Perhaps you haven’t updated WordPress in awhile.

Maybe you’ve even “tuned out” the pink bar at the top of the screen that politely yet firmly tells you to Please update now!

And you’re avoiding the little circle-with-a-number in your sidebar that keeps insistently telling you that an ever-larger number of plugins have new versions available.

You may have even read my instructions for updating WordPress, or watched my video tutorial on updating WordPress, and you’ve told yourself, “this looks easy, maybe I should take care of this.”

Yet you hold off on pressing that “Update” button. You’re not 100% confident that it will go smoothly.

Perhaps you’ve heard tales of upgrades gone bad…and even attempts to be reassuring, like my post But what if your WordPress upgrade fails?, lead you to wonder…what else could go wrong?

Hey, you’re not alone. Even rockstars sometimes get out of tune or break a guitar string (I suspect that breaking a guitar string happens all the time to the pros, in fact I’ve seen it happen on stage).

The thing is, expert musicians have the skills and tools to take care of events like the broken string. With the spare strings on hand, and basic guitar knowledge (or, you know, a crew of seasoned roadies), it’s but a moment’s work to restring, tune, and be ready to strum again.

Introducing the Website Tune-Up

When it comes to your WordPress website, things can get slow and out-of-tune if you haven’t upgraded in awhile, plus you’re more vulnerable to Internet Bad Guys if you’re using older code. And if you don’t have a backup system that automatically creates regular backups for you, it’s much harder to restore your site if something does happen to it.

I don’t want bad stuff to happen to your site, whether the cause is Internet Bad Guys or Upgrades Gone Wrong or merely a code-tweak with unforeseen consequences. I am intimately familiar with that last one, being a die-hard code-tweaker…I learned the hard way to always do a pre-tweak backup!

So I created the Website Tune-Up, a service in which I backup and upgrade everything for you. It makes you safer on two levels:

1. You’re updated to the latest, greatest code, so you’re less vulnerable to crashes and hacks, and
2. You have a dependable backup that happens automagically, so if something were to mess with your site, you could be up and running again with a quick restore.

“Trust me, I know what I’m doing.” With apologies to Sledge Hammer fans everywhere.

The Website Tune-Up grew out of my standard list of things I do for pretty much every web client I work with, the first time I log into their WordPress dashboard.

It starts with a full backup, because I never make changes to a client’s site without a safety net.

Often, doing a backup means installing and configuring a backup plugin.

After the backup is made, everything gets upgraded to the latest and greatest. This means WordPress itself first, then plugins, then the theme if there’s a new version.

I’ll check various important settings (things like permalinks, media library folders, and discussion settings that reduce comment spam).

I also run a quick check for malware and server malfunctions, and often I end up optimizing the WordPress database to speed things up and save space.

Almost every time I do this, I notice things that could be improved — a plugin that does the job of two, or a setting that is slowing things down. These are things that are easy for me to spot and tweak, but they may never have occurred to the site owner.

WordPress Peace of Mind

If you’re ready to get upgraded to the latest and greatest, hop on over to the Website Tune-Up page.

One small detail: The Website Tune-Up actually includes a full month of upgrades, for anything that gets updated after your Tune-Up is completed. If you want ongoing upgrades by Yours Truly, you can sign up for the ongoing Peace of Mind Program for a monthly fee after your Tune-Up month has passed (but don’t worry, you’re not being automatically signed up for a monthly program that you’ll have to cancel to get out of the monthly fee — I’ll never pull a trick like that!).

WordPress 3.3 is in its final beta-testing stage, so that pink Please update now! message may be popping up on your screen sometime in November. If you want to spare yourself the dread of upgrading when the next version of WordPress is released, let me handle your upgrades and backups for you.

Get a Website Tune-Up today!