Progress Planner

A website isn’t something you set up once and forget about. Over time, small issues pile up — broken links, outdated content, slow load times — and suddenly, your site isn’t performing as well as it should. But staying on top of maintenance and optimization takes time and effort. Where do you even start? Progress Planner makes website upkeep easy. Built by the founders of Yoast, this plugin helps you keep your site optimized with clear, actionable recommendations, a smart to-do list and guided challenges that help you improve your site step by step. No more guesswork — just the right tasks at the right time. 🔑 Key features Get personalized recommendations with Ravi’s Recommendations Keeping up with all the little tasks that make a website run smoothly can be overwhelming. That’s why we’ve curated an interactive list of important but often-overlooked improvements for you. With Ravi’s Recommendations, you don’t have to figure out what needs attention — we do that for you. From setting your site’s tagline and icon to reviewing your permalink structure or removing default WordPress content, we surface the tasks that help keep your site professional, optimized and secure. Each recommendation comes with clear instructions, so all you have to do is put them into practice — no guesswork required. Stay organized with an in-context to-do list Managing website tasks can be messy, but Progress Planner keeps everything in one place. Your to-do list isn’t just another checklist — it’s right where you need it. Add your own website tasks and keep them in context, so you have them on hand while working on your site. No more forgetting what needs to be done! Track your website activity over time A well-maintained website isn’t built in a day — it’s improved with regular updates. Your website activity score reflects the maintenance work you’ve done over the past 30 days, helping you stay on track and keep your site in top shape. Earn badges and streaks for your progress Motivation matters! Stay engaged with Progress Planner’s built-in gamification. Earn badges and track your streaks as you complete tasks and keep your website in great shape. Everything in one place: Your dashboard Your dashboard gives you a clear overview of your website’s progress. See your recommendations, to-do list and achievements at a glance — so you can jump right into the most important tasks. 🆘 Want expert guidance? Get Progress Planner Pro If you’re ready to take things further, Progress Planner Pro gives you access to in-depth guidance and structured challenges that walk you through key website improvements step by step. Get results with guided challenges Maintaining a website can feel overwhelming — but you don’t have to do it alone. With Progress Planner Pro, you get access to expert-led challenges that guide you through key website improvements step by step. Each challenge is interactive and tailored to help you make real progress. You can expect:

• Live webinars & workshops with experts sharing insights and strategies
• Actionable reports & exercises to apply what you’ve learned to your own site
• Personal feedback & support, like having your copywriting reviewed
• A structured plan, so you always know what to do next

It’s not just advice — it’s a hands-on, practical experience that helps you take real action and see results. Learn with practical mini courses Want to sharpen your skills while improving your site? Progress Planner Pro includes mini courses that give you the knowledge you need — without the fluff. Get support when you need it Sometimes you just need a little extra help. With Pro, you get access to our support team, ready to answer your questions and guide you through website improvements. 🧹 Ready to make website maintenance easier? Progress Planner takes the frustration out of keeping your website in top shape. Whether you’re tackling quick fixes or diving into bigger improvements, you’ll always know what to do next. Download Progress Planner for free and start optimizing your site today!

This video shows you how to install the plugin: https://youtu.be/e1bmxZYyXFY

1. Search for Progress Planner on the "Add new plugins" screen in your WordPress plugin.
2. Install the plugin.
3. Activate the plugin.
4. Go to the Progress Planner admin screen and complete our onboarding.
5. You're done.

1.1.0 In this release, we've added more recommendations from Ravi on how to improve your site. We've also made these recommendations more visible on your WordPress settings pages, by showing on settings pages exactly which things we think you should change. Also, if you're just now starting to use Progress Planner, we've made the onboarding experience a lot more fun: we show you immediately which of Ravi's recommended tasks you've already completed and we give you points for those! Added these recommendations from Ravi:

• Properly set your permalink structure.
• Fix it if your site is set to not be shown in search engines.
• Rename and change the slug of your Uncategorized category.
• Remove inactive plugins.
• Upgrade your PHP version if needed.
• Fully disable comments if they're not needed on your site.

Bugs we fixed:

• If you had WP_DEBUG set to false, the plugin would still tell you to disable WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY. We think Ravi was a bit overzealous in his recommendation, so we've fixed that.

Under the hood:

• We've added our set of debug tools straight into the plugin. If you define PRPL_DEBUG as true in your wp-config.php file, you'll get a PRPL Debug admin bar menu item.
• Improved suggested tasks completion conditions so they don't trigger at the wrong moment.

1.0.4 Enhancements:

• We've moved Ravi's recommendations to the top left of your Progress Planner dashboard. They're the most important thing on there, so we wanted to give it prime placement.
• We changed "Update post" to "Review post" / "Review page" and wrote better instructions for reviewing old posts and pages. These tasks now prioritize the most important pages, like your About page, Privacy policy, Contact page and FAQ page.
• Added an option to redirect users to the Progress Planner dashboard after login. The WordPress dashboard isn't particularly useful in our eyes, this mind entice you to action more.
• Added a plugin-deactivation feedback form (we tell you, because you'll never see it, right? :) ).
• Removed the celebration for "Perform all updates" if it was done by WordPress's automatic update. We all love confetti, but when it comes all the time without you doing anything, it loses its value, right? Hence this fix.

We've added the following Recommendations from Ravi:

• Setting site icon.
• Setting the tagline.
• Deactivating the display of PHP debug messages.
• Removing the default WP "Hello world" post.
• Removing the default WP "Sample page" page.

Under the hood:

• Improvements to the REST-API endpoint for getting stats.
• Removed admin notices on the Progress Planner page.

1.0.3 Fixed:

• Detection of page-types in the settings page.
• Properly resetting caches for monthly badges.

Enhancements:

• Added a new "Challenges" widget to the dashboard.

1.0.2 Fixed:

• Remove duplicated weekly suggested tasks.
• The REST API endpoint for getting stats was broken, causing the weekly emails not to work.
• Scrollable monthly badges widget was the wrong height on page load.
• 2026 monthly badges were showing up and shouldn't (yet).

Enhancements:

• Refocus the "add new task" input after a to-do item is added.

1.0.1 Fixed:

• Share buttons not working on localhost sites.
• Non-translatable names for monthly badges.
• Graphs appearance.
• Confetti being triggered on every page load.
• Assets versioning.
• Duplicate update-core tasks.
• Information icon for 'Create a long post' task was showing text of 'create a short post' task.
• Numerous other minor bugfixes.

Enhancements:

• Improved the onboarding experience.
• Internal refacture of local tasks.
• Privacy policy improvements.
• Removed "product" and "blog" page-types from the settings page.
• Auto-detecting page-types in the settings page.

1.0.0 We added Ravi's Recommendations: recommendations on what you should do next on your site! We also fixed all previous bugs (most of them twice) and probably introduced new ones ;-) 0.9.6 Fixed:

• Accessibility of the to-do list.

0.9.5 Enhancements:

• Added functionality to make it easier to demo the plugin on the WordPress playground.
• Improved the onboarding and added a tour of the plugin.

Fixed:

• Post-type filters intruduced in v0.9.4 now also affect the graph results.

0.9.4 Enhancements:

• Added a setting to include post types, we default to post and page and you can add others as you wish.

Fixed:

• Completing the last badge wouldn't ever work, fixed.
• Fixed some bugs around detecting badges being "had".
• Replaced links to the site with shortlinks, so we can change them as needed without doing a release.

0.9.3 Security:

• Stricter sanitization & escaping of data in to-do items. Props to justakazh for reporting through our PatchStack Vulnerability Disclosure Program.
• Restrict access to the plugin's dashboard widgets to users with the publish_posts capability.

0.9.2 Security:

• Fixes a vulnerability in our REST API endpoint access validation to retrieve stats. Props to Djennez for reporting through our PatchStack Vulnerability Disclosure Program.

0.9.1 Enhancements:

• Added an action link to the Dashboard to the plugin's action links on the plugins page.
• No longer show Elementor templates as a post type in the plugin's reports.
• Improved translatability (is that a word?) of some of our strings with singulars and plurals.

Bugfixes:

• Fixed the responsive styles of the dashboard widget. Thanks to Aaron Jorbin for reporting.
• Fix the accessibility of the to-do list. Thanks to Steve Jones of Accessibility checker for the report and fix.
• The plugin would throw a fatal error on uninstall. Thanks to Jose Varghese for reporting.
• Deleting the last to do item on the to do list would not work. Thanks to Jose Varghese for reporting.
• Don't show the password reset link during onboarding of users as it leads to confusion. Thanks to Jose Varghese for reporting.

0.9 Initial release on GitHub and WordPress.org.