Agency guide to scaling WordPress site management workflows

Scaling WordPress site management is where many agencies start losing time on things they can’t easily track, explain, or bill. Until now, that is.

At some point, every WordPress agency managing multiple client sites hits the same wall. What used to be a simple setup: one site, one person, a handful of plugins – turns into a system with multiple sites, clients and people making changes every day. Designers adjust layouts, devs work on improving code, editors update content and clients „just tweak this one little thing“.

Don’t get us wrong, nothing about this is unusual. What comes with a price is handling it with the same habits and systems you had when the agency was smaller. And, when there is no clear system for managing changes – agencies lose time on things that don’t show up on their invoices. Things like tracking down what’s changed, fixing issues no one remembers creating, constant explaining to clients without having clear answers. All those minutes (hours even!) add up, margins shrink – leaving teams stuck in reacting instead of delivering.

So, scaling WordPress work is needed and this very guide breaks down exactly how Agencies can scale site management workflows with ease and without the constant struggle. Sit back, have your notes ready and start implementing what we are about to share.

The hidden cost of an unmanaged WordPress site changes

Most agency problems don’t usually start with a big failure, but with small, everyday changes.

A page layout is adjusted, a section is removed, a shortcode is updated. And everything looks fine – until it doesn’t. In the blink of an eye, time is spent retracing steps: figuring out what changed, when it happened and who was involved. The issue itself may take minutes to fix, but the investigation rarely does.

This very scenario is where agencies quietly lose money.

Unbillable hours pile up in Slack threads, back and forth calls and a lot of guesswork. Team members hesitate to touch things they didn’t build while clients get vague explanations because there’s no clear source of truth. And over time, this reactive mode becomes the norm.

What makes this harder is that most of these changes are not necessarily happening in code. They happen inside the WordPress admin area where agencies manage sites daily.

For many agencies, that place is WPBakery, their primary page builder for WordPress.

The challenge starts when this workspace isn’t treated like one. Designers, editors and project managers spend a large part of their day inside the builder, making real, production-level changes to sites. If everyone inside it works differently: without shared standards, permissions, or reusable structures, these changes begin to create friction. People overwrite each other’s work; pages drift away from agreed layouts and fixes take longer because no one is sure how a page was put together.

Agencies that scale well approach WPBakery as part of a structured WordPress site management workflow. They define how it’s used across projects, who is allowed to change what and which patterns should be reused instead of rebuilt. Common pages are based on approved templates. Roles and permissions are aligned with responsibilities, leaving teams to spend less time fixing problems and more time delivering work. It becomes easier to onboard new team members, easier to maintain consistency across sites and easier to manage change without slowing everything down.

Even with structure in place, agencies still need a way to see what’s actually happening day to day, which is where the following tools come in handy.

Dynamic shortcodes

As agencies produce more pages across more sites, repetition is what often becomes a real cost. The same titles, excerpts, links, custom fields and images are manually updated in multiple places – which slows teams down and increases the chance of mistakes.

This is where Dynamic shortcodes integration with WPBakery becomes especially valuable.

By defining the source once and reusing it across layouts, agencies reduce both editing time and human error, updates are made in one place and reflected everywhere, without jumping between screens or manually fixing inconsistencies. Moreover, editors benefit just as much as they get a predictable way to output structured data like titles, excerpts, links, featured images, and custom fields, while keeping layouts clean and consistent.

WP Activity Log

A tool that provides agencies a clear record of WordPress admin activity across a site, including changes made inside the WordPress admin area. Instead of relying on memory or back-and-forth messages, teams can now quickly see what was changed, when it happened and who made the change.

For agency owners, this visibility removes a major source of unbillable work. It shortens time investigating, supports clearer internal communication and makes it easier to manage multiple sites and contributors without slowing delivery.

BugHerd

As teams and clients grow, the way feedback comes in becomes just as important as how changes are made. Random messages scattered across Slack, emails, internal docs and what not – this quickly turns into confusion and not knowing who said what. Familiar scenario?

This is where BugHerd comes to help agencies centralize and structure client feedback directly on the site where teams get clear, contextual input tied to specific pages and elements they work on.

For you as an agency owner, this means fewer impulsive changes, better prioritization and more control over what enters the workflow in the first place.

Patchstack

As agencies scale, the WordPress security risk profile of their sites changes. Think more plugins, more integrations, more frequent updates – all these increase the chances that a vulnerability slips in unnoticed. Most issues don’t come from reckless changes, but from outdated components and human errors aka dependencies no one had time to review.

Patchstack helps agencies stay ahead of these risks by monitoring vulnerabilities across the WordPress ecosystem. Instead of reacting after a problem surfaces, teams get visibility into known issues affecting plugins, themes and core components before they turn into incidents. As an agency, think of this tool as another layer of protection to the workflow, something that we have with them, too.

ManageWP

With rising numbers of client sites to work with, managing them individually becomes less and less realistic. Logging into dozens of dashboards, checking updates one by one and manually keeping track of site health quickly turns into wasted time. And time is money.

This is where a tool like ManageWP comes in handy. It gives agencies centralized WordPress site management in one place, which helps keep workflows efficient and predictable across multiple sites. Think updates, basic maintenance tasks, high-level site status checks – all can be handled without constantly switching contexts. And the best thing: this doesn’t replace how work is done inside WPBakery; it serves as support by reducing the operational load around it.

What this WordPress site management setup actually gives agencies

Taken together, this setup covers the parts of the WordPress workflow that cost agencies the most time and energy.

It answers how:

• changes are requested: feedback is captured clearly and contextually, instead of scattered across messages (BugHerd).
• changes are built: work happens in a shared workspace, using agreed templates, patterns, and permissions (WPBakery).
• repetition is reduced: Dynamic shortcodes eliminate manual updates and inconsistencies across pages.
• changes are tracked: there’s a clear record of what changed, when it happened and who made the change (WP Activity Log).
• vulnerabilities are handled proactively: risks are monitored before they turn into incidents (Patchstack).
• multiple sites are managed efficiently: maintenance and oversight happen from a single place, without constant context switching (ManageWP).

With this tool stack by your side, you are building, structuring and managing at scale, without compromising people, time nor money. As teams and site portfolios grow, this kind of structure becomes the difference between reacting to problems and staying in control.

And if you’re working with a team, this is the kind of conversation worth sharing internally before things start getting complicated and/or breaking at scale.