The Saber Audit

A 10-day technical audit of your WordPress site. Performance, infrastructure, security, and architecture. No vague advice — specific findings, prioritized fixes, real impact.

What you actually get

In 10 business days from kickoff, you receive a 20–30 page PDF report and a 60-minute walkthrough call. Every section in the report is grounded in specific evidence from your site. Every finding is prioritized by impact, effort, and risk. Every recommendation is actionable by you, your team, or whoever is doing your implementation.

This is not a Lighthouse score and a list of generic suggestions. It’s the deliverable of a senior operator looking at your specific stack and telling you exactly what’s working, what isn’t, and what to do about it.

What’s included

Performance audit. Full-page load analysis, server response times, query performance, caching layer review, asset delivery, Core Web Vitals breakdown, and the specific optimizations that will move the needle on your site.

Infrastructure review. Hosting configuration, PHP version and tuning, database health, cron job audit, file system check, backup posture, and whether your current setup is matched to your traffic profile.

Security posture. wp-config hardening, file permissions, plugin and theme vulnerability scan, login surface assessment, common attack vector analysis, and a security action plan you can act on this week.

Architecture review. Plugin stack assessment (bloat, redundancy, deprecation risk), theme analysis, custom code review, technical debt inventory. The unsentimental look at what you’ve built and what it’s costing you to keep running.

Prioritized action plan. Every finding categorized by impact (Critical / High / Medium / Low) with effort estimates and clear recommendations. Designed so you can hand the report to your team, your developer, or your next agency and they know exactly what to do.

60-minute review call. Walk through findings together, discuss implementation paths, answer questions. Recorded if you’d like a copy.

What’s not included

I’m specific about scope because vague offers fail both sides.

Not included: Implementation of the fixes. Ongoing monitoring or retainer support. Design or UX review. Content or SEO strategy.

If you want implementation done by me, that’s a separate engagement — quoted based on the audit findings, scoped tightly, fixed price. If you want ongoing advisory, that’s the retainer option. The audit is a clean, time-boxed diagnostic. It works because it doesn’t try to be everything.

Who this is for

Agencies managing 10+ WordPress sites who want senior operator eyes on a client property — usually a high-value client where something feels off and you need an outside read before recommending action.

SMB owners running a WordPress site doing $500k+ in revenue where downtime, slowness, or security exposure has real cost. If your site is making real money, the audit pays for itself in a single quarter.

Operators inheriting a WordPress site from a previous developer or agency and needing to understand what they’ve got — what’s solid, what’s a time bomb, what to prioritize.

SaaS or product companies running WordPress as their marketing or content site at scale, where the WordPress infrastructure has grown faster than the team’s attention to it.

Who this isn’t for

I’m honest about this too. The audit isn’t the right fit for:

• Sites running on shared hosting under $20/month. The problem is the hosting itself — save the audit fee and upgrade your stack first.
• Brand-new sites without enough traffic data or operating history to analyze. Come back once you’ve been running for 6+ months.
• People looking for “make my site faster” without engaging with the findings. The report is the start of the work, not the end.

If you’re not sure whether you’re a fit, message me and I’ll tell you honestly.

The process

Day 1 — Kickoff call. 30 minutes. You walk me through the site, the history, the pain points, and what “good” looks like to you. We align on scope.

Day 1–2 — Access setup. Admin access, hosting access, monitoring credentials. NDA available on request. I work clean — no production changes, no surprise emails to your team.

Day 2–8 — Deep analysis. This is the bulk of the work. Manual review, automated diagnostics, AI-assisted code analysis, hands-on testing. 15–20 hours of senior operator time examining your specific stack. You don’t need to do anything during this phase.

Day 9 — Report delivery. The PDF lands in your inbox. You have time to read it before our call.

Day 10 — Review call. 60 minutes. We walk through findings, prioritize, and map what implementation would look like. You leave with clarity.

Investment

$2,500 USD

Fixed price. Paid 50% on kickoff, 50% on delivery.

Some buyers ask why $2,500. Two reasons. First, a real audit isn’t a 30-minute scan — it’s 15–20 hours of senior operator time examining your specific stack. Second, the audit pays for itself. Most clients find at least one critical issue costing them more than $2,500/year in lost performance, security exposure, or wasted hosting spend. The audit is the cheapest part of fixing it.

If $2,500 is genuinely outside your budget, you’re probably not the right fit for this specific offer. That’s okay. Subscribe to The dispatch instead — most of what’s in the audit will eventually be discussed there, applied to your own site by you.

What you’re really paying for

You’re paying for twelve years of WordPress in production, condensed into a focused two-week engagement on your specific site.

You’re paying for the judgment that comes from having seen thousands of WordPress sites — what their failure modes look like, what patterns predict trouble, which optimizations are worth the effort and which are theater.

You’re paying for the fact that I’ve actually shipped under every stack, every host, every plugin combination, every edge case. When I tell you something is a problem, it’s because I’ve watched it become a problem somewhere else first.

And you’re paying for the AI-leveraged depth that the audit applies to your stack — analyses that would take a competent operator 40 hours done in 18, without losing rigor. That’s the AskSaber thesis applied to my own work.

The audit also uses my free Triage plugin as the opening diagnostic pass — the same nineteen checks anyone can run on their own site, but I read the output with twelve years of pattern recognition behind it.

The plugin tells you that autoload is 4.2 MB; the audit tells you why it got that way, which options are safe to clear, and what to put in place so it doesn’t bloat back to that size in six months. The plugin is the starting point. The audit is the work.

Frequently asked questions

How quickly can you start? Usually within 1–2 weeks. Reach out and we’ll find a kickoff date that works.

Do you sign NDAs? Yes. Standard mutual NDA available on request. If you need your own document signed, send it over.

Can you also implement the fixes? Yes, separately. After the audit, I’ll quote a clear, fixed-price engagement for the critical findings if you’d like me to handle implementation. No pressure either way — many clients hand the report to their internal team or existing developer.

What if I have multiple sites? The base price covers one site. Multiple sites can be scoped together at a discount; reach out and we’ll talk through it.

Do you offer a smaller audit? Not currently. The full audit is the offer because anything smaller starts to compromise the value of the deliverable. If budget is the issue, subscribing to The dispatch is a better starting point.

What happens after the audit? Most clients fall into one of three paths: implement the fixes themselves with their team, hire me for a separate implementation engagement, or move into a fractional advisory retainer. All three are valid. I’ll point you toward the right one based on what you actually need.

What’s your refund policy? If you’re not satisfied with the report at delivery, I’ll refund the second 50% payment, no questions. The first 50% covers the work already done. In practice this has not come up — but the policy is here so you know it exists.

Ready to start

The audit is the most operationally honest service I offer. Two weeks. One specific report. Fixed price. Real findings. No upsell games.

If your WordPress site matters to your business and you’d like a senior operator looking at it with fresh eyes, this is the right move.