Managing a Website

Overview

The Expanded Website View allows you to configure settings and view important information for your website. Click the Domain Details icon (Expanded Website View icon) to get to the Expanded Website View. You can also View your website, Clone your website, or set your website to Maintenance Mode from this interface. Each tab on the Expanded Website View provides a different set of information and configuration options.

Expanded Website View

Overview Tab

The Overview Tab provides a variety of statistics about your website.

  • The 7-day Highlights show you the number of unique hits on your site, unique visitors, page views, and bandwidth used for the last seven days.
    Note:
    These statistics only reflect communication with this server. They may not be complete if you have caching or a Content Deliver Network enabled.
  • The Performance shows you how well your website performs for desktop and mobile browsers. Lastly, Website Traffic will show you your site’s recent traffic. Without recent data, these areas will not display accurate information.

WP Squared collects performance information from Page Speed™ web performance optimizer, provided by Google®. Additional data is provided on the Page Speed Insights for your domain by clicking on the View More button.

Themes Tab

The Themes tab displays the currently active theme and any installed themes. You can install other themes from the WordPress® directory by searching for them. Themes are listed in alphabetical order and have an indicator for whether they are Active or Inactive.

  • To activate another theme, click the Activate button on the theme. You must verify the theme’s activation.
  • To install a new theme, click the Install New Theme button and search for any publicly listed WordPress theme.
  • To delete a theme, click the Trash Can icon.

Plugins Tab

The Plugins Tab shows the plugins available for use by default.

  • To activate a plugin, toggle the Active switch on the plugin tile.
  • To install a new plugin, click the Install New Plugin button. Provide search parameters in the provided box to display publicly available WordPress plugins. Once you find the plugin you wish to install, click the Install button. This will direct you back to the installed plugin interface once the plugin has been installed. To use the plugin, it will have to be activated.
  • Delete any plugins on this page by clicking the Trash Can button. If the plugin is used on a website page, the page will display an error or become unusable.

Settings Tab

The Settings tab allows you to configure tools, Auto Updates for your WordPress installation, Themes, and Plugins.

Tools

You can enable or disable several tools for your website such as:

  • Search engine indexing
  • Debugging
  • Password protection
  • Enable hotlink protection
  • Take over wp-cron.php and
  • Enable NGINX Caching

To learn more about each of these tools, hover over the tool tip (?) icon.

WordPress Version Updates

To configure Auto Updates for your WordPress installation, select your preferred option:

  • None. I will apply updates manually. - No updates to WordPress will be installed unless you install them. This gives you more control over your WordPress version but can also leave your site unprotected in the event of a security update.
  • Only apply minor version updates. I will apply major version updates manually. - Only minor version WordPress updates will be installed unless you manually update your WordPress installation.
  • Apply all updates automatically. This is the most secure option. - All WordPress updates will be installed without any action on your part. This is the recommended option since it provides the most security for your WordPress installation.
Theme Updates

To configure Auto Updates for themes, select your preferred option:

  • Default. Use the setting defined by the theme for all update types. - This option allows the defined default option to select the update settings.
  • Automatically apply security updates. All other update types will follow the default theme setting. - This option applies all security updates for the theme.
  • Apply all updates automatically. This will override the default setting. This is the most secure option. - This option applies all updates for the theme.
Plugin Updates

To configure Auto Updates for plugins, select your preferred option:

  • Default. Use the setting defined by the plugin for all update types. - This option allows the defined default option to select the update settings.
  • Automatically apply security updates. All other update types will follow the default theme setting. - This option applies all security updates for the plugin.
  • Apply all updates automatically. This will override the default setting. This is the most secure option. - This option applies all updates for the plugin.

For plugin updates, you can also choose to have vulnerable plugins automatically deactivated. This option is set to On by default.

Advanced

Warning:

Proceed with Caution - Changes to the settings on this tab can cause your website to break.

The Advanced tab provides information about your WP Squared installation and allows you to make changes to some of the advanced features such as Zone Editor and PHP updates.

Database

The expanded Database section contains your WP Squared database information. The database information cannot be changed from this interface. If you wish to change database information, click the Open in phpMyAdmin button.

Zone Editor

The Zone Editor feature allows you to create, edit, and delete Domain Name System (DNS) zone records. DNS converts human-readable domain names (for example, example.com) to computer-readable IP addresses (for example, 192.0.0.1). DNS relies on zone records that exist on your server to map domain names to IP addresses.

To add a new zone record, click the + Add New Record button. You can add three types of records: A, MX, and CNAME. You can edit any of the current records by clicking the pencil icon. You can also delete any of these records by clicking on the trash can icon.

Note:

Your hosting provider may configure your Zone Editor access to not allow you to edit all of these zones. If any options are missing, contact your hosting provider.

PHP Settings

You can manually update your PHP version; however, we recommend using the Smart PHP Update system.

Smart PHP Update allows you to test a PHP version without affecting your production site. The process clones your site to another domain, sets the new PHP version, and runs checks to see if the PHP switch will break your site. You can review the test results and decide on the switch.

To update your PHP version, select the version in the drop-down. You can immediately apply the version change by clicking the Apply button. To run tests, click Use Smart PHP Update.

  • When you click Apply, you can run a backup before updating the PHP version or with no backup. Once you click Update PHP, the PHP version update runs. You will be notified of success or failure.

  • When you click Use Smart PHP Update, the system begins analyzing your website with the chosen version of PHP. Results are shown in the interface once the test environment’s analysis is complete. You can proceed with the update by clicking Update PHP Version or cancel the action.

Clone Your Website

To clone your website, click the the Clone button in the top menu of the Extended Website View interface.

When you clone your website, you have two options:

  • Copy the website to a subdomain of the current Website
  • Copy the website to a new domain

When you’ve made your choice and have entered the necessary information, click Create Clone.

Maintenance Mode

Maintenance mode allows you to pause the live content on your website while it’s under construction.

To start Maintenance Mode, click the Maintenance Mode button in the top menu of the Extended Website View interface.

There are several options available for you to create the Maintenance Mode screen for your website:

OptionDescription
Screen TextSet the text that is displayed on your website. Default messages exist for you to use, but they can be edited to your liking. You can provide a new Page Title and other large and small text blocks with details about your current status.
BackgroundYou can provide your own image for the background of the maintenance mode page, or use the default image.
Countdown TimerIf you already know how long your website will be under maintenance, you can provide your viewers with a countdown timer. Provide the time in days, hours, and/or minutes and then toggle to enable.
Social Network Links
  • If you would like your social networks displayed, you can provide the links for the various providers. This is a great way to keep your viewers informed while your website is under construction.
  • Leave these fields blank if you don’t want them to display on the maintenance screen.

You can set the default social network links, so that your company’s social network sites are shown by default. Users can customize the links in the Maintenance Mode interface.

To set the default social network links, edit the /usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/wp-toolkit/var/etc/config.ini file and modify the following lines to your preferred links:

1socialNetworks[facebook]  = "https://facebook.com/MyAccount"
2socialNetworks[instagram] = "https://instagram.com/MyAccount"
3socialNetworks[twitter]   = "https://twitter.com/MyAccount"
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