ManageWP is time saving and brilliant

The recent Jetpack update had me wishing that there was an easier way to manage updates on our company sites. I normally find out about updates when I log into my blog and then go and update all the WordPress sites under my control. It can be a chore when I have more pressing things to do.

Someone in the Universe loves me

If ever I needed confirmation that I am loved and blessed it was the email I received at work on Tuesday from WPMU. The subject shouted: 30% lifetime discount from ManageWP! I had no clue what they were trying to sell me and wasn’t really interested until I read this:

Wouldn’t it be nice to upgrade all of your WordPress sites, plugins, and themes with just one click from one place?

Heck yes. It would be awesome.

Well, that is exactly what ManageWP lets you do!

Count me in. I followed the link and signed up for my free trial. ManageWP combines all your WordPress Admin dashboards into one easy-to-use dashboard. The dashboard is very similar to the WordPress admin area so you immediately feel comfortable.

From your homepage, you have access to all your sites where you can update plugins, themes, backup your sites and even run security scans.

You can schedule backups with the choice of keeping a copy on the server or saving it to DropBox, Amazon S3, and Google Drive, email or FTP.

Some features like uptime Monitor aren’t available in the trial version. My immediate interest was updating all the plugins that needed updating, but first to add all my sties.

In order to add a site to your dashboard, you either need to install the ManageWP plugin on all your sites and activate it or you can install the plugin from your ManageWP account by providing your login details. I actually chose to login to install the plugin individually on each site, I wasn’t ready to give up any of my passwords just yet.

After adding all the sites to the dashboard I clicked on the “Update everything button” and sat back. Aside from Jetpack there were a few other plugins that needed updating, within minutes all the plugins on all the sites had been updated. Where has this plugin been all my WordPress life?

Clone and deploy

Another awesome feature is site cloning. The Clone Wizard lets you quickly make copies of your websites or deploy websites from the backup files. This is great if you like to set up all your WordPress sites with must have plugins. You can set up a site one time and clone it. When another project comes up all you need to do is deploy from your backup and update the plugins, no muss no fuss.

 We have an app for that

Yes. That’s right as if managing your WordPress installs from one easy to use dashboard wasn’t enough, they even have an app. Now you can manage your sites on the go.

If you manage more than a couple of WordPress sites then ManageWP is definitely worth a test drive. There are three pricing plans from Individual blogger to large business and you can add from five sites to 500. I have nothing to compare this service to at the moment but as there is nothing new under the sun I’ll be checking to see if something like this already exists. If you know of something let me know.