From revolutionizing hosting with our High-Frequency plans to launching game-changing features like Domain Reseller and Webmail, we’ve been working tirelessly to make your WordPress experience smoother than ever.

Grab a cup of coffee (or whatever fuels your hustle), and join us for a journey through a year packed with innovations, improvements, and exciting developments that have made WPMU DEV even better for you!

Keep reading, or jump ahead with these links:

• Executive Summary from Our Founder, James Farmer
• What Changed in The Hub & Hub Client in 2024
• What’s Coming in 2025: The Hub’s Next Chapter
• What Changed for our Premium Hosting in 2024
• What’s Coming in 2025: Premium Hosting Gets Even More… Premium?
• What Changed for our Plugins in 2024
• Forminator: Forms That Actually Look Good (Finally)
• What’s Coming in 2025 for Forminator
• Smush: Speed Meets Style — 2024 Edition
• What’s Coming in 2025 for Smush
• Hummingbird: Performance That Packs a Punch
• What’s Coming in 2025 for Hummingbird
• Defender: Security that Never Sleeps
• What’s Coming in 2025 for Defender
• Link Checker: Breaking Up with Broken Links
• What’s Coming in 2025 for Link Checker
• Snapshot: Backups That Actually Have Your Back
• What’s Coming in 2025 for Snapshot
• And that’s a wrap, folks!

Executive Summary from Our Founder, James Farmer

“2024 has been a transformative year for WPMU DEV, marked by bold innovations and strategic expansions that have redefined what’s possible in WordPress management and hosting.

Our introduction of High-Frequency Hosting plans, powered by blazing-fast 3GHz+ Intel Xeon processors, has set a new industry standard for performance. We’ve expanded our global footprint with 12 new hosting regions, ensuring lightning-fast speeds for users worldwide.

The launch of our Domain Reseller program and Webmail service marks our commitment to being your complete WordPress solution. These additions, combined with our new Expert Services, demonstrate our evolution from a plugin provider to a comprehensive web services platform.

The Hub continues to be the cornerstone of our ecosystem, now enhanced with features like Tickets for improved client communication and our innovative Broken Backlinks Checker. Our plugins have seen significant updates too, from Forminator’s new PDF capabilities to Defender’s enhanced malware detection.

Looking ahead to 2025, we’re not slowing down. We’re already working on exciting features like the Bot Pool for improved performance, advanced static cache features, and expanded monitoring capabilities for third-party sites.

Thank you for being part of our journey. Your feedback and trust continue to drive our innovation, and we’re excited about the road ahead.”

Want to hear more from James? Check out this Post Status interview from the Product Founder Series: WordPress in the Long View with James Farmer.

All right, off to explore the individual products and services. Starting with…

What Changed in The Hub & Hub Client in 2024

If you find managing multiple WordPress sites a total nightmare, 2024 was the year The Hub said “hold my beer” and transformed into an even more powerful command center to make your agency life even easier.

Hosting Reseller Program: For that Extra Moolah

We kicked off the year with a huge update — the Hosting Reseller Program. It’s the side hustle of dreams for all those agency owners who want to sell domains and make extra cash while lounging on the beach (because why not?).

We even gave away a million dollars to kick things off. (No, seriously. A million dollars. Who are we? Oprah?).

Check out the Domain Reseller Program — and start making it rain domains!

Webmail: It’s Like Email, But Cooler (No, Seriously)

Raise your hand if you’ve ever had to email a client from your personal email address (no judgment, but, yikes). With Webmail, you and your clients can send emails like a true professional — right from your WPMU DEV dashboard.

It integrates seamlessly with our platform because, let’s face it, if you’re not running your hosting and emails from one place, are you even really hosting?

Plus, we also increased the storage space up to 50GB!

Get to know Webmail — email never looked this good.

Expert Services: Because Sometimes You Just Need A Dev

 
It’s 2 AM. Your client’s site just went down. What do you do? Panic? No. You call in an expert… but there’s no need for you to hire an expensive freelancer or bring one in-house.

We launched Expert Services — a premium suite of services to make your life as easy as ordering takeout on a Friday night (and almost as cheap too!), including:

• On-Demand Development: For that custom feature you needed yesterday.
• Proactive Monitoring: So you can sleep while we do the heavy lifting, monitoring and implementing quick fixes 24/7 for your hosted sites.
• Speed Optimization: To turbocharge your site and ramp up your PageSpeed scores to 90+ on desktop and 75+ on mobile.
• Malware Removal: No one wants to deal with hackers at midnight.

It’s like having a superhero squad on call all year round (without the spandex).

Don’t wait for a crisis — check out Expert Services.

Annual Hosting Plans: Sweet Deals and Free Stuff? Yes, Please!

Who doesn’t love a good deal? In 2024, we launched Annual Hosting Plans (excluding Quantum) that come with not only awesome rates but also a free .com domain and Webmail.

Ready to save and get free goodies? Snag your Annual Hosting Plan here.

Client Tickets for Agencies: Seriously, Who Has Time to Juggle Emails, WhatsApp, SMS, etc?

 
We know you’ve been there — juggling multiple client requests like a performer on stilts.

Enter Client Tickets, our white-labeled ticketing system that helps you manage client inquiries like an actual pro (instead of that over-caffeinated person on their third double-shot latte).

Gone are the days of lost emails and forgotten requests. Now, you’ll have everything neatly organized, even while you’re pretending to be “busy” with your other tasks.

Get the lowdown on Client Tickets here.

Broken Backlinks Checker: Fixing the SEO You Didn’t Know You Needed

Nothing kills your SEO game like broken backlinks. Luckily, we launched the Broken Backlinks Checker to save you from that SEO nightmare.

It scans your site for dead links and lets you fix them before Google starts docking your site’s reputation. It’s like having a personal SEO bodyguard for every site.

Fix Your Broken Backlinks — and keep your SEO in the green.

Hub Speed Improvements

Significant improvements were made to The Hub so your site lists load much faster than before.

Here’s an example of the average number of seconds needed to load your sites, before and after 2 rounds of performance enhancements:

What’s Coming in 2025: The Hub’s Next Chapter

We’re kicking off 2025 with some serious upgrades to The Hub that’ll make managing your WordPress empire even smoother. Here’s what’s cooking:

Proactive Monitoring for ALL Sites

Ever wished you could keep tabs on your third-party hosted sites just like our hosted ones? Well, that’s exactly what we’re rolling out.

Our 24/7 monitoring service is expanding beyond WPMU DEV-hosted sites, so you can catch and fix issues before your clients even notice them.

Clients & Billing Gets a Power-Up

We’re supercharging the client management experience with features you’ve been asking for:

• Flexible coupon creation for your services
• Schedule invoices for better payment planning
• Support for multiple clients per site (perfect for those complex projects)

Hub Experience Improvements

The Hub itself is getting some love too. We’re working on:

• Centralized white-labeling controls for a more consistent brand experience
• Streamlined WP Users Management with Multi-user SSO
• A completely redesigned Reports 2.0 system for better insights
• Email-based Tickets so your clients can create tickets and reply to them without even logging into The Hub
• White labeled support via Tickets
• ccTLD Domains
• Hub Folders for better organization of your sites
• Notes across various parts of The Hub so you can add notes to sites, domains, webmail, etc.
• Even more performance enhancements, focusing on individual service pages

Plus, we’re putting the pedal to the metal on overall Hub performance improvements—because nobody likes waiting around for pages to load.

Next up, the crazy changes we made to hosting…

What Changed for our Premium Hosting in 2024

2024 saw the launch of our High-Frequency hosting plans for even better performance than our supercharged regular plans. which makes regular hosting feel soooo sloooooooowwwww. Here’s a quick overview at the next-generation technology behind our HF plans.

High-Frequency Hosting: The Next Generation (Gen Beta?)

Blazing-Fast 3GHz+ Intel Xeon CPUs

• Purpose-built for high-performance sites
• Significantly outperforms standard 2GHz CPUs

Next-Level Storage

• NVMe SSD storage for maximum throughput
• Perfectly matched to the increased CPU power
• Dramatically faster than traditional SSD storage

Unbeatable Value

• Industry-leading pricing for the performance
• Excellent margins for resellers
• Top-tier features at competitive rates

Upgrade to a high frequency hosting plan today.

Going Global: 12 New Regions

But we didn’t stop there—we went global with 12 new regions, ensuring your sites are lightning-fast wherever your clients call home (for both HF and regular hosting plans). We added new data centers in:

• Asia Pacific: Mumbai, Delhi NCR, Osaka, Melbourne
• Europe: Madrid, Manchester, Stockholm, Warsaw
• Middle East & Africa: Tel Aviv, Johannesburg
• Americas: Mexico City, Santiago

Plus Some Neat Upgrades for the Tech-Savvy Crowd

• Custom SFTP/SSH paths — you can now specify exactly where you want your SFTP/SSH access
• XML-RPC blocking for enhanced security
• PHP 8.3 support to keep your sites on the cutting edge
• Fail2ban integration with Antibot for better security

What’s Coming in 2025: Premium Hosting Gets Even More… Premium?

Our development team is kicking off 2025 with some serious server-side improvements.

Redirect Management

Redirect Management is landing first—a powerful system that handles traffic flow at the server level. This means cleaner redirects, better SEO, and a proper system to prevent those pesky 404 errors that can hurt your search rankings.

The Auto Bot Pool

The Bot Pool is our answer to handling automated traffic intelligently. By directing bots to a separate PHP pool, your server resources stay focused on real visitors, leading to better Core Web Vitals scores and smoother user experience.

Lightning Fast Caching

We’re taking static caching to the next level with two new features:

• Lightning Mode transforms your entire site by caching all GET requests (except wp-admin and logged-in users), dropping query strings, and setting extended cache lifetimes. Perfect for company blogs and static sites that need blazing speed.
• Lightning Pages brings that same power to specific high-traffic pages like your homepage or landing pages, giving you precise control over what gets the turbo treatment.

And since we never stop improving, we’re adding PHP 8.4 support and some serious SSL improvements… because security should never be an afterthought.

Next up, our plugins!

What Changed for our Plugins in 2024

Our plugins got some serious gains in 2024 (and they didn’t even need a gym membership).

From Forminator flexing its muscles with new payment options and cloud templates, to Smush getting even smarter about WebP optimization, each plugin in our arsenal received meaningful upgrades that make your WordPress life easier.

Let’s dive into what each of these powerhouses brought to the table this year.

Forminator: Forms That Actually Look Good (Finally)

Gone are the days of boring, basic forms. This year Forminator embraced its creative side with features that make form-building actually fun (yes, really).

Payment Power-Up

Boost your conversions with our shiny new Stripe Dynamic Payment Method. Now your forms handle payments as smoothly as butter. Apple Pay, Google Pay, Amazon Pay, Klarna—if it’s a payment method your customers love, we’ve probably added it.

Fresh Fields & Features

We didn’t stop at payments. The new Rating field lets your users share their thoughts with style, while the Range slider adds some sliding satisfaction to provide more nuanced data capabilities.

Plus, our new Basic Style mode plays nice with your theme—because nobody likes a form that clashes with their design.

Finally, if you need to whip up a form fast, our new Preset and Cloud Form Templates have your back. And if you’re into email marketing (who isn’t?), our MailerLite integration makes growing your list a breeze.

PDF Power

Creating professional receipts just got easier with our new PDF template system. Generate unlimited PDFs from your forms and submissions—perfect for making your business look polished and professional.

What’s Coming in 2025 for Forminator

Next year’s going to be even better:

• A sleek new Product Field that makes selling stuff simple
• Professional PDF Quote templates
• More ready-to-roll templates (starting from scratch is so 2024)
• New integrations starting with Constant Contact—because your marketing tools should play nice together

Start creating powerful forms today.

Smush: Speed Meets Style — 2024 Edition

2024 was all about making image optimization effortless. Our dev team took Smush’s already powerful compression tools and cranked them up to eleven with some seriously smart updates.

WebP Without the Headache

The new Direct WebP method is a game-changer. One click and you’re serving WebP images to your visitors — no server configuration or CDN required. It’s the kind of simple we love, and your site speed will thank you for it.

Bulk Smush Gets Buff

We completely rebuilt our Image Optimization Engine from the ground up. For you that means a leaner, meaner Smush that uses less memory while crushing more images. Your server resources can breathe easy while your images get smaller.

What’s Coming in 2025 for Smush

We’ve got a TON of upgrades planned for Smush:

• AVIF support is landing — think WebP’s cooler cousin with even better compression
• Smart LCP Image optimization to boost those Core Web Vitals scores
• Video lazy loading with facades because why should images have all the fun?
• Automatic missing image size generation to fill those pesky gaps
• A fresh UI that makes optimization feel like a breeze
• Supercharged PNG compression for even smaller file sizes
• Better stats to show off your optimization wins

Start Smushing your images here.

Hummingbird: Performance That Packs a Punch

This year Hummingbird got serious about keeping your sites blazing fast with updates that matter. We ditched the old metrics and embraced the future of performance measurement — staying current isn’t just nice, it’s necessary.

Speed Essentials

Performance testing got a major refresh. We’ve added INP (Interaction to Next Paint) while saying goodbye to FID and TTI. It’s not just about keeping up with Google — it’s about giving you the metrics that actually matter for your site’s success.

Mobile Magic

Mobile optimization leveled up with separate cache preloading, mobile-specific Critical CSS, and smarter viewport meta handling, as well as font optimization. We also boosted Critical CSS across the board with delay-until-interaction for above-the-fold content. The result? Major gains for mobile users.

Smart Controls

Got specific performance needs? Our new granular controls for Delay JS and Critical CSS let you fine-tune exactly what gets optimized. Target specific files, post types, post URLS, plugins, themes and keywords.

Plus, we optimized the Autoloader to cut down database queries — because every millisecond counts.

What’s Coming in 2025 for Hummingbird

Hummingbird is set to take flight in 2025:

• Asset optimization is getting a major overhaul for faster, smarter, safer improvements
• Zero cache downtime to keep your hit rates high
• Font subsetting for lightning-fast text loading
• Speculative link preloading for instant site navigation
• Global Safe mode to preview optimizations before they go live

Experience Hummingbird’s performance for yourself here.

Defender: Security that Never Sleeps

Security isn’t just about blocking bad guys — it’s about being smart with how we protect your sites. This year, Defender stepped up its game with some serious security muscle.

Malware Detection 2.0

Our scanning engine got a major upgrade. Now Defender dives deep into your site’s root directory, catching nasty code that other scanners might miss. We’ve also fine-tuned our malware detection rules to stay ahead of evolving threats.

Smart IP Protection

Say goodbye to IP detection guesswork. Defender’s Smart IP Detection is your ultimate security gatekeeper, using the most secure and reliable method to identify users’ IP addresses. It’s designed to block bad actors while ensuring real users and admins sail through without a hitch. Compatible with most sites and a pro at preventing spoofing — because your site deserves nothing less.

Self-Service Security

And if you do manage to get locked out, we added the super convenient “Unlock Me” feature. Admins can now verify their identity through email and get back to work without waiting for support. No more locking the door and leaving the keys inside!

What’s Coming in 2025 for Defender

Get ready for some HUGE upgrades for Defender including:

• AntiBot Global Firewall — tapping into security intelligence from 500,000+ sites to block malicious IPs automatically
• Advanced Malware Scanner that goes beyond core files and checks JavaScript files and database tables (because we all know malware loves to hide in unexpected places)
• User Session Management to protect against stolen session cookies and keep browsing sessions secure

Cover your sites with ultimate defense against any attack.

Link Checker: Breaking Up with Broken Links

Links are the highways of your website, and this year we made sure they’re smoother than ever. Our team rolled out some smart updates that make finding and fixing broken links feel less like a chore and more like a superpower.

Cloud Connection Made Simple

No more Dashboard plugin required — connect straight to BLC Cloud from The Hub. It’s like taking the scenic route and finding a shortcut you never knew existed.

Query Parameter Scanning

Those tricky URLs with query parameters? Yeah, we scan those now. BLC Cloud leaves no URL unturned, making sure every corner of your site stays connected.

Backlink Magic

Introducing our “Broken Backlink Checker”! Now you can find and fix dead backlinks that might be hurting your SEO juice. Because good SEO isn’t just about what’s on your site — it’s about who’s linking to you too.

Cleaner Reports

We heard you about those ignored links cluttering up your reports. Now you can hide them and focus on the links that actually need your attention.

What’s Coming in 2025 for Link Checker

We’ve got a couple little (but powerful) tweaks coming up:

• Bulk actions to edit, unlink, and ignore broken links in one go
• Advanced URL exclusions for more precise link monitoring
• Fewer false positives for even more reliable results

Check your links now with one click.

Snapshot: Backups That Actually Have Your Back

Nobody gets excited about backups until they need one. That’s why we made Snapshot smarter about how it protects your site data, with features that work before you know you need them.

Pre-Backup Intelligence

The new Preflight Check is like having a co-pilot for your backups. It scans your server resources, large files, and database tables before takeoff, making sure your backup journey goes smoothly.

Selective Restore Power

Sometimes you just need to restore one piece of the puzzle. Now you can download and restore your database or files separately — no need to restore everything when you only need a portion.

For multisite users, we’ve added the ability to restore individual subsites from a full backup.

Cloud Storage Options

Azure joined our backup destination family this year. More options mean more ways to keep your backups safe and sound.

What’s Coming in 2025 for Snapshot

We’re expanding our cloud storage horizons with iDrive and Cloudflare R2 as new S3-compatible destinations — because your backups deserve options.

Never get caught out again — keep your backups automated!

And that’s a wrap, folks!

Phew. We made it through another wild ride of a year.

Thank you for being part of the WPMU DEV family and for all your amazing feedback, bug reports (we see you!), and love for our platform. We can’t wait to make 2025 even better, faster, and just a little bit wilder.

Here’s to 2025 from WPMU DEV — where hosting is never boring, and client tickets get sorted faster than your New Year’s resolutions!

Let us know in the comments what upgrades you’re most excited about!

Would you like to focus more time attracting new clients, growing your agency, and running your business than juggling multiple tasks to keep existing client sites optimized, secure, and running smoothly?

How about effortlessly boosting the speed of your clients’ sites, fortifying their security against malicious threats, and enjoying proactive monitoring and unparalleled peace of mind … all hands-free?

What if you could offer all of the above to your clients whilst increasing your revenue? With WPMU Dev Expert Services, you can resell this enhanced management to your clients. Not only do we take care of these maintenance tasks for you but you can add your own markup while selling these services to your clients to bring in some extra cash flow.

We’ve spent years helping web developers fix all types of issues on WordPress sites and so Expert Services was born!

While our support team is always happy to fix things wherever possible, often all they can do is advise and instruct members what to do, leaving you to implement these recommendations yourself.

This can be quite time-consuming.

So, as an extension to the unrivaled support we provide to members, we are thrilled to unveil three new premium support services designed to save you time optimizing website performance, enhancing security, and providing proactive monitoring for your hosted sites.

Our dedicated expert teams are ready to tackle these challenges on your behalf so you can focus on what matters most – delivering exceptional content and services to your clients.

In this article, we unveil three powerhouse services that go beyond the ordinary, delivering outstanding results for your WordPress sites:

1. Proactive Monitoring
2. Site Speed Optimization
3. Malware Removal

Let’s jump in…

1) Proactive Monitoring

For sites hosted with WPMU DEV, our Proactive Monitoring service offers carefree site management.

Our dedicated team will monitor your site’s status every second, ensuring immediate fixes in case of downtime due to attacks, hacks, or any other issue.

Priced at just $9 per month per site, this service provides peace of mind and swift resolution of any issues.

2) Site Speed Optimization

Is your website not performing as fast as you’d like? Our Site Speed Optimization service is the solution.

Our expert team will work on your site to achieve Google PageSpeed scores of 90+ on desktop and 75+ on mobile.

Simply add your site to the Speed Optimization list in the Hub, place your order, and let our experts handle the rest.

With a one-time fee of $399, you can ensure your site maintains optimal speed.

3) Malware Removal

Security is paramount, and our Malware Removal service provides expert assistance in cleaning your website and configuring optimal security settings.

If your site falls victim to hacking or malware, our meticulous experts will clean it and set up optimal security hardening measures for a one-time fee of $250.

Make WordPress Site Management a Breeze

If you want to look after your clients’ sites yourself, our support team will help you with any issues as we have always done and provide you with expert advice, suggestions, and instructions for you to implement the fixes yourself.

If, however, you would rather outsource and have a completely “done for you” service, then let our experts take care of it.

Our services are reasonably priced, so if you are looking for a new way to increase your service offering and revenue streams then this is the solution for you. You can add your own markup and resell these expert services to benefit your clients and your profits.

Here’s how to enhance your clients’ website’s performance, security, and management with WPMU DEV’s premium services:

1. Go to your Hub and click on WPMU DEV Services,
2. Choose the service(s) you’d like to automate and select your site.
3. Make the payment to purchase the service,
4. We’ll create a dedicated forum ticket for ongoing updates and communication,
5. Our experts will commence work on the site immediately.

Note: For added peace of mind, our speed optimization and malware services include a 7-day guarantee, so if any further problems should occur within 7 days of those services being completed, we will fix them entirely free of charge.

The WordPress Management Revolution Has Begun

WPMU DEV’s new premium services are ideal for agencies and under-resourced web developers looking to streamline and automate their WordPress management processes.

Proactive Monitoring, Site Speed Optimization, and Malware Removal services are just the beginning. Future services may include web design, custom WordPress development, and more.

If you are looking for a “hands-free” expertly-run WordPress site management solution, simply visit your Hub to get started.

Not a WPMU DEV member yet? Join risk-free and start growing your WordPress business today!

Questions? Check out the Expert Services section of our terms of services page, or contact our helpful support team.

Winners of 60+ G2 Awards for Winter ’24!

G2 Global Best-in-class Awards

Managed HostingDomain RegistrationManaged DNS ProvidersWordPress Management ToolsWordPress HostingReseller Hosting

Managed HostingDomain RegistrationManaged DNS ProvidersWordPress Management ToolsWordPress HostingReseller Hosting

Managed Hosting

Domain Registration

Managed DNS Providers

WordPress Management Tools

WordPress Hosting

Reseller Hosting

Not sure why G2 awards matter? Then check out this post: Why G2 Are Kind Of a Big Deal for Web Developers.

Here are the results of the G2 Winter 2024 Awards, backed by authentic and verified feedback from G2 users.

Managed Hosting

Overall grid rankings (Winter 2024)

User satisfaction rankings (Winter 2024)

Summary

WPMU DEV, Kinsta, and Right Networks topped the chart in most user satisfaction categories according to G2. We are especially proud of our amazing 99% score for Quality of Support.

WordPress Site Management

Overall grid rankings (Winter 2024)

User satisfaction rankings (Winter 2024)

Summary

WPMU DEV is the clear winner in all of G2’s WordPress Management categories above. Not much more to say, other than to brush the non-existent dust off our shoulders.

Help Us Improve

We take our members’ feedback and suggestions seriously and we provide 24×7 expert support to deal with any issues you may experience.

If you are unhappy with any aspect of our services or have suggestions for improvement, please tell us. And if you are delighted, please leave a review.

To see how our performance stacks up against other WordPress leaders, go here: How We Compare

To see what new and exciting WPMU DEV developments are coming up next, check out our roadmap.

Not a WPMU DEV member yet? Then experience our award-winning services and become a member today…it’s 100% risk-free!

As if our award-winning and highly rated managed hosting wasn’t already amazing enough…

Now we’ve taken it to the next level by introducing 7 brand new High Frequency (HF) plans that give a whole new meaning to performance.

What makes these plans different? How powerful are they? And why should you consider High Frequency Hosting?

All is answered in this article, as we give you the lowdown on our newest high-octane creations and put them to the ultimate test.

Here’s what we’re covering:

• What is High Frequency Hosting?
• CPU Performance: High Frequency vs Regular Hosting
• Disk Performance: High Frequency vs Regular Hosting
• Deploy High Frequency Hosting in Minutes

What is High Frequency Hosting?

Over the years, we’ve introduced many new plans to our hosting lineup, but these High Frequency plans are an entirely different beast.

Because although they’re built on the same powerful infrastructure as our other plans, they have a completely different hardware setup.

This is what sets these plans apart and allows them to handle more traffic load, perform tasks at a higher speed, and execute operations more effectively (more on that soon).

Here’s a quick look at the next generation technology behind our HF plans:

3GHz+ Intel Xeon CPUs

High Frequency plans are powered by blazing-fast 3GHz+ Intel Xeon processors that are made specifically for sites requiring uncompromising performance.

This cutting edge processor greatly outperforms standard CPUs, which for context, typically fall within the 2GHz range.

NVMe SSD storage

Having next level CPU speed doesn’t mean much if your local disk storage can’t keep up.

This is the advantage of NVMe SSD storage, which unlike regular SSD storage, has the capacity to match the enhanced CPU throughput.

Combine these two hardware elements, and you have a recipe for high-performance architecture that seamlessly handles increasing requests and maintains reliability as your hosted site’s workload continues to grow.

You and your clients also get to enjoy the following benefits:

• Better and faster user experiences – Superior CPU and disk performance ensures smooth and blazing-fast user experiences with absolute minimal site downtime and disruption.
• Scale hosting seamlessly – HF servers are designed to accommodate and effortlessly scale with increasing website demand. Plan upgrades are also easy and affordable.
• Stand out from the crowd – Give your hosting services a competitive edge and target clients seeking high-performance solutions.

But enough about the tech and what performance benefits High Frequency ‘should’ give you.

Next, we will truly put them to the test, so you can see how powerful they really are for yourself.

Putting High Frequency To The Test

Before launching these new plans to the world we had to be sure they lived up to their name.

So, our expert hosting team arranged a set of tests to see how these plans performed in real-world scenarios compared to our regular plans.

We decided to test two crucial categories when it comes to hosting performance: CPU performance and disk performance.

Here’s how it went down:

CPU Performance: High Frequency vs Regular Hosting

Methodology:

For the first two tests in the CPU performance category, we simulated multiple people visiting our website’s cached and uncached home page using the ‘Maintain client load’ method.

For the third test we simulated users adding a product to their cart on our website multiple times using this same load method.

All three tests involved scaling up page visitors to a targeted max client count, specific to each plan, within five minutes. During this time, each client repeatedly made requests, simulating high-traffic website use.

The best plans handle more requests and have a lower (faster) average response time.

Here’s how it all went down:

1. Load test for increasing traffic on *cached* home page

Here is the test data:

The Results: Up to 108% performance increase!

• 40-108% increase in requests handled (Regular vs. HF plans)
• Improved average response time across the board, including over half the average response time (Bronze Regular vs. Bronze HF)

2. Load test for increasing traffic on *uncached* home page

Here is the test data:

Results: Up to 126% performance increase!

• 61-126% increase in requests handled (Regular vs. HF plans)
• Improved average response time across the board, including almost half the average response time (Bronze Regular vs. Bronze HF)

3. Stress testing PHP with repeated add-to-cart simulations

Here is the test data:

Results: Up to 108% performance increase!

• 51-108% increase in requests handled (Regular vs. HF plans)
• Improved average response time across the board, including a 33.19% speed increase (Bronze Regular vs. Bronze HF)

Disk Performance: High Frequency vs Regular Hosting

Methodology:

For this performance test category we used the FIO (Flexible I/O) tool to perform random read and write operations on the disk.

The higher read/write speed = better upload/download. Faster read/write also means increased database performance.

Testing disk performance through random read/write operations

Results: Up to 2.79x performance increase!

• 1.7-2.78x increase in Read speed (Regular vs. HF plans)
• 1.71-2.79x increase in Write speed (Regular vs. HF Plans)

Deploy High Frequency Hosting in Minutes

Satisfied that High Frequency can deliver the power, speed, and reliability you’re looking for?

Then check out our new range of HF plans, which, despite the groundbreaking features and performance, offer incredible value for buyers and resellers.

We have a total of 7 plans which scale based on your needs, and you can easily move between plans as well.

Another easy way to try High Frequency, or any of our hosting plans, is through our Premium membership, which automatically gives you $144 worth of free yearly hosting credit, and access to exclusive VIP pricing.

Every WPMU DEV product or plan also comes with an automatic 30-day 100% money-back guarantee, so no matter which option you decide to take, it will be completely risk free.

We hope you are as impressed and excited by our new range of plans as we are. It’s a massive step forward for our hosting, with even more exciting improvements coming in 2024 to look forward to!

Winners of 70+ G2 Awards for Fall ’23!

G2 Global Best-in-class Awards

Managed HostingDomain RegistrationManaged DNS ProvidersWordPress Management ToolsWordPress HostingReseller Hosting

Managed HostingDomain RegistrationManaged DNS ProvidersWordPress Management ToolsWordPress HostingReseller Hosting

Managed Hosting

Domain Registration

Managed DNS Providers

WordPress Management Tools

WordPress Hosting

Reseller Hosting

Not sure why G2 awards matter? Then check out this post: Why G2 Are Kind Of a Big Deal for Web Developers

Here are the results of the G2 Fall 2023 Awards, backed by authentic and verified feedback from G2 users.

Managed Hosting

Overall grid rankings (Fall 2023)

User satisfaction rankings (Fall 2023)

Summary

WPMU DEV, Kinsta, and Right Networks topped the chart in most user satisfaction categories according to G2. We are especially proud of our amazing 99% score for Quality of Support.

WordPress Site Management

Overall grid rankings (Fall 2023)

User satisfaction rankings (Fall 2023)

Summary

WPMU DEV is the clear winner in all of G2’s WordPress Management categories above. Not much more to say, other than to brush the non-existent dust off our shoulders.

Help Us Improve

We take our members’ feedback and suggestions seriously and we provide 24×7 expert support to deal with any issues you may experience.

If you are unhappy with any aspect of our services or have suggestions for improvement, please tell us. And if you are delighted, please leave a review.

To see how our performance stacks up against other WordPress leaders, go here: How We Compare

To see what new and exciting WPMU DEV developments are coming up next, check out our roadmap.

Not a WPMU DEV member yet? Then experience our award-winning services and become a member today…it’s 100% risk-free!

Winners of 139 G2 Awards for Summer ’23!

Not sure why G2 awards matter? Then check out this post: Why G2 Are Kind Of a Big Deal for Web Developers

Here are the results of the G2 Summer 2023 Awards, backed by authentic and verified feedback from G2 users.

Managed Hosting

Overall grid rankings (Summer 2023)

User satisfaction rankings (Summer 2023)

Summary

WPMU DEV, along with Kinsta, tops 3 of the 5 G2 user satisfaction categories shown above, including an amazing 99% for Quality of Support, which we’re pretty chuffed about.

Web Hosting

Overall grid rankings (Summer 2023)

User satisfaction rankings (Summer 2023)

Summary

WPMU DEV and Kinsta ranked highest for the various G2 user satisfaction categories shown above. Notably, WPMU DEV topped Quality of Support here with a 98% score.

WordPress Site Management

Overall grid rankings (Summer 2023)

User satisfaction rankings (Summer 2023)

Summary

WPMU DEV is the clear winner in all of G2’s WordPress Site Management categories shown above. Not much more to say, other than to brush the non-existent dust off our shoulders.

Help Us Improve

We take our members’ feedback and suggestions seriously and we provide 24×7 expert support to deal with any issues you may experience.

If you are unhappy with any aspect of our services or have suggestions for improvement, please tell us. And if you are delighted, please leave a review.

To see how our performance stacks up against other WordPress leaders, go here: How We Compare

To see what new and exciting WPMU DEV developments are coming up next, check out our roadmap.

Not a WPMU DEV member yet? Then experience our award-winning services and become a member today…it’s 100% risk-free!

Exclusively available for WPMU DEV Premium members, we’ve built this platform from the ground up to make selling-sites-while-you-sleep a reality.

Read on to see how you can use Reseller to create your own Squarespace, GoDaddy, or to just automate your web development business.

Manual no more

Our members have always resold WPMU DEV plugins, hosting and services and we’ve always done whatever we can to make that happen by making it easy to white-label everything we do.

But that’s always been a manual process, your customers have had to contact you, you’ve set stuff up and emailed them back, and so on.

Well, that ends today, because with Reseller you can offer your site visitors a hosting plan, a choice of templates and any services you care to add on, and they can purchase it and create a subscription, without you having to lift a finger.

They’ll be able to manage their site and their subscription using your professional custom portal, get support, and purchase other services as you define them.

And shortly, you’ll be able to package domains with that too. [Editor’s note: Automated Domain Reseller is now live!]

Reseller tools

To get started, just visit the new Reseller icon in The Hub and follow the instructions, as part of this you’ll set up:

White-label billing, powered by Stripe

Our client billing platform has already processed over $5 million in subscriptions and invoices for our members, and it powers Reseller, allowing you to easily let your customers set up subscription packages and make one-off payments.

Even better, we charge 0% commission, so you get to keep the entire fee.

White-label client portal, at your own domain

The Hub Client is already used by thousands of WPMU DEV members to provide a professional portal for their clients, and now you can also use it to create elegant product and pricing tables that allow your users to check out directly to their new site.

And you can control exactly what they see there.

Hosting and template packages

It’s easy with Reseller to create as many packages as you like, combining templates (use ours or create your own) and whatever hosting packages you choose. Then, simply add prices and advertise them on your site.

We’ll only ever charge you, at our normal rates, for the hosting your customers buy.

Coming soon…

Reseller is ready to go now. In fact, it’s already being used successfully by a number of members, but there are some core integrations coming soon that we think you’ll enjoy.

Domain automation

Allow your customers to search for and purchase a domain with their package, this will automatically map the domain to their site and set up a subscription for them too. Domain transfers will also work just fine.

In the interim, you can encourage customers to bring their own domains or let them know you’ll arrange that shortly (and you can use the billing platform for that).

[Editor’s note: Automated Domain Reseller is now live!]

White-label support

Are you concerned about not being able to support your clients 24/7? We know exactly how you feel and that’s why we’re going to offer white-label support to help you run your round-the-clock business, with a platform that integrates your support with ours.

Of course, you can already provide your own integrated support right now as part of The Hub Client.

Let us know how you go

We’re really looking forward to seeing how you use Reseller and developing the platform to help you succeed, so please let us know through the feedback tab how you go, and what we can do to help you succeed.

And, of course, we’re interested in your impressions here too :) So feel free to leave a comment below!

“I have been looking to find an easier way to check for broken links. Thank you for making this tool so accessible.” Dena, WPMU DEV Member

Broken links are a negative indicator of site health and can have a major impact on your PageRank and your reputation. Staying on top of your site links is an essential and crucial aspect of good WordPress site management.

But… manually checking your content for broken links is time-consuming and tedious excruciating, especially if you manage multiple WordPress sites.

“This is potentially going to save a ton of time! Before now I’ve always done a manual check on all sites I create.” TNT Systems, WPMU DEV Member

This article shows you how to use our powerful link checking tool on unlimited WordPress sites – completely re-engineered with a top user-requested feature and a new API that works 20x faster, to deliver better and more accurate results, prevent negative SEO performance issues, and improve user experience.

We also include a comprehensive guide covering all you need to know about why link management is important and how to effectively manage broken links on all of your sites.

We’ll cover the following topics:

• Broken Link Checker for WordPress – BLC Plugin
  • Set Up
  • Edit/Unlink Broken Links
  • Run Manual Scans
  • Schedule Scans and Send Email Reports
  • Search
  • Export Lists
• Cloud Link Checker – Perfect For Agencies
• How Broken Links Affect SEO
• Broken Links Can Also Harm Your Business
• What is Broken Links Hijacking?
• What Causes Broken Links?
  • Best Practices to Fix Broken Links
  • Steps to Avoid and Fix 404 Pages
• Fixing Broken Links: Manual vs Automated Methods
  • Benefits of Using Manual Methods to Fix Broken Links
  • Benefits of Using Automated Methods to Fix Broken Links
• Take Link Maintenance to the Next Level with WPMU DEV’s BLC

Let’s jump right in and take a look at the only tool you’ll ever need to check and repair broken links on unlimited WordPress sites.

WordPress Broken Link Checker (BLC) Plugin

WPMU DEV acquired Broken Link Checker many years back from ManageWP, and since then have implemented many tweaks and fixes to improve its capabilities, growing its popularity to 700K downloads and its user satisfaction to 4/5 stars.

[NB: Special shoutouts to Patrick Walker, Team Lead at WP Engine’s Customer Experience Operations Team for his hard work in collaboration with our engineers to get our plugin removed from WP Engine’s and Flywheel’s block list and to Kinsta for recommending our cloud-based service.]

While we plan to continue maintaining and improving the old plugin version for the thousands of users who are still currently using it, starting from versions 2.0 and onward, we’ve also introduced a new cloud-based link checking plugin for WordPress.

Note: We’ll focus the rest of this article on our Cloud Link Checker. For more information on using the old (Local) BLC plugin, visit the plugin download page on WordPress.org.

Why Two Different Link Checking Engines?

The old Broken Link Checker plugin (we now call this version Local Link Checker) is a great tool currently used and loved by thousands of WordPress users to keep their URLs healthy.

If you love it, feel free to keep using it. Keep in mind, however, that it depends on your site’s resources to run scans, which can be affected by your hosting plan’s available resources, and, depending on what plugins are installed on your site, could cause conflicts or WP/PHP errors.

Our latest innovation — a cloud-based plugin — takes things to a whole new level and opens the door to an entirely new scope of possibilities that we couldn’t achieve before by integrating the best of the Local BLC plugin with cloud capabilities directly into The Hub (our all-in-one WordPress platform), all at no additional cost to users.

For example, some of the benefits of the new cloud-based BLC include:

• Scalability: Cloud Link Checker runs on WPMU DEV’s engines not the individual site where the plugin is installed, so you can run broken link scans on sites of any size and server type.
• Blazing Fast Scans: Being cloud-based means any dependencies on the performance of your server are eliminated, giving your scans a massive speed increase.
• No Risk of Blocklisting: Pinging external sites repeatedly from your website raises suspicious flags with internet service providers and puts your site at risk of being blocklisted. Cloud BLC doesn’t use your site’s IP address, so there’s no risk of your site(s) being blocklisted.
• Faster Updates and Instant Improvements: No more waiting for plugin version releases or worrying whether you site’s resources can handle the changes. We test, fix, and improve everything on the cloud and your site benefits instantly as soon as we deploy the changes and improvements to our engine..
• Eliminate WordPress and PHP Errors: Our cloud-based link checker doesn’t run on your site’s resources, so you won’t experience site resource errors using the plugin.
• Crawl Everything: Cloud Link Checker follows the same logic as search engine crawlers, so no URLs are missed on all standard pages and posts, menus, category pages, etc. Even better, use scheduled reports to discover broken links before the search engines see them.

Cloud BLC scans your site from top to bottom, monitoring external and internal links in your posts, pages, comments, blogroll – even custom fields.

It detects links that don’t work, as well as missing images and redirects. It will then notify you via the Broken Link Checker section of the Hub, or you can view a summary of the results in the plugin dashboard of your WordPress site.

“Love this new tool, especially since it runs off-site and doesn’t hog server resources.” Levi, WPMU DEV Member

Set Up

Whether you’re an existing Broken Link Checker plugin user or new to the tool, setup is a breeze.

You can set up the plugin from the WordPress dashboard plugin and from WPMU DEV’s Hub.

Let’s look at both methods.

From the WordPress Dashboard

1. Install and activate the plugin.
2. Go to the Link Checker menu and select Cloud.
3. If you’re logged into WPMU DEV, click ‘Enable Cloud Engine’ (otherwise, the button will say ‘Connect to WPMU DEV’), and you’ll be taken through The Free Hub onboarding process, as well as the broken links checking tool component. This will lead you directly to the BLC service tab in The Free Hub.
4. From here, run a new scan. You’ll get a notification once the scan completes, so feel free to look around The Free Hub while you wait.
5. Once you receive notification that the scan is complete, you can view the results in the Broken Link Checker section of The Free Hub.

From The Hub

1. After logging into The Hub, you’ll see Broken Link Checker listed as a new service in the menu (top & sidebar).
2. Activate this to install the plugin on the site.
3. Run a scan to see your results.

However you choose to install the Cloud Link Checker, the WordPress dashboard will display the Summary Report, while The Hub will have the Full Report – including the list of broken and dead links.

Click View Full Report to see the full scan report in The Hub.

Aside from locating your broken links, missing images, and redirects, the plugin has additional functions that let you schedule scans, send reports by email, search (with built-in filters), and export your lists for download.

Edit/Unlink Broken Links

Our members spoke…and we listened!

One of the most requested features for this tool was the ability to edit and unlink broken links.

We’re thrilled to announce that in addition to ignoring and reporting links as not broken, you can now also easily edit and unlink broken links from The Hub.

Simply click on the vertical ellipsis (3 dots) to the right of any link listed in the Hub’s scan report and select one of the available options.

Select Edit Link to point the link to a new URL, Unlink to remove the link and change it to plain text, or select one of the other options to ignore the link or to report false positives (note: we use Not Broken reports to improve BLC’s engine).

Note: New scans are temporarily disabled while the system is performing editing or unlinking operations. You can run a new scan after these processes have completed.

Also, to keep reports manageable, if the scan detects multiple instances of the same broken link URL, the report only displays the first 10 instances and notifies you how many other instances there are.

You can choose to edit or unlink only the first 10 visible links, or perform the operation on all instances of that same link.

Note that the tool does not scan hardcoded links written in php files (eg template files, shortcodes, etc.).

Run Manual Scans

You can run a manual scan any time, in both the WordPress dashboard and The Hub. Just hit the blue Run Scan button. This can be helpful if you’ve done some clean up, and want to refresh your view of the list.

Schedule Scans & Send Reports by Email

Scheduling scans is done from the Broken Link Checker plugin section in the WordPress dashboard.

At least one recipient must be added to schedule reports, so that it can be sent to a party via email.

1. From the Schedule Scan section, click Configure.
   Check that you are on the Schedule Date tab from the top menu.
2. Choose the Frequency, from Daily, Weekly, Monthly.
3. Select desired time, day, or date from the dropdown options; then click Save.

Now we will add recipients (at least one), so the report has a destination to be sent to:

1. Click on the Add Recipients tab.
2. You can either Add Users, from the list of those you’ve already added to the site, or Add By Email, for anyone at all. Remember to Save Changes.

You can deactivate the scheduled scan or change the sending schedule, as well as who it goes to, at any time.

Search

To easily locate your URLs, search results can be filtered from within The Hub.

From the summary screen, you can use the dropdowns to filter by Status or Domain.

Export Lists

You can export your broken URL lists anytime in CSV format.

To do this, simply click the Export as CSV button from the summary screen in The Hub.

And … that’s it! You’re now a BLC pro.

“I love this! Offsetting the resources to the cloud will help so many sites!” PTaubman, WPMU DEV Member

“But I’m happy with Local BLC and I don’t run multiple sites…”

If you want to keep using the older plugin, you don’t have to switch to Cloud Link Checker. Local BLC will keep working just fine and you can easily switch to the cloud version at any time inside your WordPress admin.

Just keep in mind that you can only activate one engine at a time, so if the Cloud engine is running, Local Link Checker will be inactive and vice-versa.

Note: if you run a multisite installation, BLC cloud version will only be available on the main site when network-activated. Due to the complexity of scanning multisite, subsites will continue to use the BLC Local version.

Cloud Link Checker – Perfect For Agencies

Being able to manage all of your sites from one place (The Hub) and send clients white labeled reports makes Cloud Link Checker the perfect solution for agencies, freelancers, and anyone running multiple WordPress sites.

You can also use the tool with a customized report as a way to generate new clients for your agency and upsell WordPress maintenance services to existing clients.

Compare our plugin with other broken link checking tools and you will quickly see why WPMU DEV’s cloud-based link checker is a no-brainer.

For example, here’s one of our competitors’ offering:

• Free version limitations:
  • Only one website allowed.
  • Only 200 links checked per month.
  • Only internal links are checked.
• Links are checked once every 3 days.
• Cost: $30/month (credit card required to sign up).

Whereas, with WPMU DEV’s Cloud Link Checker…

• No limitations:
  • Unlimited number of websites.
  • Unlimited number of links.
  • Internal and External links are checked (Local and Cloud versions).
• Set your own schedule (Local and Cloud versions).
• Manually check all your sites anytime.
• Cost: Free (priority support included for members only).
• No credit card required to sign up.

To get the full picture of what our broken links checker can do, see the plugin documentation.

Now that we’ve shared the good news with you about a powerful WordPress troubleshooting tool every web developer (and user) should have in their site management toolbox, let’s take a closer look at the harm broken links can cause if left unchecked and why you need a tool like Broken Link Checker.

How Broken Links Affect SEO

High-quality, relevant, and authoritative links are crucial to a website’s SEO and reputation. Broken links can have several negative impacts on search engine optimization, including:

1. Crawling and Indexing Issues: Search engine crawlers follow links to discover and index web pages. In fact, Google cites good working links as a best practice. When a crawler encounters a broken link, it cannot access the linked page and may struggle to navigate through your website effectively. This can prevent certain pages from being indexed, making them invisible to search engines and reducing their chances of appearing in search results.

2. Increased Bounce Rates: Bounce rate measure how long users spend time on a particular web page before “bouncing” to another one. Visitors who stumble upon broken links may abandon a site altogether. When visitors repeatedly choose to leave a web page almost immediately after landing on it, this leads to a high bounce rate, which sends a “low-quality” signal to search engines about the site.

3. Decreased Search Engine Rankings: Search engines aim to deliver the best user experience by providing relevant and high-quality search results. Websites with broken links may be considered less reliable and valuable by search engines, leading to lower rankings in search results. This can result in reduced organic traffic and visibility for your website.

4. Impact on Internal Link Structure: Broken links disrupt the internal link structure of your website. Internal linking helps search engines understand the relationships between different pages and establishes a hierarchy of importance. When broken links exist within this structure, it can confuse search engines and weaken the overall SEO structure of your website.

5. Lost Backlink Opportunities: Backlinks are an important factor in SEO, as they indicate the authority and relevance of your website. If other websites link to broken pages on your site, it can negatively impact your backlink profile. Broken links may deter other webmasters from linking to your site, reducing your chances of acquiring valuable backlinks.

To mitigate the negative impact of broken links on SEO, it is crucial to regularly monitor and fix them. Conducting regular website audits, using tools to identify broken links like BLC, and implementing redirects or updating links can help improve user experience, maintain search engine rankings, and enhance the overall SEO performance of your website.

Broken Links Can Also Harm Your Business

In addition to impacting your site’s SEO, broken links can also cause serious damage to your business and its reputation. This includes:

1. Poor User Experience: Studies show that 89% of consumers will shop with a competitor after having a poor user experience on a site. Broken links create a negative user experience by leading visitors to dead-end pages or error messages. Users expect links to provide relevant information or resources, and encountering broken links can be frustrating. This can decrease user engagement, increase bounce rates, and ultimately harm your website’s reputation.

2. Negative Impact on Revenue: Broken links can sometimes cause roadblocks in your sales conversion process. Investing money and time into marketing efforts to get potential customers to your site then losing sales because they cannot reach conversion pages means wasted time and lost revenue.

3. Security Vulnerabilities: Broken links can also lead to malicious attacks on your site, phishing scams, and broken links hijacking (see below)

What is Broken Links Hijacking (BLH)?

Broken Links Hijacking (BLH) refers to the practice of exploiting expired, unlinked, or inactive external links found within a webpage.

It involves malicious actors taking advantage of resources or third-party services that are no longer available or valid, such as due to expired domains. These attackers can seize control of these links to carry out various harmful activities, including defacement through acquiring expired domains, impersonation, or even cross-site scripting.

Attack Scenario and Security Risks

Let’s imagine a scenario where a business shuts down or forgets to create a social media page but still has the link to that page on its website. In this case, an attacker can simply create an account using the same name and then proceed to post offensive content or launch phishing attacks while pretending to be the business.

Illustrative Scenario

To illustrate this further, let’s consider a website called thewebsite.com that mentions a LinkedIn page URL but hasn’t actually created the page yet. As a result, when users try to visit the LinkedIn page using the URL (e.g., https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-website/), they encounter a “404 page not found” error.

Exploiting this situation, an attacker creates a fake LinkedIn page and customizes the URL to resemble “the-website.” Consequently, when a regular user accesses the company’s LinkedIn page through the URL, they unknowingly get redirected to the attacker’s controlled LinkedIn page.

What Causes Broken Links?

There are several factors that can lead to broken links. Some of the most common causes include:

1. Typo: Mistakes made when writing the link can result in broken links. This could be a simple error in typing or copy-pasting the URL incorrectly.

2. Deleted Pages: When a page is deleted from a website, any links pointing to that page will become broken. This can happen when content is removed or when a website undergoes restructuring.

3. Renamed Pages: If URLs are changed or pages are renamed without implementing proper redirects, the old links pointing to those pages will no longer work and lead to broken links.

4. Domain Name Change: When a website changes its domain name, any links pointing to the old domain will become broken unless appropriate redirects are in place.

Best Practices to Fix Broken Links

To fix broken links, it is important to follow these best practices:

1. Check Links with a Broken Link Checker (BLC): Use a reliable tool to identify broken links on your website. This will provide you with a list of broken links that need to be addressed.

2. Prioritize High Authority Pages: Start by addressing broken links on pages with high authority or those that receive significant traffic. Fixing these links will have a greater impact on your website’s overall performance.

3. Redirect to Relevant URLs: If a page has been deleted or its URL has changed, set up proper redirects (such as 301 redirects) to automatically send visitors to the relevant new URL. This ensures a seamless user experience and avoids 404 error pages.

Steps to Avoid and Fix 404 Pages

To prevent and resolve 404 pages (page not found errors), consider the following steps:

1. Preserve and Update Content: Instead of deleting pages outright, consider updating or refreshing the content. This helps avoid unnecessary 404 pages caused by removing content that other pages have linked to.

2. Implement 301 or 302 Redirects: If a page’s content still exists but its location or URL structure has changed, use 301 or 302 redirects to redirect visitors to the new page. This ensures they can still access the desired content without encountering a 404 error.

3. Reach Out to Webmasters for Updated Links: If a 404 error occurs due to an external website incorrectly linking to your content, you can try contacting the website’s author or web administrator. Requesting an update to the erroneous link can help resolve the issue, or alternatively, suggest changing the link altogether.

Fixing Broken Links: Manual vs Automated Methods

Fixing broken links has long been considered an essential practice among SEO practitioners. Broken links should be fixed quickly.

Google understands that broken links are a natural happening. However, SEOs know that taking time to correct these issues can significantly impact the site’s performance in search engines.

For these reasons and more, it’s clearly important to keep tabs on all of your site links. A small site with minimal content can easily handle checking for broken links manually. However, the more content your site has, the more difficult it becomes to conduct manual scans of your links.

Fixing broken links manually on a website and using automated methods each have their own benefits:

Benefits of Using Manual Methods to Fix Broken Links

1. Accuracy: When fixing broken links manually, you have full control and can ensure that each link is checked and corrected accurately. This allows for a more precise and tailored approach to resolving broken links.

2. Customization: Manual fixing allows you to review each broken link individually and determine the best course of action. You can update the URL, remove the link, or find alternative resources as needed.

3. Quality control: By manually fixing broken links, you can ensure that the replacement URLs are relevant, trustworthy, and provide value to your users. It allows for a more thorough evaluation of the content being linked to.

4. User experience: Manually fixing broken links allows you to consider the user experience in the process. You can choose appropriate anchor text, update navigation menus, and ensure a seamless browsing experience for your visitors.

5. Content review: While fixing broken links manually, you can review the content surrounding the broken links. This presents an opportunity to update outdated information, improve the overall quality of the content, and enhance the SEO performance of the page.

Benefits of Using Automated Methods to Fix Broken Links

1. Time-saving: Automated tools can scan your website and identify broken links quickly, saving you time and effort compared to manually checking each link individually.

2. Efficiency: With automated methods, you can fix broken links in bulk rather than addressing them one by one. This can be especially useful for large websites with a high volume of broken links.

3. Scalability: Automated tools can handle the detection and fixing of broken links on websites of any size. They can efficiently process a large number of links, ensuring comprehensive coverage.

4. Regular monitoring: Automated methods allow for regular and scheduled scans of your website, ensuring that new broken links are promptly identified and addressed.

5. Consistency: Using automated tools ensures a consistent approach to fixing broken links across your entire website. This helps maintain a unified user experience and prevents oversight of any broken links.

The choice between using manual and automated methods depends on your specific needs, resources, and preferences. The good news is, all of the risks associated with bad links are easily avoided if you make sure they are kept in proper working order.

Even better, is using a quality, automated dead link checker tool like Broken Link Checker removes the tedious and time consuming task of manually tracking and manging your broken links.

Take Link Maintenance to the Next Level with WPMU DEV’s BLC

Over 700,000 WordPress users depend on Broken Link Checker to keep their sites free of errors and performance issues caused by outdated and non-working URLs.

Our new cloud-based plugin version offers even more incredible value — enhanced speeds, no PHP/DB errors, ability to schedule scans and send email reports (including white labeled), plus the ease of managing unlimited sites from one central Hub – all while still (and always) remaining free.

Don’t let your site’s SEO and user experience take an unnecessary hit. Especially when a practical solution is directly within your reach.

Connect, scan, schedule, and fix broken links quickly and easily and keep your sites running optimally with the new Cloud-based Link Checker. Get it for free or as a WPMU DEV member.

Note: A WPMU DEV membership includes full access to all Hub features, hosting, pro plugins, and unmatched 24/7 expert support.

Before you even ask, the answer is “Yes” …

• Will I still have access to 24/7 expert support from living, breathing, humans?

Yes, you will. We have no intention of replacing our excellent support team with robots. Our AI assistant is designed to enhance and complement our support offering.

• Will this help me get answers faster so I can get back to my business sooner?

Yes, it will. That’s a great question and thanks for asking! Keep reading to learn how our AI assistant will help to speed up your business.

• Will the AI assistant automatically grow a successful business for me?

Yes, it will not. Our CEO’s name is James Farmer, not James Cameron (you can check out our James’ Avatar here) and he likes to keep it real. So, don’t hold your breath until your face turns blue waiting for some other-worldly futuristic flight of fancy, cause we’re all about delivering real support with real people (we’re just not opposed to using the latest AI technologies and tools if it helps us serve you better).

In this article, we’ll cover:

• Why Introduce an AI Assistant to WPMU DEV?
• How to Access AI-Powered Support 24/7
• Benefits of Using WPMU DEV’s AI Assistant
• What Can WPMU DEV’s AI Assistant Help You With?
• Help Us Improve Our Bot
• Get Faster Answers With WPMU Dev’s AI and Live Team Support

Why Introduce an AI Assistant to WPMU DEV?

While we are very much a “team human” company (no ifs or bots about it), our membership is growing. We offer 24/7 support to all WPMU DEV members (and your team members too as an add-on).

As we are committed to providing all members with the highest level of quality support, we are always looking for tools and ways to help us better help and support you and your business.

Using an AI-powered chat bot is just another tool that can help us to provide a better service.

So, the aim of introducing the AI assistant is not to replace our human support team, but to help speed up the quality and effectiveness of our support service to you.

We understand that customer support is essential to the success of any product or service. We want to assure you that our goal is to continue delivering on our commitment to deliver the best customer support available in the WordPress universe while enhancing your experience and providing faster and more efficient assistance through the addition of our AI-powered chat bot.

The AI-powered chat bot is designed to work alongside our human support team, not replace them. Our human support team is still available 24/7 to provide a personalized touch to the support experience and handle any complex issues that may arise.

How to Access AI-Powered Support 24/7

WPMU DEV’s assistant is available to WPMU DEV members via The Hub.

You can access it from any screen in The Hub by simply clicking on the Help button…

Or select it from the Support tab…

Launch the AI Assistant, enter your question, and hit the Submit button. That’s all there is to using it!

You’ll get an answer in seconds…

And it even provides the sources of its response, so you can click through to get a more detailed answer.

Now that you know how to use the tool (honestly, it’s that simple!), let’s look at why we think you should use it.

Benefits of Using WPMU DEV’s AI Assistant

With our AI assistant, you can expect immediate access to support 24/7 and a faster resolution to your issues and inquiries.

The addition of an AI-powered chat bot to our support team is aimed at allowing us to provide you with a faster and more comprehensive and efficient support experience for common questions and issues that we already have documented answers for.

This saves you time searching our documentation and frees up our human support resources to handle more complex problems and provide more personalized solutions and expert assistance when required.

We are confident that this improvement will enhance your experience and enable you to not only get the most out of our products and services but more importantly, help you get back to your own business sooner whenever you need to interact with us.

The benefits of using our AI-powered help bot include:

• Immediate assistance: Get immediate responses to commonly asked questions 24/7 without the need to wait or be placed in a queue.
• 24/7 availability: Our AI assistant is always available, as is our human support team for round the clock support any time of day or night.
• Faster issue resolution: Experience less frustration as our AI assistant can quickly identify and help you resolve common issues.
• Consistent responses: We are continually improving our bot to provide consistent and accurate responses to inquiries, ensuring that you receive the same high-level of support that we aim to provide to all of our members.
• Increased efficiency: With the AI assistant handling common inquiries and issues, our human support team can focus on providing you with more complex and personalized support when needed, increasing the overall efficiency of our services and providing you with a higher quality level of support.
• Self-service option: Find the tutorials and help articles you need faster and with greater ease.
• Multilingual support: Our AI assistant supports multiple languages, providing you with assistance in your preferred language.

What Can WPMU DEV’s AI Assistant Help You With?

We’ve used OpenAI’s GPT technology to train WPMU DEV’s AI assistant on all of our documentation, blogs, and tutorials.

I wanted to know what kind of questions we can ask our friendly AI help bot, so instead of bugging our busy support team for answers, I thought why not put the tool to the test and ask it directly…

Here’s the reply I got…

I then repeated this a few times and compiled the following list of areas you can expect the bot to provide reasonable answers:

• WPMU DEV plugins and services
• WordPress user management
• WordPress updates and upgrades
• WordPress troubleshooting
• WordPress themes and templates
• WordPress SEO
• WordPress security
• WordPress performance optimization
• WordPress multisite
• WordPress hosting
• WordPress eCommerce
• WordPress development
• WordPress design and theming
• WordPress customization
• WordPress community and events
• WordPress best practices
• WordPress backups and restores

That’s quite a list.

Questions You Can Ask WPMU DEV’s AI Assistant

But…what about asking it “real” questions? How does the AI assistant handle these?

Well, fortunately one of our human team members (thanks, Marcel!) carefully analyzed and reviewed over 1,200 questions from real users and compiled a report listing all the correct, almost correct, and even wrong answers given by the AI assistant.

Here is just a sample of some of the actual questions the AI assistant provided quality responses for (as judged by our team of human experts). Feel free to ask the bot the above questions and check out the replies for yourself:

• Is there a limit to how many images Smush Pro can compress?
• Does Defender work with the hosted site WAF?
• Is it possible to move non-hosted domains in and can all domains have unlimited email forwarding?
• Can I use WooCommerce on a silver/bronze plan?
• Can Forminator forward the form data that the customer entered to the email notification feature?
• A new site showed up in My Sites that ends with .local, where did this come from?
• I’m getting a Error 504 – Gateway timeout on [domain]
• Can I import Gravity forms into Forminator
• If I associate a client with a domain, will that client automatically be billed for it?
• Can I set my own pricing for domains?
• Where i can find code epp
• How to change the admin email address?
• How can I submit a feature request
• Will I be charged to add a connected domain to Domains
• I want to do specific changes to my forms I integrated via forminator.
• Can I schedule cron jobs?
• If I cancel my subscription, will I still have access to the pro features until the next renewal?
• Enabling CDN breaks the images when we enable it for the first time. Can I push the images to CDN manually before enabling the CDN on the site to prevent image issues on the live site?
• How to fix image resize report
• Can I have a mix of free and paid sites?
• Can I recover a deleted site?
• Why is my images blurry with Smush?
• What does suspend site do?
• Can I connect a multi-site WordPress site network and install all the plugins on all of the site even If I only have the Basic Plan?
• Does WPMU hosting have GD PHP Library installed?

Avoid Asking These Questions

You can ask the AI Assistant anything you like, but unless it’s about WPMU DEV products and services or WordPress-related, don’t expect to get a helpful reply.

More importantly, the bot does not have access to your personal details or account information, so it can’t answer questions like:

• “My website is down”
• “Why is my site not loading XYZ?”
• “What are the best templates to use for my website?”
• “Why didn’t I get hero points for commenting on last week’s DOTW?”

For assistance with anything like the above, please contact the support team.

It’s The Best Bot We’ve Got (And We’ll Improve It A Lot!)

WPMU DEV’s AI Assistant still has some ways to go and some challenges to overcome but we believe you will find this tool will become increasingly useful when you need fast answers to many commonly-asked questions.

As the tool is still new and still being trained, it doesn’t always give you the answer you expect, but you can help us train it just by using it, so it will get better at serving you and all of our members.

Simply ask a question, and if you like the answer, click on the “thumbs up” (Helpful) icon below the response.

Our AI assistant is continuously improving through machine learning algorithms. Your feedback will be taken into account in the bot’s learning process to provide more accurate and relevant responses over time and help deliver you a better experience.

If you find that the bot’s reply doesn’t answer your question or help to resolve your issue, don’t fret, don’t sweat, our helpful humans are still the best help you’ll ever get…and they’re only a click away!

If the answer you get from the bot is not helpful, click on the “thumbs down” (Not helpful) icon below the response and then click on the Contact support now link and you will be immediately put through to our support channel.

In some cases, the assistant will even recommend that you contact the support team for help.

And of course, you can always just click right through to our support team directly…it’s always your choice!

Get Faster Answers With WPMU Dev’s 24/7 AI Bot and Live Team Support

We know from hundreds of genuine user reviews and user-driven awards that our expert and dedicated support is essential to the success of our members and we assure you that our goal is to continue delivering the best customer support in the WordPress universe while providing faster and more efficient assistance.

As mentioned earlier, the aim of bringing you WPMU DEV’s AI-powered assistant is not to replace our human support team, but to help speed up the quality and effectiveness of our support services. Our team is always available 24/7 to provide personal support and handle any questions or issues you experience in your WordPress business.

WPMU DEV’s AI assistant and access to our 24/7 expert support team is available to all WPMU DEV members. If you’re not a member yet, we invite you to try us today for free.

Thanks a bot!

WPMU DEV has earned all of these awards by delivering products of genuine value to users.

The above awards cannot be bought, bribed, or dreamed up – they must be earned by delivering users products of genuine value, as voted by the G2.com user community. No fake reviews or made-up testimonials allowed!

(On that note, feel free to visit WPMU DEV’s G2 profile page whenever you like for hundreds of authentic user reviews and testimonials about our products.)

For a software company to win a G2 award is a big deal, as the award does not come from artificially generated means, such as bots or fake reviewers.

Most importantly, however, what all these awards mean is that the company is committed to delivering a product of genuine quality and value to users.

As the G2 reports below show, WPMU DEV is committed to providing the best WordPress site management software available…

We’re also continually improving our managed WordPress hosting service and climbing up the charts…

In fact, we’re currently one of the world’s top 10 choices of web hosting providers…

So, if you are evaluating using a new software product or service and don’t know where to start researching or who to trust for unbiased, honest, and trustworthy reviews, G2 is a great place to start.

Who is G2?

G2.com is a software review company trusted and used by more than 60 million people each year (including employees at all Fortune 500 companies) to make technology-buying decisions based on authentic peer reviews.

Here is what just some of the hundreds of real WPMU DEV user reviews look like:

“The best thing is their HOSTING, PLUGINS and SUPPORT. It’s all the best! I love the HUB. I love the reports and the automation and the plugins and the support. It really just keeps on getting better and better all the time and I already thought it was great a few years ago when I joined.” Paul C. G2 Review

And…

“Their support is second to none. They’ve helped recover several sites despite not being the actual host. The suite of plugins that they provide is really an entire solution to manage your WordPress sites. SEO, Page Speed, Security, Managing Clients, Etc… 10/10” Frank W. G2 Review

And this one too…

“I like the wide variety of plugins and services available that has been growing throughout the years. I’ve been a customer for many many years now and I’m beyond happy, especially when I need support, customer support is always fantastic and quick to help!! Completely recommend this to any webmaster/website owner.” Vanessa S. G2 Review

You can check out hundreds more reviews from genuine users on WPMU DEV’s G2 profile.

But… Anyone Can Create Fake Reviews And Testimonials, Right?

Not on G2.

While on many sites and platforms it’s relatively easy to create dozens of fake accounts and employ bots to populate these accounts with fake reviews and testimonials, G2 has a rigorous vetting process to make sure that only authentic and genuine reviews from real users get posted on the site.

In fact, as WPMU DEV’s Chief Business Officer Savo Vujovic states: “G2 eliminates fake reviews and testimonials by requiring users to fill out a huge form and then using a complex manual process of reviewing and moderating each submission before these are approved for display on their site. Users have to jump through many hoops and must really want to post a review or testimonial about a company, especially as many are doing this without receiving incentives or commissions.”

For example, according to G2’s criteria, you can see that the review shown below comes from:

• Validated Reviewer – This reviewer is real and was validated through LinkedIn.
• Verified Current User – The reviewer uploaded a screenshot or submitted the review in-app verifying them as a current user.
• Review Source: Organic – The review was written entirely without invitation or incentive from G2, a seller, or an affiliate.

In addition to organic (i.e. unsolicited) reviews, G2 does send out invitations (either from G2 or on behalf of the organization) to encourage genuine users to leave reviews, and it allows reviews to be incentivized by offering users something like a gift card as thanks for completing the review.

Looking at the review activity, you can see that out of a total of 470+ reviews submitted by users, over one-third of all WPMU DEV’s reviews were submitted by users without invitation, solicitation, or incentives to encourage these submissions.

G2’s Review Sources

To help you understand where user reviews published on G2 come from, here are their review sources explained:

• Organic: These reviews are generated without invitation from G2 or the organization.
• G2 invite: These reviews are submitted via a G2 landing page as a result of an invitation from G2.
• G2 invite on behalf of seller: These reviews are submitted as part of incentivized G2 review campaigns on the organization’s behalf.
• Seller invite: These reviews are incentivized by the organization.
• In-app: These reviews are generated via G2 integration options (e.g. Delighted, Medallia, and Pendo), as well as G2 in-app review prompts.
• G2 Gives program: These reviews are submitted as part of the incentivized G2 Gives program.

G2 Reviews Give You The Good AND The Not So Good

What makes an unbiased review is being able to read what users love the most about the product… and any areas they feel the company is falling short of delivering on value, quality, or service.

G2’s review process encourages users to share anything they dislike…

So, Where Does WPMU DEV Sit Amongst All This?

G2’s complex approval process not only results in authentic, credible, and trustworthy product and company reviews and testimonials, but they also employ an advanced methodology and sophisticated software algorithms to collate, analyze, compute, and produce “best of” awards every quarter to companies based on criteria such as usability, ease of implementation, user adoption, user satisfaction, market presence, and more.

WPMU DEV has earned G2 awards in the following product categories:

• WordPress Site Management
• Managed Hosting
• Web Hosting

And here’s what the awards mean (and how G2 awards them):

• Leader: Products in the Leader quadrant in the Grid Report are rated highly by G2 users and have substantial Satisfaction and Market Presence scores.
• Leader Small-Business: Products in the Leader quadrant in the Small-Business Grid Report are rated highly by G2 users and have substantial Satisfaction and Market Presence scores.
• High Performer Mid-Market: Products in the High Performer quadrant in the Mid-Market Grid Report have high customer Satisfaction scores and low Market Presence scores compared to the rest of the category.
• Best Results: The Best Results product in the Results Index earned the highest overall Results rating in its category.
• Best Results Small-Business: The Best Results product in the Results Index earned the highest overall Results rating in its category.
• Best Relationship: The Best Relationship product in the Relationship Index earned the highest Relationship rating in its category.
• Best Relationship Mid-Market: The Best Relationship product in the Relationship Index earned the highest Relationship rating in its category.
• Best Relationship Small-Business: The Best Relationship product in the Relationship Index earned the highest Relationship rating in its category.
• Best Usability: The Best Usability product in the Usability Index earned the highest Usability rating in its category.
• Best Usability Small-Business: The Best Usability product in the Usability Index earned the highest Usability rating in its category.
• Most Implementable: The Most Implementable product in the Implementation Index earned the highest Implementation rating in its category.
• Most Implementable Small-Business: The Most Implementable product in the Implementation Index earned the highest Implementation rating in its category.

Additional awards:

• Users Love Us – The Users Love Us badge is earned after collecting 20 reviews with an average rating of 4.0 stars.

G2 Awards are calculated based on where companies are positioned in a G2 Market Report.

For example, here is a screenshot of a G2 market index report for Managed Hosting, showing WPMU DEV as a leading hosting provider of managed hosting for small businesses:

For more information on the criteria used for inclusion and scoring of Market Reports, check out G2’s Research Scoring and Methodologies guide.

WPMU DEV G2 2023 Winter Quarter Awards

Here is the list of awards WPMU DEV received for the 2023 Winter quarter:

• Leader – WordPress Site Management, Managed Hosting, Webhosting, WordPress Site Management (Small Business), Managed Hosting (Small Business), Webhosting (Small Business), Managed Hosting (Europe), Webhosting (Europe), Webhosting (Asia Pacific)
• Best Relationship – WordPress Site Management, Managed Hosting, Managed Hosting (Mid-Market), Webhosting (Mid-Market), WordPress Site Management (Small Business), Managed Hosting (Small Business)
• Best Results – WordPress Site Management, Webhosting (Mid-Market), WordPress Site Management (Small Business)
• Best Support – Managed Hosting (Mid-Market), Webhosting (Mid-Market)
• Best Usability – WordPress Site Management, Managed Hosting (Mid-Market), Webhosting (Mid-Market), WordPress Site Management (Small Business)
• Best Est. ROI – Webhosting (Mid-Market)
• Best Meets Requirements – Managed Hosting (Mid-Market), Webhosting (Mid-Market)
• High Performer – Managed Hosting (Mid-Market), Webhosting (Mid-Market)
• Highest User Adoption – Webhosting (Mid-Market)
• Most Implementable – WordPress Site Management, WordPress Site Management (Small Business), Webhosting (Mid-Market)
• Easiest To Use – Managed Hosting (Mid-Market), Webhosting (Mid-Market)
• Users Most Likely To Recommend – Webhosting (Mid-Market)

WPMU DEV G2 2022 Fall Quarter Awards

Here is the list of awards WPMU DEV received for the 2022 Fall quarter:

• Leader – WordPress Site Management, WordPress Site Management (Small Business), Managed Hosting, Managed Hosting (Small Business), Web Hosting, Web Hosting (Small Business)
• High Performer – Managed Hosting (Mid-Market), Web Hosting (Mid-Market)
• Best Results – WordPress Site Management, WordPress Site Management (Small Business)
• Best Usability – WordPress Site Management, WordPress Site Management (Small Business)
• Most Implementable – WordPress Site Management, WordPress Site Management (Small Business)
• Best Relationship – WordPress Site Management, WordPress Site Management (Small Business), Managed Hosting, Managed Hosting (Mid-Market), Managed Hosting (Small Business)

Why G2 Should Matter to You

In a world where so much can be faked and skewed, companies that provide unbiased, honest, and trustworthy reviews like G2 can be a product user’s best friend.

So, if you are considering purchasing any software or technology solution, check out what real users are saying on G2 before you buy. It could save you a ton of money and hassle later and help to prevent buyer’s remorse.

And if you do decide to give WPMU DEV a try, make sure to leave your honest review ;)