Automation is taking over the world anything that is simple enough to be replicated by a machine, it can be automated. Automation relies heavily on the knowledge of the system and the technology being used.

WordPress, one of the most popular, is also not free from automation. And, that’s a good thing as it provides you more free time which in turn let you focus on other aspects of your business development. You can be a normal WordPress user or a WordPress developer, automation can really help you and improve your productivity. It also ensures that there is no chance of making mistakes as machines do most of the work. All you need to do is setup the automation correctly.

As WordPress provides an ecosystem, it is evident that the automation needs to be done through a plugin. In some cases, you can edit the core files. Also, the choice of plugins needs to be done right. Otherwise, it will slow down your website. So, without any delay, let’s get started.

Updates

One of the most useful automation you can do it updates. Updates are essential for your website to run flawlessly as they provide bug and security fixes. If you don’t do it, then you let your website exposed to exploiters. That’s why the best way is to automate the updates.You can do it with by simply using the Automatic plugin updates.

It is a plugin that lets you set automatic updates. You can also exclude certain plugin from updating. This way, you can control the conflict issues when new updates are installed.

You can also enable automatic updates by editing the theme’s functions.php file. To do so, just add the following line of code in the file.

add_filter( 'auto_update_plugin', '__return_true' ); //for updating plugins

add_filter( 'auto_update_theme', '__return_true' ); //for updating themes2. 

Backups

If you have an online website, you need to do regular backups. The good news is that WordPress support proper backup functionality either via plugins or online service. It can also be automated. Also, if you are are using any of the best WordPress hosting such as WPEngine, Siteground or others, they will back up your website regularly. Still, we recommend you guys to backup your website yourself. This will ensure that you don’t have to depend on an external entity if something goes wrong.

There are many backup plugins that you can use to automate the backup process. We recommend using BackupBuddy and BackUpWordPress. Both plugins are good and let you automate the backup process. All you need to do is configure the plugin to do backups accordingly. You can set it to do backups daily or once every two or three days. The frequency should be decided depending on how much content you put on your website.

Database Cleanup

With regular use, databases get pretty bloated with unnecessary information. If your site is big and processes a huge amount of data, then it is necessary to do database cleanup periodically. This will remove the overhead information such as post revisions, spam comments, etc. and make your website as fast as possible.

You can use WP-DBManager if you want to clean your database. The plugin also lets you automate cleanup, optimize or backup your database. The plugins are also easy-to-use and let you do your work without worrying about site slowdowns.

Performance Monitoring and Enhancements

Performance matters. It is one of the main factors for a website to become successful. Any good website will load within 3 seconds. Above it, and you will not only decrease customer satisfaction but also hamper your Google ranking. This point is crucial for anyone who is starting a blog and wants to begin their blogging journey.

The way to solve it is to do proper performance monitoring and enhance it. You can also automate it with the help of caching plugins and other tools. To get started, you need to use WP CheckUp or similar services to generate a detailed report of your website quickly. WPCheckUp provides a free scan and tells your current score. It also lets you know what things need to be improved.

Now, you need caching plugin such as W3 Total Cache or WP Super Cache. These cache plugins will improve your site performance by performing some optimization such as file minify, Gzip compression and so on.You can also automate the whole optimization and monitoring with the help of Hummingbird. It completely optimizes your website and also provides a detailed report. 

Image optimization

Just like website performance, image optimization is also important. Images play a crucial role in making your posts highly readable. This means using images in almost every post. To use them effectively you need to optimize them. The image optimization process can be automated by using image optimization plugins such as WP Smush, EWWW Image Optimizer, and others.

All the plugins let you optimize image when they are first uploaded to the media gallery. You can set the image resolution that the image will be converted once uploaded. They also optimize it and provide a lower size image with no quality loss. The plugins also let you optimize your whole library with the help of just one click.

Social Media Sharing

Social media sharing can also be automated thanks to amazing plugins such as JetPack. It is common for business or blogs to share their content on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter or Google+. It is the part of the content strategy that almost every business out there uses.

To ensure that you focus on the important strategic thinking, you can automate social media sharing with the help of Jetpack or CoSchedule. Both are excellent plugins/platform and let you brilliantly manage social media sharing.

Lead generation

Do you feel frustrated when you have to generate leads manually? With WordPress, you can automate lead generation thanks to amazing plugins. The two plugins that we recommend include Thrive Leads and Hustle. Both are paid option. Thrive leads is a standalone plugin that covers everything that you need to do to generate leads and convert them successfully.

For example, with Thrive leads, you can create forms, connect them with mailing services, and do A/B testing. Also, it comes with tons of pre-installed templates to try out. As an owner, all you need to do is create a form and landing page and let it roll. It will automatically start generating leads and you can also access detailed reports on each through the dashboard. Moreover, you can change or modify the forms or strategy to increase lead generation rate.

Conclusion

This leads us to the end of the WordPress site and workflow automation techniques. We only covered the important aspects of a website that can be automated. Tasks such as email marketing, analytical gathering, payment collection, blog scheduling, etc. can also be automated. So, what do you think about the WordPress automation? Comment below and let us know.

Author Bio: Madan Pariyar, a blogger at WebPrecious and a digital marketing strategist helping clients to resolve their website woes. When not busy with all things, you may find me occasionally watching movies, traveling and spending time with my family.