Maintenance

Maintenance in the sidebar lists every active WordPress and static site on the account in one place. Use it to see which sites have gone longest without maintenance, update WordPress sites with a backup taken first, and keep a dated log of the work done on each site. Old links to the former WordPress Updates page bring you here, on the WordPress Sites tab.

This page is not the same as the Maintenance toggle in a service's status bar, which shows your maintenance page to visitors (see The service page).

The site list

Tabs across the top, All Sites, WordPress Sites and Static Sites, show how many sites each holds. Each row shows:

• Site Nickname, with the domain beneath it. Click it to open the site's service page at its Maintenance Log.
• Type: WordPress or Static.
• Last Maintenance Logged, such as "3 days ago" (hover for the exact time), or Never. Update in progress appears while an update is running.

Sites with nothing logged come first, then the ones that have waited longest. The icons on the right of each row open the live site, start an update (WordPress sites only), show the maintenance log and log a note.

Running an update (WordPress)

1. Click the update icon on a WordPress site's row.
2. If the site has the backup add-on, a backup of the whole site is taken first and appears in My Backups. If the backup fails or does not finish in time, nothing is updated and nothing is logged. If the site has no backups set up, the update runs without one and the log says so.
3. Every plugin and theme with an update available is then updated. WordPress core and translations are not part of this run; update those from Manage Updates on the service page (see WordPress sites).
4. Progress shows on screen. You can click Close and check later; the update keeps running in the background and its log entry appears when it finishes. Clicking update again while a run is in progress rejoins that run instead of starting another. An update cannot start while a restore is running on the site.

When it finishes, Maintenance finished for … lists what was updated, with old and new versions, anything that was not updated, and whether a backup was taken. To add a comment to the entry, such as what you checked after the update, type it and click Add comment, or click Close. Each entry takes one comment, added from this window.

Logging maintenance by hand

Work done outside the portal can be logged too, on WordPress and static sites alike.

• One site. Click the note icon on its row. In Log maintenance for …, describe What was done, set the Date and time (it cannot be in the future) and click Save entry.
• Several sites. Tick the sites (the box in the header ticks every site on the page), click Log maintenance for selected (N) and fill in the same form. The same entry is written to every selected site.

An entry dated in the past is added to the log but does not move Last Maintenance Logged back.

The maintenance log

Click the log icon on a row to open that site's Maintenance log. The same log appears on the site's service page as Maintenance Log, with its newest entries and a Maintenance page link back here. Each entry shows:

• When and Who. Entries made by the Press Mage team are signed Press Mage (name).
• Type: Update run, Note, Bulk note, or Restore, which is written automatically when Restore & Clone replaces the site.
• Details: the note or update summary, the backup line (Backup taken before updating with its time, or No backup taken: this site has no backups set up.), each plugin and theme updated with its old and new version, anything not updated, and any comment with who wrote it and when.