WordPress Toolkit Guide

WordPress Toolkit is a set of administration tools that allows us to install, configure and manage WordPress sites. For hosting plans with cPanel, the WordPress Toolkit version Deluxe is included providing professional features such as Cloning and Smart Updates. In this guide we tell you about its powerful benefits.

Introduction

WordPress Toolkit is an all-in-one solution for managing WordPress installations. It is available in control panels cPanel, and, if our hosting includes cPanel itself, then you will enjoy its package of features. Toolkit was created to make WordPress administration easy, and this includes diagnoses and solutions against vulnerabilities after scanning Theme/Plugins from our website.

If we are hosting resellers, we save resources while adding value to our service by increasing its efficiency, improving security and making all customization actions easier than before.

If we have our beloved site created with WordPress, we will access the WordPress Toolkit via our control panel:

cpanel.oursite.com

So we can enjoy this complete management solution that includes full CLI control, maintenance and debugging tools, and a description of each WordPress installation on our server (note: there is no limit to the number of WordPress sites that WordPress Toolkit can manage).

Control Panel

After having entered with our credentials to cpanel.oursite.com, we will immediately notice the link to the WordPress Toolkit on the right.

Instantly we will see the WordPress Toolkit panel and even a report with everything that is going well… and what is not.

One of the things that caught our attention on one of our sites was an alert about HTTPs. We quote this example so that we can understand how easily the Toolkit works.

Intuitively we clicked on the alert, and immediately we could see what the problem was:

Not only are we duly detailed with what is happening, but we are even given a link to resolve it. After clicking on “Turn on redirect to HTTPS” takes us to this screen.

As we can see, WordPress Toolkit is immediate both to detect inconveniences as well as to allow us solve it with two clicks.

Another typical example is the analysis and reporting of vulnerabilities:

After clicking on the link “Fix vulnerabilities” we are presented with a report detailing the problems but also providing links to fix it. In our example, we discovered that we needed to update the Astra Theme to fix a hole in SQL, and we also noticed that another security hole in a plugin we use hasn't been fixed yet. Therefore, we could consider replace it with another.

Another of the great advantages of the WordPress Toolkit is the possibility of activating the Smart Update.

Smart Update tests WordPress updates harmlessly for our online site. The tool is almost magical: clone our site to update only the copy, then run a series of smart checks to make sure our cloned site is working fine. We can review the results of this test and check the clone and then decide whether to apply the updates to the live site. It doesn't occur to us nothing cleaner and safer when it comes to updating Themes and Components.

Tools

Take note of the following practical tools.

The File Manager it is the way to carry out operations with the files without having to resort to an FTP client. Copy, rename, upload, delete... A Windows explorer, but from our site.

copy data It is the useful tool to transfer the data from our WordPress to another. This includes files as well as the database.

For this we must previously have a non-public version (staging) of a WordPress on a separate domain or subdomain, and a publicly available version. We create a "stage" with the option that exists right next to Copy Data, that is Clone (in the next point we talk about this).

tool copy data It is useful for these cases:

• We need to copy the changes made to the site from stage to the online version.
• We want to copy the data from the live website to the cloned stage to test and evaluate changes (for example, a new plugin). After verifying that everything works fine, we can copy the changes to the live site.
• We have made changes (eg testing a new plugin) to the clone site, and those changes created new tables in our database. We need to copy only these tables to the public online site without affecting other data.
• We have either upgraded the cloned website to a newly released version of WordPress and everything is working as it should, or we have already fixed what is not. Now we need to push the changes to the live site.

We can choose between copying the WordPress files, the database or both. Regarding the database, it is also possible to decide which tables to copy and which not.

Clone is the tool to create a test site, hidden (stage). We have referred to its advantages in the previous point.

We must choose the destination where to clone the website. If we leave the option checked “Create subdomain”, Toolkit will create it with the prefix determined “staging”. This is the usual and most practical (we can also write a subdomain prefix of our choice).
We will select “Use existing domain” to display a list with our created domains.

Optionally we can change the name of the database created during the clone.

After having made these decisions, we will click the button Start. That is all.

Backup and Restore is the tool to create backup copies of our site (to eventually, if we need it, recover the data).

The screenshot above shows us the blue Copy button to create our first backup. Once this is done, we will be presented with a second button to be able to recover our site from the stored backup.

Finally, Records allows us to view a log with all the items found on our site and their dates:

We can download the blog at ease by following the blue link in the upper left corner.

We hope that the guide has been very easy for you and, as always, we encourage you to leave your doubts in the comments section. Good luck and thanks for reading.