As a web designer/developer I have client sites where I on occasion will need to go through the technical aspect of a web site.
Backup the site
The first step I did was take a backup of the site and downloaded the backup to my computer.
As one begins to adjust the site it is good to know that I have a backup available if problems show up so that I have to restore the site. I plan on doing this carefully but one never knows.
Security
Does the site have a security plugin in use? Check the site at the Sucuri Online site check scanner.
Then be sure to check the security plugin in use on the site and then recheck the site at Sucuri.
There might be “HTTPS mixed content found”. See if the security plugin can force all connections to the website are made over SSL/TLS – HTTPS.
Design and functionality
Going through the frontend each page and atleast some or all of the blog posts to check for design and functionality. Does everything work? Are there links that are broken? Does any aspect of the design or layout need to be fixed?
Plugins
Going through each of the installed plugins. Looking at the age of each. When was it last updated by the developer? Which plugins are active and which are not active? Which plugins are not in use on the site and can be deleted? Are there plugins that need to be exchanged for another and newer plugin? Just be sure that all plugins are updated.
Themes
Take a look at the theme in use. Has the theme been updated? Is it a downloaded theme or a custom theme? If it is a custom theme the chances are big that it has not been updated in a while. Deleting default themes not in use. Perhaps keeping the newest as well as the Twenty Twenty One theme that is not full site editing.
Images
Going into the Media library to see if the user has uploaded material that should not be there such as videos, images that are too big, duplicates. Taking the time to download the full media library by using a plugin such as Export Media Library which I have used a lot to easily get a hold of the contents of the Media Library.
Site Health
Go to the Tools -> Site Health.
See if there is any messages there that needs to be adressed. Then click the info tab and select the Server accordion. Check the information there especially the PHP version in use on the site.
Users
Go to the Users screen and take a look through the administrator users. Do these seem real? Here the user would know which of these should be there and which should not. If the site does not need user registration. Take a look at Settings -> General and uncheck the “Anyone can register” option.
Web site speed
There are multiple sites to check how the web site loads. tools.pingdom.com , gtmetrix, page speed insights, webpagetest.org
Be sure to add a site speed optimization plugin. For a quick boost I usually install autoptimize.
Web hosting
Check the web hosting. Should it change to another web host? Upgrade what is there? Or is that fine as it is?
SEO
How is the SEO of the site doing? There are a lot of sites where one can do a SEO audit. Here is one I tested. eoptimer.com
The work of cleaning up a messy site.
Pages
The site has 101 pages making it difficult to get an overview over where a plugin is used.
This means that most of the active plugins will have to remain active.
Making sure a plugin is fully deleted.
I noticed Ninja Forms and WP Forms were installed but deactivated. I activated one at a time found where in the plugin settings I could fully delete all the submissions and other content and then deleted these. As many plugins have an option in their settings to fully delete the plugin and contents it is a good idea to be sure that the option is selected before deleting a plugin. This removes everything associated with a specific plugin. If I had not done this then I would have to later on install a database cleaner plugin and likely manually remove all entries associated with each.
Contact forms
Deleting all entries / submissions from Contact Form 7
Contact Form 7 and Flamingo is installed and active. I checked the Flamingo submissions area and noticed 574 messages. By browsing through the first page they all looked like spam. Now cleaning out all the Flamingo submissions is not as easy as cleaning out the content of Ninja Forms and WP Forms. I would have to do a research.
With help from posting on the Advanced WordPress Facebook Group. I received a response from Damien: “I wrote a tiny script to delete Flamingo spam submissions. Here is the tutorial I made for deleting a huge number of Flamingo submissions based on Damiens blog post. How to delete a huge number of Flamingo Contact Form 7 submissions
Recreating current forms into the Fluent Forms plugin.
I recreated 3 forms into Fluent Forms. Going between Contact Form 7 and Fluent Forms to make sure that I have all the fields needed and the correct email address these are to go to is set up correctly. I then installed Akismet to be used with Fluent Forms in addition to the Honey pot feature that exists to make sure the forms plugin is secure.
Next up is making sure that the client receives the test emails that I will send through all 3 Fluent Forms.
Going through the Media library
As I went through the Media Library I noticed that there were a many MB size images which I then would need to replace.
I installed the plugin Enable Media Replace which will make it easier for me to manually download huge files, make these smaller and upload a smaller size images. I also installed Imsanity – “Automatically resize huge image uploads with Imsanity.”
Another option is to also use https://tinypng.com/ or https://shortpixel.com/online-image-compression to compress images.
Or an app for the Mac https://www.realmacsoftware.com/squash/
Going through each plugin
Figuring out which of the plugins are being used and which can be deactivated.
Shortcodes
Figuring out where shortcodes are being used.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/shortcodes-finder/
Resources:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/rvg-optimize-database/
https://www.cloudways.com/blog/wordpress-site-audit
https://www.blogmarketingacademy.com/clean-wordpress-media-library/
https://www.cloudways.com/blog/wordpress-site-audit
https://github.com/10up/block-catalog
Goodbye Plugins – 8 Ways To Reduce WordPress Plugin Reliance:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAGWD9Pyi-c
