WordPress Health Check
A full inspection of your website with a written report at the end – one you keep, whether you hire me to fix anything or not.
Most site owners have no idea what state their website is in until something breaks. A health check tells you before that happens, in plain English, with the problems ranked by how much they actually matter.
What Gets Checked
Plugins and themes
What is installed, what is out of date, what has been abandoned by its developer, what has known security holes and what is installed but not being used. Abandoned plugins are the quiet danger – they keep working right up until they are the way somebody gets in.
Backups – and whether they actually work
Not just whether a backup plugin is installed, but whether backups are completing, where they are stored and whether restoring one has ever been tested. A backup nobody has tested is not a backup, it is a hope. Plenty of sites have a green tick in the dashboard and nothing usable behind it.
Security
Login protection, file permissions, admin accounts including ones nobody remembers creating, exposed information and whether your username is visible in the page source. That last one is more common than people think – sites publish their own login name in the code without realising it.
Performance
Loading speed on a real page, Core Web Vitals, image weight, database size and anything obviously dragging.
The bits underneath
PHP version, memory limits, database health, error logs. Error logs are worth reading even on a site that seems fine – recurring warnings are usually the first sign of something on its way to breaking.
Search visibility basics
Whether the site is indexable, whether pages are accidentally blocked, broken links, redirect chains and missing titles. Not a full optimisation, but enough to catch anything actively costing you traffic.
What You Get
A written report listing what was found, ranked in three groups:
- Fix now – a real risk to the site or to your business
- Worth doing – costing you speed, money or visitors but not urgent
- Leave alone – looks like a problem, is not one
That third group matters as much as the first. Plenty of audits pad the list to look thorough. If something is fine, I will say so.
The report is yours. Take it to whoever you like or do the work yourself if you are technical. There is no obligation to have me fix anything.
What It Costs
- Businesses – £150 per hour, one hour minimum
- Private individuals – £120 per hour, one hour minimum
- After the first hour, charged in half hours
A typical brochure site is around an hour. A WooCommerce shop or a site with a lot of plugins takes longer. Tell me the site address and I will estimate before starting.
Who This Suits
- You inherited a site somebody else built and have no idea what is in it
- Your developer has gone quiet and you want an independent view
- You are paying for maintenance and want to know it is being done
- The site feels slow or fragile but nothing is obviously broken
- You are about to invest in the site and want to know what you are starting with
That third one comes up more than it should. If you are paying monthly for someone to look after your website, a health check tells you whether they are.
What I Need To Get Started
- Your website address
- WordPress admin login
- Hosting login if you have it, which lets me check backups and logs properly
Read-only access is fine. A health check does not change anything on your site.
Who I Work With
Private customers and small to medium sized businesses. That is the work I am set up for and the work I am good at.
I do not take on corporate contracts. Development teams, sign-off processes and layers of project management are a different job to this one. If that is what you need, I am not the right person and I would rather tell you now than find out halfway through.