WordPress can be a problem. We solve WordPress problems.
How does a WordPress website get into trouble?
A WordPress website isn’t a single piece of software but an interconnected system comprising WordPress itself, themes and plugins, hosting infrastructure, databases, user accounts, APIs and third-party services. Every one of these components changes over time, so a website that was well configured and secure when it launched cannot simply be assumed to remain that way indefinitely.
A site that hasn’t been actively maintained may contain outdated or incompatible software. Updates may have been postponed because previous attempts caused problems, plugins may no longer be supported, and administrator accounts can accumulate without anyone reviewing who still needs access.
More seriously, outdated software can contain known security vulnerabilities. WordPress itself identifies keeping WordPress core, plugins and themes up to date as an important part of securing a website. If a site has previously been compromised, however, simply updating the software may not be enough: malicious code, unauthorised users or other means of regaining access may have been left behind.
These aren’t problems we solve by clicking “update all” and hoping for the best.
Performance can become a problem too
WordPress can handle substantial levels of traffic, but how a site is built and hosted makes an enormous difference. Dynamic requests can involve PHP processing, database queries, API calls and other server-side operations, and a poorly optimised site may consume considerable resources under load, resulting in slow pages, server errors or periods of downtime.
Caching, database optimisation, content delivery networks and appropriate server resources can all form part of the solution, but automated traffic adds another dimension. Search engines, AI crawlers, malicious bots and other automated systems can generate large numbers of requests, particularly if they repeatedly reach expensive, uncached parts of a website.
Performance also matters when legitimate search engines and AI systems retrieve your content. Google’s crawler documentation, for example, confirms that slower server responses, errors and rate limiting can cause its crawlers to reduce activity. That doesn’t mean a faster website automatically ranks more highly, but reliable infrastructure makes it easier for automated systems to access content efficiently.
For that reason, we look beyond how quickly a homepage loads. We consider the underlying application, caching, database performance, server resources, content delivery, automated traffic and how the website behaves under load.
Not all WordPress websites are built in the same way
Many WordPress websites use visual page builders such as Elementor, Divi or WPBakery. These tools have a legitimate place in the WordPress ecosystem, particularly for people without development expertise, but our approach is different.
Castlegate is a technology-led web development company. Our websites are designed around the requirements of the individual organisation and built by experienced developers using lean code and established WordPress development practices. This gives us greater control over performance, accessibility, maintainability and functionality, without restricting future development to what a particular template or page builder was designed to do.
That distinction becomes particularly important when we inherit a website with technical problems, because understanding and controlling the underlying architecture is often essential to finding the real cause.
We used to recommend rebuilding. Now we can often rescue the site.
Years ago, when a client approached us with a badly maintained or problematic WordPress website, our recommendation would often have been to replace it. We have since developed the processes, tools and experience to take on existing WordPress installations and bring them up to the standards we expect from websites we build ourselves.
We start with a technical audit of the WordPress installation, theme, plugins, users, hosting environment and other important components, looking for outdated or unsupported software, compatibility problems, security concerns, performance issues and unnecessary components.
Where there is a risk that the site has previously been compromised, we also establish that we’re working from a clean and trustworthy foundation. The objective isn’t merely to get the website working again, but to reach a point where we understand it, can maintain it properly and are confident enough in the underlying system to take responsibility for it.
Then we keep it working
Bringing a website up to date is only the beginning. Once it comes under our management, we use a combination of on-site and external systems covering performance, caching and content delivery, transactional email, security, strong access controls and multi-factor authentication, on-site and off-site backups, spam and bot protection, vulnerability scanning and automated testing.
We use dedicated transactional email infrastructure for website-generated messages, giving us much greater control over authentication, reliability and diagnostics than relying on a web server to send email itself. Delivery logs also help us establish what happened if an expected message doesn’t arrive.
The availability and performance of the websites we manage are monitored around the clock, with the web service checked once a minute. We also carry out automated daily quality assurance checks, scanning for vulnerabilities or signs of compromise and checking important functionality.
Software updates are regression tested, and if an automated update causes a problem it can be rolled back rather than leaving the website broken. Our developers can then investigate the underlying issue and take whatever manual action is required.
Ongoing maintenance is therefore much more than installing WordPress updates. It means actively monitoring the website and taking responsibility for keeping it secure, reliable and working as intended.
Security is only part of the job
A professionally managed WordPress website also needs to be performant, accessible and compliant. Professional website management includes appropriate implementation of the UK GDPR and Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR), particularly where websites use analytics, advertising technologies, embedded third-party services or other technologies that store information on, or access information from, a visitor’s device.
The Information Commissioner’s Office has significantly increased its work around online tracking and cookie compliance. Cookie compliance is also considerably more complicated than displaying a banner: the technologies operating behind it need to respect the choices a visitor makes, which can involve careful configuration of analytics, advertising, embedded media and other services.
Increasingly, website management also means considering how content and infrastructure interact with AI search engines, crawlers and agents. The web doesn’t stand still, and a website that was well configured three years ago cannot simply be assumed to remain well configured today.
Taking responsibility for your website
For organisations that regard their website as an important digital asset, somebody ultimately needs to take responsibility for it. For websites under our management, that responsibility sits with us: we manage updates, access and permissions, security, backups, performance and the underlying technical infrastructure, with an experienced team available when something unexpected happens.
When the organisation wants the website to do more, the same team is available to develop it. Our full-time, in-house developers have worked with Castlegate for between six and 19 years, so they understand the websites we manage and the systems and processes behind them. That continuity matters, particularly when a website has complex functionality or is important to the organisation that depends upon it.
Have you got a problematic WordPress website?
If your WordPress website is slow, unreliable, difficult to update, poorly maintained or causing problems that nobody seems able to resolve, get in touch. We’re happy to carry out an initial assessment free of charge.
Send us the website address and, if possible, screenshots from the WordPress administration area showing the installed plugins and their versions, together with the themes listed under Appearance. We can then give you an initial indication of what we’re dealing with and, where appropriate, provide a quotation for bringing the website under our management.
Our objective isn’t simply to resolve technical problems. Ultimately, a website needs to achieve something for the organisation behind it, whether that’s generating sales or enquiries, attracting members, encouraging downloads or subscriptions, providing important information or helping more people engage with the organisation. Getting the technical foundations right allows us to move beyond fixing problems and concentrate on making the website more effective.
Is your WordPress website causing problems?
These are all problems we can investigate and help resolve.
- My WordPress site works some of the time, but at other times it times out or displays a 503 error.
- My website is reasonably quick for visitors, but the WordPress back end is painfully slow. Routine WooCommerce tasks can take 30 seconds or even a minute.
- I think my WordPress site may have been hacked. What should I do, and who can help me?
- My website occasionally displays a completely different site advertising pharmaceutical products.
- Some of my plugins and WooCommerce extensions are out of date, but whenever I update them, parts of the website break.
- Emails from my website either don’t arrive or end up in recipients’ spam folders.
- My website forms attract hundreds of spam and scam submissions.
- My old WordPress site has grown over the years and become confusing. How can I reorganise the content and make it easier to navigate?
- I’m trying to create new landing pages in WordPress, but the finished pages look broken and unprofessional.
- My website is reasonably quick in the UK but extremely slow for visitors in the United States.
- Every time I want to change something, I have to go back to my web developers. They can take weeks to respond and then tell me the change can’t be made.
- I don’t like the design of my WordPress site. The theme now looks old and tired.
- My website looks good, but it doesn’t appear prominently in search engines or generate the traffic and business I expected.
- When I ask AI tools about the products and services my business provides, they recommend my competitors instead of me.
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