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Any WordPress developers? I need some feedback.

I've been developing WordPress sites for several years now, both for clients and personal projects. The more sites I've built, the harder it has become to maintain them all (updates, backups, etc.) It got so bad that my personal website was actually hacked due to an outdated plugin... not a fun experience.

So, like any Indie Hacker (or broke college student), I set out to solve my own problem. I needed to keep my sites maintained and I needed it to happen automatically - emails and screenshots would be a nice bonus.

Naturally, the engineer in me took over the would-be entrepreneur and I began building.. a lot. By now, most of you reading this are screaming "LEAN STARTUP!" and you're right, I know. I just can't help myself sometimes 🤷🏼‍♂️.

Several weeks and a lot of coffee later, I've added email notifications, screenshots, and a dash of machine learning (used for detecting vulnerabilities). The result? -> sitemgtx.com
a SaaS app that manages, updates, and secures WordPress sites.

Now, there are a few companies that offer a similar service. Only, their model is based on employees actually managing the sites manually. Also, they're a bit pricey for my liking -remember, broke college student talking here. Just an FYI in case you guys were wondering.

Anyway, if you guys have time to drop some feedback about my latest project I'd really appreciate it ( Is this something you could use? Why am I going to fail? Pricing? Additional features? etc.)

Thanks, happy hacking!

on November 22, 2019
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    Seems like a cool idea Landon

    You may have already thought of this, but I'd make sure you can rollback if a plugin update breaks the site.

    1. 1

      Thanks Brother! I appreciate that. And yeah it's a good point, before each update it does a backup of the site. Been down that road before too :/ sucks!

  2. 1

    Hi Landon, I was also in the same position. I really like WordPress and preferred it for my own and client's websites when having the ability to edit their own sites was a need. But I also had several sites hacked and messed with its not fun.

    Not sure if you're aware but DreamHost has a 1-click install of WP but also helps to keep the core up-to-date, which is really nice. This doesn't auto-update plugins or themes but knowing that the core is taken care is a huge plus.

    They have a dedicated WP hosting which they call DreamPress, but the behavior I'm describing is available at no-cost on their shared hosting (which is what I have).

    That combined with WordFence, and I haven't had any issues since. But there's definitely a need for this.

    As for pricing, i'm not sure I can be much help except maybe some suggestions:
    Me personally I don't know if I would pay a subscription for a plugin on say a Personal Blog or Portfolio site (since I'm also cheap, unless the site is making money to pay for itself).
    can you detect if the WordPress site is being used as a cart (WooCommerce, etc), and adjust the costs? Having this on a commerce site would be vital since the user is dealing customer personal and credit card data.

    Maybe you can see if you can help someone be PCI compliant?

    Cheers and good luck!

    1. 1

      Thank you Cesar! Those are some really good points especially about the PCI compliance - The software can detect that, so I'll definitely jump down that rabbit hole.

      I really appreciate the feedback brother, let me know if I can help with anything!

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        :) glad I could help!

        Just want to say I admire your hustle!