Since reading it, I have deliberately structured systems into everything I build to make it very easy for my team to complete work to my exact specifications.
One area where this seems to be unique from my friends and SEO experts is in blog network management. Not only is this process systemised, it is also simplified for my VA’s.
Let me give you an example…
How does your site manager VA install plugins? Do they pick a few from the list you choose? Are they the same every time?
All my VA needs to do is to choose a random option between 1 and 10, it then automatically installs a set of plugins for them.
Not only does this eliminate the time of manually installing plugins, it allows me to be in full control over which plugins are installed.
In this free guide, we will be covering the systems and tools that I’m using in my networks to make it more manageable for myself and my team.
Skip all this hassle and rent links from my personal network. Details here.
The first tool is MainWP.
Out of the box, it is not great, but with a bit of customisation it allows improved security and systematic management for your team.
Before we cover the setup of this, let me show you the process of my team…
The site manager is given cPanel access to install WordPress using Softaculous. They are given notes on what they website will be about, the topic of the website, the site name, and the site description.They will then install MainWP child plugin on the blog, and set it up with one of our MainWP network managers.
While inside the network manager, they will 1-click install one of ten pre-selected groups of plugins to the new blog.
After this, they will install a free theme for the blog. Before adding 2-3 pre-defined types of page content, and 2-3 types of post content.
These pages can vary from recommended links, to resources, about pages, contact pages, advertising enquiries, etc. The posts can range from top lists, to infographics, video posts, standard articles, and so on.
After this, I will create tasks for our writer which include the article title to eliminate time spent thinking. The writer will also receive the domain, blog description, and network name.
Once the writer has written all of the content, they can simply 1-click login to the relevant network manager, select the site they need to submit to, and publish the blog post as usual.
These posts are all scheduled to avoid going live at the same time.
On top of this, every day all the comments on our websites are removed to stop them stacking up and using hosting resources.
Every so often I login and activate our file editing blocker script, which prevents our themes/plugin files being edited if we were to get hacked, done in two clicks.
Contents
Does this vary from your process?
Here is the tools we use to do it…
1. MainWP Dashboard
This allows you to manage a network of websites using the child plugin.
2. MainWP Child Plugin
This connects the blog with the network manager/dashboard plugin for easy management
3. MainWP Code Snippets Extension
Create a new snippet with the information below to block people from using the plugin/theme editor in your blog. This means if you get hacked, they can’t insert hidden code/links in your scripts.
Snippet Name: Disable Admin File Edits
Snippet Description: Remove theme and plugin editing capabilities.
Select “This Code Snippet executes a function on the Child Site”
In the blue code editor area, enter:
<?php
define(‘DISALLOW_FILE_EDIT’, true);
?>
4. MainWP Favorites Extension
This allows you to upload favourite plugins and themes into your main dashboard, create favourite groups, and make easy 1-click installs.
5. MainWP Maintenance Extension
Set maintenance options to keep your databases clean and eliminate server resources (Read: save yourself specs and money on hosting).
6. Custom 1-Click Network Login Script
If you have multiple networks, for different clients or money sites, or different niches, this makes it easy for your team.
This is a custom script I wrote up, you can download it later in this article.
What about the footprints?
That is simple, you can solve that in a single switch…
But that’s not all…
The above tools make it very easy to manage your WordPress blogs. However, You still need systems in place for your team to setup your blogs for you, publish articles to your network, and to keep track of your whole network.
Without custom solutions (which I use for some of this), the easiest way of doing this is by using different spreadsheets.
The four I recommend creating are:
- Managing your full network – domains, hosting, blogs
- PBN Posting Template – for your content writer
- PBN Creation Template – for your site creator
- Anchor Text Tracking – for each money or client site
This takes a lot of thought initially, but will overall make your life much easier. Let’s break down what needs to be in each of these spreadsheets…
Network Management
- Domains Sheet
- Registrar – rows containing registrar, and login details
- Domain – column with domain name
- Registrant Email – column, if a registrant email was needed for whois
- Email Password – column containing password for registrant email
- Hosting Sheet
- Host – the domain / url of the hosting provider or client panel
- Username – billing area login username
- Password – billing area login password
- Domains – list of all domains hosted there
- Server – if available, name of server selected
- Billing – billing details
- Sites Sheet
- Domain – the domain of your blog
- cPanel Username – cpanel login for this domain
- cPanel Password – cpanel login for this domain
- WP Username
- WP Password
- Network – if you have multiple networks, enter the name
- Topic – for future reference, topic of the blog
- Notes – explain what the site is about, for future reference
- Links – list of all domains this blog links to (I only list the domain once)
This spreadsheet is exclusively for your eyes. Be VERY careful how you protect it. Your team do notneed access to this document, it is purely for you.
PBN Posting Template
I do not use this myself as we have a custom project management system built, but this is the structure we use in our system.
- Status – for reference
- Blog – the domain of the pbn site
- Network – if you have multiple networks, which one it is on
- Blog Topic – topic of the pbn site
- Blog Description – description of the pbn site
- Anchor Text 1 – first anchor text to use
- URL 1 – url for the first anchor text
- Anchor Text 2 – second anchor text to use
- URL 2 – url for the second anchor text
- Article Title – title to use for post, makes their job easier and exactly what you want
Couple things you may be wondering here… We do a maximum of 2 links in a post. If the blog is niche relevant to the money site or client site, many times I will just leave the article title empty.
After filling in this document, I would immediately enter the information into the “Anchor Text Tracking Template”, as well as update the “Network Management” spreadsheet to include the domain as a link.
PBN Creation Template
Immediately upon purchasing a domain and setting it up with hosting, I will fill out this template for our site creator to complete.
We use Dropbox to share the file, as soon as they have completed it, the information is copy and pasted directly into the Network Management spreadsheet and deleted from dropbox.
This spreadsheet contains the following columns…
- Status – for reference
- Domain – the domain of the new blog
- cPanel URL – the url to access cPanel
- cPanel Username
- cPanel Password
- WP Username – for site creator to fill in
- WP Password – for site creator to fill in
- Site Name – for WP setup
- Site Description – for WP setup
- Network – if you have multiple networks, which one to put it on
- Topic – for MainWP and future reference, topic of the blog
- Notes – explain what the site is about, sometimes setup details
Anchor Text Tracking Template
Once again, I do not use this document as our custom system manages it. This is basically how our system does it though…
- URL – row with the URL (page) that is being linked to
- Anchor Text – column with the anchor text used
- Site – column with the site (domain) used for each anchor text
You may also want a ratio of each anchor text to each URL/page, I rarely ever repeat anchor texts so this isn’t important.
Let’s not leave you hanging though..
So far I have introduced you to a number of cool systems you can create. Some of those…
- Custom 1-Click Network Login Script
- Network Management Spreadsheet
- PBN Posting Template
- PBN Creation Template
- and the Anchor Text Tracking Template
Will all require quite a lot of effort on your behalf to put together, even if I’ve given you the exact blueprints to them. To make your life even easier, I am going to share the love and give you each of these for free.
Just enter your details below and I’ll send it to you…
Download the PBN Worksheets
Subscribe to our newsletter and get the PBN Worksheets for FREE
Your friend in building kickass blog networks,
– Daryl
Skip all this hassle and rent links from my personal network. Details here.
Hi. Great post. Where’s the the Like/download button for the mentioned templates?
Thanks.
My bad, forgot to include it. Set it up as an autoresponder now, so if you enter your email address in the post above it’ll be auto-emailed to you.
Hi Daryl,
How do I get these freebies:
Custom 1-Click Network Login Script
Network Management Spreadsheet
PBN Posting Template
PBN Creation Template
and the Anchor Text Tracking Template
Thank you
Oops, forgot to include it! Set it up as a welcome email for the mailing list now, enter your email above (in the post) and it’ll be auto sent to you.
Hey Daryl,
I entered my email. No email from you.
Thanks
Weird, I just manually sent an email to you now with them. Enjoy 🙂
Hey Daryl,
great info here! I also didn’t receive an email with the download link.
Thanks
Oops, missed your comment. Just sent them to you now manually 🙂
Sign me up for the Beta!
About 8 years ago I was given a copy of the emyth revisited and it changed my life forever. Everything I build now is build from the ground up on systems. Duplicatible, scalable and manageable. Thanks for giving us a peek into your systems. I love that many of the worksheets we use are very close to yours and as you said, they improve over time if you spend more time working ON your business than you do IN it. Just as Micheal says in the emyth.
If you haven’t read the emyth mastered, it can help you really see how powerful specific systems can be in growing a massive enterprise.
Thanks again Daryl!
Definitely a must read for all business owners. Still amazes me how few businesses have actually built systems! Imagine how much more money local fast food places would make if they gave the exact same amount of food every time, hence why McDonalds and the huge companies make so much money.
Thanks for the system, Daryl! MainWP is pretty cool so far and I think I will be getting a lot of miles out of it. I can’t believe I didn’t know this existed, I didn’t even think to look! I just purchased the users extension which seems neat so far… I figure it’s best to give VAs one login where they can access all the sites with publishing permissions only. Your downloadable templates are great too. It’s getting close to taking the system for a test drive!
Hi Daryl,
Awesome stuff as usual. But I am already subscribed. So how do I get hold of this stuff
You should have already got it in your welcome email when you subscribed.
Otherwise, another way you can access it is inside the members Facebook group. I just put up a sticky post there with all of them.
Enjoy 🙂
Great info, so with what tools did you built your custom project management system? Is MS Project any good for this? Thanks!
Glad you liked it!
It’s a custom web-based tool coded in PHP.
Do you need to add the code snippet AND run it or would you only run it if you were hacked?
Hey Daryl,
Just catching up with this post 8 months later than I should be 🙂
2 very quick q’s about it!
– Does adding the anti-file editing snippet to every site not constitute a footprint?
– Can one use the backup and security extensions without them being a footprint?
Thanks!
Zak
Thanks for sharing this massive post.. Do you have any thoughts about GSA Search Engine Ranker and fcsnetworker??
Hi, great article! Signed up for your newsletter – confirmed the Awber optin, but got no email from you with files?
Thanks Sveinung. Already sorted the files with you over FB 🙂
i’m trying to get the files too but it always says that i’m already subscribed, so i can’t proceed. now what?
Check your inbox for a welcome email from my name. If not, message me on Facebook and I’ll hook you up.
Dear Daryl
I signed up to receive the download for the PBA Systems page emplates and confirmed my email address but have not received this link yet. Can you sort this out for me please?
Gail
Hey Daryl,
do you have a list with themes, that do not automatically use the excerpt function?
It´s a pain in the ass to find themes without that excerpt function…
regards,
Serge
I don’t have a list, I just taught my VA how to do it.
Hey Daryl,
What type of VA’s do you hire? Are they SEOs in upwork or another category? I heard that you shouldnt hire SEOs as VA’s because its better to teach someone from scratch. Thanks.
That’s exactly my thinking too. I use OnlineJobs.ph for full/part time, and UpWork for one-off, but they’re untrained and taught to do it my way.
You can see exactly how I do that in this free training: http://systematicscaling.com/
Thanks!
Hey Darryl,
I finished your course last week and set up 5 of my own PBN’s. Needless to say, it was a nightmare and it took a lot of time out of my hands that I could have spent on link building and content creation.
Definitely need to outsource now and learn how to do that properly now that I got the PBN stuff down. Could you link me to your course where you provide the systems you use with your VA’s?
Loved the first course mate even the weird “PBN Mastery” intros lol.
Thanks again!!
Hey buddy, great content you have here! I would like to know what’s your opinion about using WordPress Multisites, as it basically cover many of the things MainWP is supposed to do. Cheers!
I haven’t tried them, but I’d be careful if they hide footprints or not. MainWP have an option to hide footprints so nobody knows you’re using them.
Hi Daryl, I can’t find the Hosting Sheet in PBN Management Sheets.zip. Can you send it to me?
It should be a tab inside the PBN Management Sheet. Take a look, otherwise I messed something up.
I’m that guy who usually don’t leaves comments, but I needed to just say this post is genius !
Haha, thanks for breaking the habit to leave a comment Alex.
I am assuming you don’t use this system anymore right ? As it is more than 2 years old.
I constantly looking for a system to automate a big part of the hole process.
Could probably do with an update to this post, but I’m still using MainWP today, makes everything far easier.
Thanks a lot dude for providing us so much information for free. I loved reading your site and got a lot’s of things to know about PBN’s. Will give a try to PBN’s soon. keep sharing such stuff with us.
Appreciate it dude, thanks for commenting
Hi Daryl.
In theory, this looks good (testing pbn). But in practice it is not so easy to test the PBN. For example my niche.
Site № 1 – 25, 26, 28, 30, 32
Site № 2 – 24, 29, 28, 31, 36
Site № 3 – 22, 26, 23, 31, 33
Sites very much shakes (even without links), if I put 1 anchor link, it will not give rise to 5-10 + positions, which means that I will not be able to estimate the real impact of the link. Because these requests and without references very much shakes.
The question is how you can track a positive result, if the position is not permanent. Thank you.
If you’ve had time to look at my website, you can see that it’s not the type of “money site” that you’re used to or most interested in.
I’m a 74-yr-old realtor that now specializes in “seniors real estate” transactions. Doesn’t sound too exciting, does it?
However, it’s got more potential than you think – and here’s why. There are about 10,000 Seniors Real Estate Specialists in the US and Canada, and I’m one of them. I’m trying to build a marketing machine that will attract Baby Boomers to this site and convert to a lead. I can then refer that lead to anywhere in the US and Canada and get a referral fee from the SRES agent to which I refer the lead.
In effect, I’m trying to build a referral business, where I become the marketing arm for 10,000 SRES agents. Our market is about 100 million Baby Boomers. This is kind of a different approach to selling residential real estate.
I started looking through your stuff, and I just can’t handle it. I don’t know enough about SEO to start there. Because of my age I need a quicker solution but I’ve got to start somewhere. Where do you recommend I start for beginner’s training.
Hey Raleigh, I would honestly recommend just outsourcing everything. No point wasting your time learning this when you can pay someone that’s an expert at it, while you focus on growing your business.
Hi Raleigh, I’m very curious to know if you ever got this idea of yours moving. I ask because I think it is a great strategy. Hopefully the answer is yes.
Daryl, thanks so much for your feedback
i wanted to know if i may, when you do PBN, do u need to have each of the websites running on all different hosting? otherwise they will be tracked as sharing the same hosting plan/ IP?
Yep every website on different hosting.
You can lower your fees by clustering your network though, as explained in the PBN guide: http://lionzeal.wpengine.com/pbn-guide/
I have a question about your hosting recommendation. In the previous comment, you mentioned each website is on a different host. What if you use something like Linode or Digital Ocean and set up multiple $5 or $10 Linodes or Droplets? Each Linode/Droplet will have a different C class number in the IP. What are your thoughts on this?
They’re all on the same hosting company though, which is a footprint.
Hello Daryl,
Very interesting post. It definitely helped me improve my system! Thanks a lot for that!
I’ve got a question for you regarding the MainWP security scan. Do you always fix all of these security updates? (See here: http://prntscr.com/gqay5s)
Cheers,
V
Hi Daryl. How many links do you need for ranking. And how many pbn site for ranking one keyword.