What We Look After on Your Site, and How to Ask for a Change

You, or the developer you work with, can change almost anything inside WordPress. A few things sit underneath WordPress, in how the server runs your site. A wrong choice there can take a working site offline in a way that is not obvious from the outside, so we make those changes for you. This is not about making you ask permission. It is so that the person pressing the button knows exactly what is on that server and can put it back.

What we look after

• The PHP version. Your site's page shows which one it runs. A newer version is faster and safer, but a single old plugin can stop a site loading on it, so we check the site first and move it when it is ready.
• Which server the site is on. If a site needs more room or a different location, we move it and make sure nothing breaks on the way.
• Updates. How and when WordPress itself, plugins and themes are updated on your site.
• Server settings. Things like upload size limits, memory limits, caching rules, redirects that need to happen before WordPress loads, and scheduled tasks.
• Running commands. WP-CLI, database imports and exports, and search and replace across the database.

How to ask

Open a ticket from the dashboard: go to Support and create a new ticket. Put in:

• Which site. The web address is enough.
• What you need, in your own words. "Upload limit up to 256MB so we can import a video" is perfect. You do not need the technical name for anything.
• Why, if it is not obvious, and when it has to be done by.
• Anything to avoid, such as "not during our Saturday sale".

A developer you have brought in can ask too. If they do not have a login to your account, invite them, or open the ticket yourself and pass on what they need.

What happens next

We check what the change would do to that site first. If it carries a risk, for example a PHP update with a plugin that might not cope, we tell you what we found and agree a time with you before touching anything.

Things you do not need to ask for

These are yours to do whenever you like, from the site's page or from inside WordPress:

• Getting into the site's files over SFTP
• Making a staging copy
• Putting the site behind a password
• Installing and configuring plugins and themes, and changing content, in WordPress