The WordPress Toolkit is a powerful management interface that allows you to easily handle your WordPress installations from your hosting control panel. With WordPress Toolkit, you can install, update, secure, and manage your WordPress sites—all from a single dashboard. Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced WordPress user, this guide will help you navigate the key features and manage your WordPress site with ease.
1. Top Section (Tabs and Action Buttons)
Tabs (Installations, Plugins, Themes):
- Installations: Displays your current WordPress installations. You can manage, update, and secure them.
- Plugins: Manage installed plugins, view their status, and update them.
- Themes: Manage installed themes, update them, or switch between different themes.
Action Buttons:
- Install: Add a new WordPress installation.
- Scan: Searches your server for existing WordPress installations and attaches them to WordPress Toolkit, allowing you to manage them.
- Updates: Update WordPress core, themes, and plugins across all installations.
- Security: Review and apply security measures to your WordPress installations.
- Detach: Detach the site from the WordPress Toolkit, meaning it will no longer be manageable through the Toolkit, but the site itself will remain functional.
- Remove: Permanently remove the WordPress installation, including its files and databases.
2. Tabs (Dashboard, Plugins, Themes, Database)
- Dashboard: The Dashboard provides an overview of your WordPress installation, including WordPress version, plugin and theme statuses, PHP version, and applied security measures. It also includes shortcuts for accessing the File Manager, Clone options, and Back Up / Restore.
- Plugins: The Plugins tab allows you to view all installed plugins, activate/deactivate plugins, update them, or install new ones.
- Themes: The Themes tab shows all installed themes. You can activate, deactivate, update, or install new themes for your WordPress installation.
- Database: The Database tab provides options to manage your WordPress database, including backing it up or restoring it. You can also view and manage database tables for advanced troubleshooting.
3. WordPress Dashboard Panel
- File Manager: Direct access to the file manager for your WordPress site, allowing you to edit and manage your website’s files.
- Copy Data: This allows you to copy website data from one WordPress installation to another.
- Clone: Clone your WordPress installation to another location, such as a subdomain or folder. Useful for testing or staging environments.
- Back Up / Restore: Create a backup of your WordPress installation or restore from a previously created backup.
- Logs: View your WordPress site’s logs for troubleshooting purposes or to monitor activity.
4. Status Section
- WordPress Version: Displays the current version of WordPress installed.
- Plugins: Shows if your plugins are up-to-date.
- Themes: Shows if your themes are up-to-date.
- Security: Provides information about the security status of your site. Clicking All security measures applied allows you to review and apply recommended security improvements.
- PHP Version: Displays the PHP version your WordPress installation is running on, with an option to change it.
- SSL/TLS: Shows whether your website has an SSL certificate installed. In this case, Let’s Encrypt is used for SSL.
5. Tools Section
- Search Engine Indexing: Toggle whether search engines can index your site (useful for live vs staging sites).
- Debugging: Toggle to enable WordPress debugging, which shows detailed error messages.
- Password Protection: Adds a password to your WordPress site for privacy, often used for staging sites.
- Take over wp-cron.php: Enables control over the WordPress cron system, which handles scheduled tasks like publishing scheduled posts.
- Enable Hotlink Protection: Prevent other sites from linking directly to your media files, saving bandwidth.
6. WordPress Site Actions
- Open: Opens the website in a new tab.
- Add label: You can add a label to help organise your WordPress installations.
- Log in: This button allows direct login to the WordPress Admin dashboard for your site without needing to enter credentials.
- Setup: Configure additional setup options or perform site-specific actions.
7. Bottom Section (Other Controls)
- Updates: A toggle for automatic updates, allowing you to automatically update WordPress core, themes, and plugins.
- Autoupdate Settings: Customise how and when updates are applied, including core, themes, and plugins.
- Smart Update: Test updates in a staging environment before applying them to your live site, reducing the risk of site issues.
- Check WordPress Integrity: Runs an integrity check on the core WordPress files to ensure they haven’t been altered or corrupted.
- Maintenance Mode: Toggle maintenance mode on or off to display a maintenance message to visitors while you update your site.