Many developers face a common problem: they inherit a WordPress website and they need to start working on it. You need to understand that inheriting a WordPress site brings a lot of responsibilities and you must pay attention to some basic things.
If you just got a WordPress site, here are five tips that will help you work with it:
The value of passwords – get the access
Once you have inherited a WordPress site, make sure you get all the username and password information, including the web hosting password, the CDN password, the FTP password, the domain management password, and all the passwords from the third party premium plugins. Make sure you have everything you need!
From previous experiences, we can tell you that it is extremely useful to have a video meeting with the previous developer; he can explain how things work and where you should focus your attention.
Change the admin password and the email passwords
After you get all the password information the best thing you can do is to start changing them! All of them! This will ensure that the previous owner or developer cannot modify things, and your work is safe.
You should also update all the admin accounts, including the contact emails. It is a well-known fact that people forget to change the email of the admin on the WordPress settings page. You must update the contact information because you need to make sure that the correct user gets all the important notifications.
Analyze the website and take notes
It is extremely important to analyze the new WordPress site and to take notes about it before making any changes. Make sure you get familiar with it. Try to understand how it works, its functionalities, the installed plugins, and everything else you see there. Take notes and make sure you know what widgets the website is using.
If you are not familiar with WordPress, you should read about it before anything else.
Backup!
We shouldn’t even say it, but you must perform a backup. You cannot start changing the website and performing any modifications before creating a backup. It will ensure that in case of failure, errors, or if anything breaks, you can easily get it back from the original version.
A backup is always recommended no matter what kind of work you are performing on a website, so do not skip this step!
Cleaning
When you inherit a WordPress site, you must clean out all the things you do not need. Make sure you do it only after you analyze the website carefully. Check for inactive plugins or themes and uninstall them. Delete any user account that is not used and optimize the database.
You can also check for errors, bad plugins, or anything else that doesn’t make sense and clean it out.
Conclusion
After performing these five steps, you can start working on the WordPress site. The keyword for you should be “improvement”, so make sure every change you make will only bring benefits. Check all the scripts and the code, and turn on the debug to make sure everything is working properly. Discuss with the website owner and make sure you understand what he wants from you. Good luck!