WordPress

What to do when a WordPress update stalls halfway, leaves a maintenance message stuck on, or breaks the site outright.

Deactivating a plugin leaves its files and often its database tables behind. Here is how to remove one completely.

WP-Cron piggybacks on visitor traffic rather than running on a real schedule. Here is how to replace it with one that does.

Three ways to reset a WordPress password, from the ordinary email link to editing the database directly when nothing else works.

Restoring files and database together, whichever way you took the backup, and the checks to run once the site is back.

Updates, strong unique logins, two-factor authentication, a minimal plugin list, and backups that actually restore — in that order of importance.

Page caching turns a rebuilt-every-visit page into a stored copy — how to set it up and avoid caching the parts of a site that must stay live.

The small amount of setup that lets you customise a theme without losing every change the next time it updates.

Measure first, then work through caching, images, plugins, PHP version and the database in the order that gives the biggest gain.

The built-in settings, the anti-spam plugin, and the moderation rules that between them stop nearly all of it.

Issue the certificate, update the site URLs to https, force every visitor onto it, then clean up the mixed content this always leaves behind.

Back up, update one thing at a time, and check the site immediately — the order that keeps an update from becoming an outage.

Manage updates, plugins, users and search-and-replace from the command line over SSH, faster than clicking through the dashboard for the same job.

Core WordPress is actively maintained and reasonably secure. Almost every real compromise comes from something added on top of it.

A drag-and-drop page builder buys visual control and costs some site speed. Whether that trade is worth it depends on who is building the site.

The one folder in a WordPress install that is entirely yours — themes, plugins and uploads, none of it replaceable by reinstalling core.

The one file that connects WordPress to its database and controls a handful of settings nothing else can reach.

A handful of causes account for almost every slow WordPress site. Here is what to check, roughly in order of likelihood.

One is a hosted platform you sign up to. The other is free software you install on hosting of your choice. The gap between them is bigger than it sounds.