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Actionable tips and updates to help you ship plugins, themes, and client sites faster
8 min readWordPress auto-update plugins: how to turn them on, and what the rollback actually checks
Plugin auto-updates take one click to enable. Since 6.6, WordPress rolls back an update that causes a fatal error, but it only checks one logged-out request to your home page, and here is what that misses.
5 min readWordPress Network Admin: where it is, why it is missing, and what Upgrade Network does
Network Admin lives at /wp-admin/network/ and only appears for Super Admins on a multisite install. Here is why it goes missing, and the one button in it, Upgrade Network, that is worth rehearsing on a copy first.
7 min readWordPress admin slow: find the one request that is slow before changing anything
Every guide hands you the same list of twelve fixes. Open the network tab first: a slow admin is usually one request, and which one it is decides which fix is even relevant.
8 min readWordPress media library not showing images: find out which half is broken first
Switch to list view before you touch permissions or caches. The grid and the list read the same rows through completely different code, so which one works tells you where the fault is.
9 min readHow to migrate a WordPress site to a new host without a broken hour
Copy the site, verify it on the new server, then change DNS last. The order is what keeps the site up, and the hosts-file preview every guide recommends tests less than you think.
11 min readStill on PHP 7.4? Test your WordPress site on PHP 8.3 before you upgrade
PHP 7.4 gets no release with the fix for two critical remote code execution bugs patched on 21 October 2026, so SandyWP no longer runs it. Here is how to test a 7.4 site or plugin on PHP 8.3 before you switch, and how to reproduce a 7.4-only bug without exposing it.
7 min readHow to disable WordPress automatic updates (and which layer you are actually turning off)
WordPress auto-updates are five separate decisions, not one switch. Here are the exact wp-config lines and WP-CLI commands for each, the precedence order, and why WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE does nothing to your plugins.
6 min readHow to clear WordPress cache, and how to tell which cache was lying to you
Purging everything in sequence works, but it tells you nothing. One curl shows you which of the five layers served the stale page, and wp cache flush does nothing at all on most installs.
6 min readWordPress wp-admin not working: read the status code first
Before you rename the plugins folder over FTP, run one curl. The HTTP status wp-admin returns tells you which of five different failures you have, and two of them need no file access at all.