ManageWP Review, WordPress Protection, Back Ups and Business Time Saving

In our ManageWP review, I will explain how the website can save you a lot of time if you have WordPress Blogs, and website and need to be able to control all of them from one, central area. Not only that, but ManageWP takes care of everything you need from one central website, and I have been using it now for around 4 weeks, and the results are fantastic.

One problem WordPress website owners come up against, is the time it takes to manage their business, blog, and website. I was looking for a service that would not only save me time, but would mean I no longer have to log into various websites on a daily basis just to carry out regular maintenance – and ManageWP is that website.

What is ManageWP?

ManageWP is a website that connects all your blogs, and WordPress sites in one place, and this means you no longer have to log into multiple websites to do your daily tasks. If you have even a single blog then this service is helpful, but if you have multiple blogs, then ManageWP is a real time saver, as well as being extremely costs effective.

Imagine the following scenario:

You have a couple of WordPress blogs, so you have to constantly log into the admin of each one, clear spam comments on each one, back up each one, log into each one to write new posts, have multiple windows open on your PC, or device to service each one – it becomes very, very time consuming.

With ManageWP, you would simply log into their website, and their service automatically logs you into each of your connected blogs, as well as combining all the tasks in bulk. For example, you can complete the following on ALL your blogs with a single click of a button:

  • Clear out all spam comments.
  • Update all plug ins on your blogs.
  • Update all wastage on your blogs.

ManageWP really is a time-saving service.

For example, I currently have 4 blogs connected to my ManageWP service:

managewp-remove-spam-comments

As you can see, although I have 4 blogs connected to the service, the ManageWP website console has a single button that I can use to update and clean everything!

If I wanted to update the plugins, clean the overhead table, and remove spam comments, I would usually have to log into each separate blog to carry out those tasks, and now, as per the image above, I can just click a single button to carry out all the tasks in one go  -which is seriously time saving.

What Can You Use ManageWP for?

The main reason I started looking around for such a service because where one of my websites is hosted, WPEngine (which is a service specifically for hosting blogs, they limited the availability of particular plugins.

WPEngine is a service that is streamlined for WordPress blogs only, and the disallow the use of certain plugins to ensure that their service runs faster for all concerned, and is free from plugins that in any way affect their service, so although WPEngine have their own back up service, I found that the backups they created were missing certain files.

Now me, being somebody who backs up my websites religiously, I had to find a solution, and back up service that just worked.

Most people who have blogs would use plugins such as BackUpWordpress, etc. but WPEngine simply do not allow such plugins, or the other usual back up plugins that most people use. I am fairly satisfied with WPEngine as a hosting company, albeit they are fairly expensive, but I really needed to find a way to back up the website in the easiest possible way.

And so the search began.

My Main Reason For Using ManageWP

If you read my post regarding the importance of backing up your website, you will know that I am a stickler where back ups are concerned, as without a back up for your website, you are 100% at the mercy of your chosen hosting company, and this is NEVER ideal, because if the hosting company goes down, so does your website – if you don’t have back ups.

So it was during a recent downtime that I moved one of my websites away from Heart Internet, and you can read about the problems with back ups on my recent post here, regarding issues with Heart Internet, and when their service went down, where most people simply didn’t know what to do, I managed to move my website elsewhere very quickly indeed…

…Because I had complete backups!

WPEngine Did Not have a Full Back Up Service

When I moved one of my websites to WPEngine, I read around the internet as you do, and realised that although they offered a good service, there were certain files that were not back up in their in-house backup service, so I had to find something that worked 100%, so that I had backups on my computer in the event of ever needing to move quickly.

Every back up plugin I used on WPEngine failed, and I was at the stage of possibly moving elsewhere to a service that allowed you to use backup plugins.

I asked on various Facebook groups of anybody who had experience with WPEngine, when a chap mentioned the ManageWP service, and that he had been using it for many years. I had never even heard on ManageWP at this stage.

I opened an account with ManageWP, and tested their back up service with the WPEngine servers, and voila – it worked perfectly 🙂

Here is how easy it is to backup with ManageWP:

manage-wp-backup

As you can see from the image above, the ManageWP backup facility details exactly which files are being backed up, and you can adjust this very quickly, to either include certain files, or exclude certain files, and the back up service will also back up your database.

Here are the benefits of the ManageWP back up service:

  • Complete backup.
  • Database backup.
  • Database back up has the same name, for easy migration.
  • The ability to choose which files to include.
  • The ability to exclude certain files.
  • Very, Very fast back up, and zip up.
  • Backup saved to your public html, or externally to Dropbox, Amazon, etc.
  • The ability to perfectly restore your back up – automatically.

Restoring Your Website With ManageWP

Now this is a fantastic feature, and will save you, the user, from needing any technical knowledge whatsoever.

If you have never installed a WordPress website, then unless you have experience, it can be fairly tricky, especially when moving host, or needing to repair a database. ManageWP solves this for you, because with a single click, you can restore the whole website, including database from a previous backup.

For example, here is the ManageWP website once a backup has been completed:

manage-wp-backup-screenshot

As you can see from the above image, once the backup has been completed, you have the following actions that can be completed:

  • Restore the backup
  • Download the backup to your pc
  • Delete the backup

You can also choose how many backups to save, so that if you are saving them on your public-html folder, you are not filling up with too many backups, and taking up too much space.

This is a great service, and the speed of the backups is faster than I have ever seen. So with 2 clicks of your mouse, you will have your whole website, and database backed up, and have it downloaded to your computer for safe keeping  – exactly what I needed.

How Does ManageWP Work?

When you decide to use ManageWP, you need to firstly install a plugin called ‘Worker Plugin’ on your WordPress blog, and then activate it. Once you have done this, as well as created a ManageWP account, then the plugin connects your website to the ManageWP dashboard. You can download the Worker Plugin here

managewp-worker-plugin

Therefore, if you have multiple WordPress websites, you would initially need to install the above plugin on all your websites, so that they can all be connected to the ManageWP dashboard, and then that it is, you are connected, and can manage all your websites/blogs from one central area.

You can also load the WordPress admin of your website from the ManageWP dashboard, so you still do not need to open new windows for any tasks, and this alone means it is saving you desktop space, and it is so much nicer, and neater to work this way.

Here is The official ManageWP video showing how the dashboard works:

 

The above video may look a little complex, but trust me, the dashboard is very, very easy to use.

Also, ManageWP are updating their software all the time, so the above video may be slightly different in features to what is currently available, but everything you need, or is valid is still there.

ManageWP New Orion Dashboard.

ManageWP will soon changing to their new Orion dashboard, and although I have not thoroughly tested it in real time, as it is an on-going project, some of the new features included in Orion make a lot of sense.

The dashboard is completely re-written, and will have a different interface altogether, and although most users will now be familiar with what is already on Classic, this is a very big change for ManageWP, so hopefully they can pull it off without any downsides.

ManageWP Incremental backup addition

One of the new features is incremental backups.

On my computer I have a piece of software that provides incremental backups, and this saves me 2 hours backing up a full hard drive every time I need a back up of my PC, and although my website at the moment is only around 95mbs, I suppose the idea is the same.

I did query this point with the makers of ManageWP, and was told that the main idea behind incremental backups is the reliability, and that their current backups only produce a success rate on around 80% – although I have never had problems with it – but their new incremental back up solution will provide a success rate of around 97%.

I have tested the first back up, using the new Orion, and I was surprised that it took around 10 x longer to complete, and download the back up. I have since been told that subsequent back ups will be much quicker, as only changes made since the last back up will need ‘backing up’.

I am going to give ManageWP the benefit of the doubt for now, since their new Orion interface/dashboard has not been finished yet, but if the speed of the backups, and downloads is not quicker than it is now, I may have to deduct a star from my rating.

Other ManageWP Features

There are other features, and you can see many of them on the following screenshot:

manage-wp-menu-image

As you can see from the screenshot, other ManageWP features include:

  • The ability to control posts, and add new content from the ManageWP dashboard.
  • View and use the site admin from the dashboard.
  • Install and maintain plugins.
  • WordPress backup facility.
  • Clone your website facility, so that it can be moved elsewhere.

Other links include external resources that are not actually part of the ManageWP service, but simply link to them, and these include:

  • Security check.
  • Performance test.
  • Malware check.
  • Page loading time.
  • Broken links checker.

As mentioned, these are not actually part of the ManageWP service, but link out to websites offering those services.

Summary of ManageWP

I may make additions to this post, based on what happens with their Orion interface, but I am hoping that all the same features are still there from the current Classic interface.

The idea behind managed WordPress is fantastic, and can save a lot of time. I am just hoping that when they remove their Classic dashboard, and replace it with Orion, that some of the functionality does not go missing.

Personally, I prefer the ManageWP Classic interface, and the speedier backups, but it does seem that the creators are changing direction on a few key elements of their features, and only time will tell if they are as effective, and user-friendly.

 

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