Have you inherited a WordPress site, but don’t know what on earth you’re supposed to do now? You’re used to building your website from the ground up, which includes having all of the essential information you need up front. We’re going to take you through 3 things you should do when inheriting a WordPress site, so you can continue right where the previous owner left off - with potentially a few improvements.

Get All the Passwords

You’re not going to be able to get very far without acquiring all of the usernames and passwords that go into running your new WordPress site. While hopefully you have been provided with all the documentation you need, you may need to request any missing information from the previous owner. It’s also important to verify that all the logins work once you receive them and that you’ve been granted admin access rights to everything you need.

Wpbeginner.com expands on why it’s important to do this step first:

Start Exploring

Beyond receiving all necessary usernames and passwords, you need to login and take take a thorough look through your WordPress site. Find out which items are in need of an update (there will potentially be many) and gather as much information as you can. 

Eric Karkovack of 1stwebdesigner.com tells us why you need to login and explore: 

“Take a cursory glance through the WordPress administration area (aka Dashboard) and make note of the active theme and plugins used by the site. You’ll also want to note if the theme being used is a child theme. You can do this by visiting Appearance > Themes, hovering over the active theme and clicking the Theme Details button that appears. If the site is running a child theme, it will be stated as such in the details window. This is important information as it will help you to diagnose any potential problems.”

Perform a Clean Up

It’s easy to immediately weed out what you don’t need once you’ve explored your WordPress site. There may be several plugins downloaded that are no longer active, and are therefore causing unnecessary bloating to your website.

Bjorn Allpas of Wplearninglab.com explains why performing a cleanup of your inherited site is important:

“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.

If you’re looking for support in figuring out the ins and outs of your newly inherited WordPress site, Work Hero is here to help. Sign up for one of our price plans here for unlimited monthly support.