale.

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Have the right tools in your toolkit Chapter 2

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We’ve already determined that time is important when managing multiple WordPress sites. The more you can streamline your process, the better. So while every client will have their own unique requirements for a site, you might want to consider creating a “toolbox” of themes and plugins that you regularly use. For example, are there any plugins you install on every site you create, such as Jetpack or Yoast SEO?

Good plugins are quite essential when you’re building sites professionally. We try to always use high-end plugins that won’t easily break a website when they have an update and are generally hassle-free. Bart De Vuyst, Exelmans Graphics

Create a (well-organized) folder and store all of the zip files for these plugins in it. Then, the next time you create a site, you can click, drag, and install your go-to plugins super quickly. If you’re still building up your favorite plugins, a few of our favorites include: • Advanced Custom Fields • Better WordPress Minify • Ninja Forms • P3 (Plugin Performance Profiler) • TinyPNG for WordPress

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As for themes, when you find certain templates that are easy to customize or companies that offer stellar support, add them to the toolbox also. Then when a client comes to you needing an eCommerce site, instead of digging through the thousands of themes out there, you can turn to your curated list to simplify the process.

The biggest challenge of managing multiple sites comes when you design and develop on lots of different WordPress themes. As my business has grown, I’ve found a few premium WP themes that are highly customizable, and it’s made it so much easier to manage them with on-going updates, changes, and client requests. Jackie Johnson, Jackie Johnson Coaching

Once you create your toolbox, don’t forget to update it periodically. If a new version of a plugin is released, make sure you update the zip file in your folder. If you run into problems with a theme, take it out of the toolbox so you don’t repeat the same issues. And as you discover new products that you love, be sure to add them so you can install them for a future site. The toolbox is meant to be a guide, not a limitation. Keep it fluid and allow the tools inside to change over time.

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BUILD SITES FASTER WITH BLUEPRINTS Flywheel’s Blueprints saves you a bunch of time when whipping up WordPress sites. When you create a Blueprint of an existing site, that site’s theme and plugins will be saved as a custom configuration you can use for building out future projects. When you create a new site, you’ll have the option of starting from one of your existing Blueprints with the click of a button (no manual installation needed)!

Learn all about it here.

Flywheel was created from the ground up to go far beyond hosting and provide development tools for designers, freelancers, and creatives. These tools speed up project time so you don’t have to create lengthy work-arounds for outdated management tools, share spreadsheets filled with passwords, or try to track down your client to make them pay their hosting bill. Instead, you get more time and energy to devote to new projects, brainstorm about business development, or drink mai tais on the beach. Here are just a few of the other added features that make Flywheel the go-to choice for any agency managing multiple WordPress sites: • One simple dashboard to view all your sites • Real-time project activity feeds to see who’s working on what • The ability to transfer billing to clients • Staging sites that can go live with just one click • Free migrations and 14-day demo sites

With the right tools, managing multiple WordPress sites will be a breeze. Next, let’s talk about making sure each and every one of your sites functions beautifully and smoothly.

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Master your performance workflow Chapter 3

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If you’re building a site for a client, you’re probably spending a ton of time on performance optimization - adding caching plugins, optimizing images, reducing HTTP queries, installing a CDN - all that fun stuff in order to make the site as speedy as possible. Wouldn’t it be great if you could just whip up a beautiful site and know with certainty that it was going to be blazing fast? That’s where a strong performance workflow comes in. Part of the performance puzzle falls on you and your team – you’re the ones in charge of building the sites, after all. But part of the performance puzzle also falls on your WordPress host, since they’re the ones managing the servers. You can optimize your site all you want, but if your WordPress host isn’t holding up their part of the deal, it’s all for nothing. So, let’s start with what you should look for in a WordPress host, and then we’ll dive into your own workflow. Our number one recommendation when it comes to choosing a WordPress host? Go with a managed hosting solution. The price tag of shared hosting always makes it seem like a bargain, but it comes at a different cost: slow site speed, irregular performance, and frequent downtime. The stress isn’t You can optimize your site worth it, especially when you have all you want, but if your the ability to choose a managed WordPress host isn’t holding WordPress host (like Flywheel!) that’ll up their part of the deal, it’s take care of a huge chunk of your WordPress performance woes. all for nothing. Besides the basics, some WordPress hosts might take care of some additional performance problems for you. Take caching, for example. Typically, your developers probably seek out a plugin and configure it to the site you’re working on. Flywheel uses a Varnish caching system that can handle any amount of traffic at anytime, meaning you don’t have to configure a thing – we automatically take care of caching for you. These perks mean less headaches for you and more time to build and design sites.

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The pain points of stability and performance have been completely taken care of with Flywheel. It’s nice to be able to just let go and enjoy and do what we do. Bryan Monzon, Fifty and Fifty

Having a solid host is just the first-step to the performance puzzle. Next, you need to nail down your own process within your team. To start, make sure these steps are included in your workflow: • Optimize all the images you’re using on a site • Use solid plugins that you trust • Trim any plugins the site doesn’t need • Cache assets at both the browser and server level • Minify assets such as CSS and JavaScript

OPTIMIZE YOUR SITE’S PERFORMANCE We’ve only scratched the surface when it comes to performance. This free guide has 7 straightforward steps you can use to increase your WordPress site’s performance and speed today.

Download it now.

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Make security a priority Chapter 4

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There’s nothing quite like a hacked site to completely throw off your workflow and slow down progress on a project. When you’re managing multiple WordPress sites, it’s critical that you try to minimize security risks in order to keep hackers at bay and your client’s sites secure.

Going back to that whole Cleaning up a site full of malware “choose the right host” idea, can take days, often weeks on your your WordPress host plays own. If you don’t have the proper security processes in place, you a major role in keeping sites might not even be aware that the safe and secure. site was hacked right away. You don’t want to run these risks when your reputation and livelihood are on the line, or waste valuable time that could be spent growing your business and focusing on compelling client work. To keep hackers away, start with these simple security tricks. • Use strong passwords • Avoid obvious usernames • Keep your themes and plugins updated • Uninstall inactive plugins and themes • Move your WordPress login screen • Add an SSL certificate • Add Captcha

For an in-depth guide to keeping your site safe, check out our free ebook: How to boost your WordPress site’s security

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And last, choose a WordPress host that’ll help take care of security concerns for you. Sure, you can certainly install a bunch of security plugins on every WordPress site you’ve ever worked on, but that’s time-consuming, unreliable, and requires diligent updating. Why bother with it when you don’t have to? Going back to that whole “choose the right host” idea, your WordPress host plays a major role in keeping sites safe and secure. For example, Flywheel takes care of all your security needs for you right at the server level (meaning you’ll never have to use a security plugin again)! And if your site ever does get hacked, we’ll clean it up for you, for free.

We knew we wanted some sort of managed hosting solution because we were spending a lot of our time on security problems. At Artmil, we’re basically all designers, and we just didn’t want to become the world’s foremost experts on WordPress security. With Flywheel, we don’t have to worry about the backend stuff or install a bunch of security plugins (which we used to do). They’ve solved our #1 problem. Paul Miller, Artmil

Basically, just know what your host will do for you both before and after your site gets hacked, so you can have a plan in place for the worst-case scenario. Being prepared is critical, especially when you’re managing multiple sites.

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Know how to offer stellar support Chapter 5

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It’s not fun to imagine worst-case-scenario situations, but to successfully manage multiple WordPress sites, you’ll want to be as prepared as possible when something goes wrong. Let’s say a site goes down; who do you call? For every product that you use to build your client’s sites (themes, Set your clients up for plugins, host, etc.) be sure you know success and teach them how how to contact their support teams. to find their own support. You may even want to create a spreadsheet with email addresses, phone numbers, or links to contact forms to help streamline the emergency process. And be sure to have a discussion with your clients about the level of support you’ll provide. Should the client contact you first, or should the client contact their hosting company directly? If they’ll be contacting the support teams on their own, set them up for success and teach them how to navigate those companies’ sites.

The biggest challenge that I have with managing multiple WordPress sites is keeping up with site maintenance requests from clients. I have a steady stream of past clients who email asking for small tweaks or improvements to their site that I have to schedule into my existing workflow within a reasonable amount of time. Katie Price, Designer Guide Book

If the client will be contacting you for support, establish some ground rules and expectations. Explain the difference between a true emergency and just an average problem, and be clear about how quickly you’ll aim to resolve each.

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Depending on how much support you find yourself offering to clients, an alternative would be teaching your less-technical clients how to use WordPress. The more they know, the less they’ll come to you with questions, which frees up your time to develop more sites and work with more clients.

We use Advanced Custom Fields Pro for every website because it lets us write small explanations next to custom fields. This helps our clients (and us) remember how to use the site more efficiently in the long-run. This results in less phone calls from clients that don’t remember how to use their site, which is a plus for us. Bart De Vuyst, Exelmans Graphics

There are several different ways you can go about teaching your clients WordPress. If you want to be sure they learn it (or at least attempt to learn it), you can schedule some education time into your final site handoff. If you’d rather offer WordPress lessons as an optional course, you could encourage it as something extra they can pay you for once you’re done with their site. Or if you’d rather passively teach your clients how to use WordPress, you can create some additional resources to sell (or give away for free) on your site. If your agency is busy managing a bunch of sites, passive ways to help your clients understand WordPress are definitely the way to go. Sure, it’ll take a little work up front, but once the tools are created, you can keep using them for each and every client.

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When I launch a new website for a client, I record our training session using screen recording software so they can reference it if they forget how to do something. This helps reduce customer service requests for little things! Jackie Johnson, Jackie Johnson Coaching

Some helpful resources to create for your clients include things like: • Blog posts • Ebooks • How-to videos • Cheatsheets • Online courses As long as you keep communication with your client open and have a clear support strategy in place, you’ll be able to manage multiple sites like a pro.

FIND A HOST THAT UNDERSTANDS YOUR AGENCY When you call Flywheel, you’ll get our knowledgeable, friendly support team, ready and willing to assist you with all of their expert WordPress knowledge. And if you host dozens of sites or more on with us, you’ll also get the added bonus of a dedicated account manager who can help you with anything from escalating support issues to migrating sites at short notice. We believe in a being a partner for your agency, and will work diligently to help you in every capacity we can.

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Embrace growth and scale your agency Chapter 6

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If the number of WordPress sites you manage continues to grow, it might also be time to grow your business. If you’re beginning to get bogged down or start experiencing burnout, that could be a sign that it’s time to switch up your revenue streams for something a little more stable and passive. Reselling hosting is one of the simplest, most straightforward ways to add recurring revenue to your agency’s bank account. The best part? You know your clients require web hosting for their site, so it’s a super easy sell. On top of generating regular recurring revenue, reselling hosting offers a bunch of added benefits for your team. Partnering with a great host allows your agency to know the state of each of your clients’ sites. And when one of those clients calls on you to update a page, you’ll be well-versed in the standard setup instead of fumbling through a different and unfamiliar hosting panel each time. By having all of those sites on the same host, your team won’t By having all of your sites have to waste a bunch of time reacon the same host, your quainting themselves with the site.

team won’t have to waste a bunch of valuable time reacquinting themselves with the site.

Reselling hosting also means you’re free to choose a hosting partner that makes the most sense for your client and your business. If you’re offering SEO services, speed becomes crucial. If you’re offering turnkey solutions, better workflows become super important. Or perhaps you’re hosting high-traffic websites and you’re looking for a host that you can consult with on how to effectively scale your client sites. Whatever the case is, choosing the right host to partner with will help you optimize your work and provide superior services for your clients.

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If you’re looking at adding hosting to your agency’s offerings, focus on how to make monthly billing a seamless, simple process. You’re probably used to sending the standard invoice to your clients for other services, but invoicing for monthly services like hosting eventually becomes a burden. Look at options for recurring billing that keep you out of the weeds and deposit the monthly payments automatically into your account. QUICK TIPS FOR RESELLING HOSTING FOR YOUR AGENCY: 1. Think about your margins and make sure reselling is worth your while. If you’re paying $10 per site to your host, don’t charge your clients a measly $12. Healthy margins will help make reselling a main driver of recurring revenue. 2. When choosing a hosting partner, remember that your client considers you the host. If their site is down or they’re seeing a “white screen of death,” they will be calling you, at which point, the quality of support you receive from your host may mean the difference between hosting earning you money or costing you money. Find a great partner that understands the agency model. 3. Some clever clients may see you’re charging $50/month for hosting and seek out a cheaper price on the web. If you’re offering maintenance plans, include hosting for free. This avoids the cost of hosting becoming a discussion point. Meanwhile, your monthly maintenance fees cover your hosting bill and you get the extra benefits of knowing your hosting provider.

Interested in teaming up with Flywheel? Learn all about our Agency Partner Program here!

Managing multiple WordPress sites is no easy task, but as long as you’ve got the right tools, an organized team, and a steady workflow, you’re sure to find a system that works for you. Just remember: Look for opportunities to simplify the problems so you can get back to doing the things you love. Flywheel exists so you can stop wasting time on server management, security plugins, caching, and all those other boring repetitive tasks that take your focus away from growing your business. See how we can help you manage WordPress sites and sign up for a demo today!

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What is Flywheel? Flywheel is a delightful platform that empowers designers, developers, and digital agencies to focus on what they do best — building beautiful, functional sites for their clients. We make it a breeze to create and develop WordPress sites, handle hosting, manage projects, and ultimately scale your business. Stop wasting time on server management, security plugins, caching, and all those other boring repetitive tasks that take your focus away from growing your business and jeopardize your relationship with clients. Get Flywheel and get back to doing what you love.

CONTACT SALES

[email protected] | (888) 928-8882 Or, sign up at getflywheel.com

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