Tech Talk: Review, InfiniteWP
Today I want to tell you about a cool piece of technology
that made my whole “website development company” so much more streamlined, I
have time to be a writer again.
So, that’s your cue to look away if you’re just here for
pictures of weird food, hand-written signs, or descriptions of people who drive
their car while the alarm is going off.
This is one of those “tech nerd” posts.
You have been warned!
I’m assuming that some of you are using WordPress, and
further, some of you even have more than one WordPress installation going
(hopefully not all on the same hosting account, because if that is the case,
you are at risk of being hacked. Be sure
to diversify! No more than 10 domains per hosting
account, people!). To be clear, I’m talking about individual
domains with their own WordPress installations, not a big ol’ WordPress.mu
monster if you have one of those.
One of my “things to do in 2013” was to find a more
streamlined method of managing multiple WordPress installations and websites,
and with that in mind, I have been using InfiniteWP. This is a tool that you can use to manage
multiple domains (on different hosting accounts/ IP addresses), and though it
is a little bit complicated to set up (I couldn’t figure it out, so I paid the
$39 for the professional install), once I got all of my sites and my clients’
sites in there, I probably can’t express to you the sheer awesomeness of being
able to update 25 plugins by clicking one button.
Does that not sound awesome to you? If not, then you probably have never spent
an entire day updating WordPress themes and plugins, one by one by one, to the
point where you’re watching entire movies on your other computer because that
kind of repetitive work reminds you of jobs you did after college. Also, NOT updating your WordPress installation,
themes, and plugins is simply not an option, because leaving old stuff hanging
around on your hosting server is an open invitation for hackage. So, I’m sure you can imagine, once I got the
setup done and added all the websites to InfiniteWP, I’m now actually excited
to log in to the dashboard, because it is now just so damned easy to
update.
InfiniteWP is free (although, like I said, I would really
recommend shelling out for the pro installation), and once you get over the
hump with the setup, I cannot say enough nice things about all the time it will
save you. Go over there and watch the little video! It is definitely my “favorite
new tech thing” for this year. Stephan is probably very excited that he can
ask me to update something on one of his websites without my swearing and
having to locate the passwords.
Oh, also, in case you are a WordPress person, I feel it is
important for you to know that I waited a few days before doing the latest update because the last time I installed the update on the day it came out, it crashed
all my plugins and I cried a little bit. Version 3.5.1 does seem
to be plugin-friendly, so I hit the magic “Update All” button a few days ago
and updated all of my bazillion websites, and everything is fine. All clear!
Update away!
Seriously, go update your WordPress, themes, and
plugins. I don’t want you to get
hacked. WordPress may be open-source
and groovy and free and all, but regular maintenance is actually really
important.
Go get InfiniteWP, then come back and tell me how much time you’re
saving! I'm not even getting anything for telling you this, except perhaps the satisfaction of knowing that your life will now be a little bit more awesome.