WordPress Toolkit

One dashboard to mass-manage multiple WordPress instances

WordPress Toolkit helps you get things done faster!

WordPress

WordPress has been around since 2003, and it’s still going strong. It is the most popular content management system in the world, powering over 43.0% of all websites on the Internet.

It’s free, open-source software that can be used to create a website or blog. Because of its large community of contributors, it has developed into the most popular solution for any website creation.

You can also find many plugins and themes to change how your website looks and operates. Because WordPress is so popular, it’s easy to find help if you ever have any issues.

WordPress Extilum

WordPress Toolkit step-by-step guide

What is WordPress Toolkit?

WordPress Toolkit is a WordPress management solution.

This toolkit includes a number of features that make it the most comprehensive, secure, and versatile toolkit for WordPress.

It has a simple interface that allows users to install, configure, secure, update, and manage all their WordPress sites.

The WordPress Toolkit is designed to be used by both beginners and experts.

Watch our video for an introduction on how to use the WordPress Toolkit

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1. Install WordPress

The WordPress Toolkit icon will appear in the Domains’ category within cPanel. If you do not see the WordPress Toolkit icon within the Domains category, your hosting provider may need to activate this for you.

The one-click installer of WordPress Toolkit does everything from start to finish. It downloads WordPress, creates and configures a database, creates an admin account inside the website, and initializes WordPress.

Database

You do not have to interact with the Database section. WordPress Toolkit will generate this for you.

Manage Admin User

Manage the admin user, leave an automatic generated data or change credentials.

Manual or Automatic Updates

Apply manual or automatic updates for WordPress core, plugins, and themes.

Plugins and themes

You can select a package of plugins and themes to install from a drop-down menu.
Once your installation is complete, the window will pop up that will prompt you to install some plugins and themes (if you want). These plugins come directly from wordpress.org.

2. Add Existing WordPress Installations

If you have an existing WordPress site, you can easily add it to the WordPress Toolkit.

The installation needs to be under your account. Just use the toolkit’s scan button to search your account’s directories.
The search will find all of your existing sites and import them to the WordPress Toolkit.

3. Updates and Security Status Check

WordPress websites are frequently targeted by hackers.

Outdated WordPress core, plugins, and themes also pose a security risk.  So updates and Security Status Check are crucial part of the WordPress Toolkit.

“WordPress makes it drop-dead easy to start a site. Take my advice and go do it.”

— John Battelle

4. Manage updates

Easily enable/disable automatic updates, get your Smart Updates, and more.

Smart Update

WordPress developers are constantly releasing new updates for the platform. Sometimes these updates may not play well with your website, and you won’t know until you try them.

Smart Update is a feature that allows you to test updates to your website, its plugins, and themes without actually affecting the website itself.

This feature will clone the website, run all the updates on the clone, then run several checks against the updated website to see if the updates caused any issues. The results of the changes made to the clone will be made available to you. And you can decide whether you want to push the updated version of the website to the live website.

5. WordPress Integrity

The last part of keeping your site up to date and running is to check WordPress integrity. You can check to see if your site has files that have ever been infected by malware. It is an important step in ensuring your website is active and online.

6. Maintenance mode

WordPress maintenance mode allows you to display a user-friendly notice to visitors while developing, updating, or resolving issues on your WordPress website. WordPress Toolkit provides an easy way to enable or disable maintenance mode using the cPanel interface.

7. Staging and cloning functionality

A WordPress staging site is a test site that you can use to make plugin updates, website redesign, and other changes before going live.
Maintaining and developing a website should never be done in a live environment. Clone any existing site to a completely safe staging area on its own database in order to experiment, then sync back to your live website when you’re ready.

Test new features and ideas in a sandbox before pushing them to production.

8. Manage Plugins

A WordPress plugin is third-party software that adds new functionality to WordPress. With WordPress Toolkit, you can easily install and manage plugins.

9. Manage Themes

A WordPress theme determines the overall design of your website, including colors, fonts, and layout. By selecting a different theme, you change the look and feel of your website without changing the content. With WordPress Toolkit, you can install and manage themes.

“A lot of the early adoption of WordPress was actually
from thousands and millions of individually hosted instances,
so a lot of the people who ran WordPress were on their own.”

— Matt Mullenweg

10. WordPress Toolkit Tools

The controls in the “Tools” section give you easy access to the following settings and tools: Search engine indexing, Caching (Nginx), Debugging, Password Protection, and more.

Search engine indexing

It shows your website in search results of search engines.
If your website is not yet ready for public viewing, turn off Search engine indexing.

Debugging

If you are installing WordPress for testing or development, you can enable Debugging to automatically find and fix errors in the website code.

Password protection

Set a password to protect access to your WordPress website.
Anyone visiting a password-protected website must enter a valid username and password to view the website content.

Take over wp-cron.php

It helps you set up a regular run of wp-cron.php.
The wp-cron.php file is a virtual cron job (or scheduled task) WordPress uses to automate certain operations, for example, checking for plugins or themes updates, sending email notifications, and so on. If you want WordPress operations to be performed regularly and on schedule, you need to disable the default wp-cron.php execution.

Enable hotlink protection

Enable hotlink protection helps you prevent other websites from displaying, linking, or embedding your images. It is called hotlinking, and it can quickly drain your bandwidth and make your website unavailable.

11. Manage WordPress multiple sites

Updates and security scans for multiple sites

You can make bulk updates and security scans; and simple and easy management of multi-WordPress sites.

WordPress plugins for multiple sites

You can make bulk plugin updates, installation, activation, and more.

WordPress Themes for multiple sites

You can make bulk themes updates, installation, activation and more.

“The themes in WordPress drive a lot of design trends.
It democratizes design … You make a theme,
and suddenly it’s on hundreds and thousands of sites.”

— Matt Mullenweg

12. Back up and Restore WordPress

WordPress Backup feature is best if you need to back up an individual website. A WordPress Toolkit backup requires less time and disk space.

13. Delete or Detach WordPress site

You can detach WordPress installations that you do not want to manage in WordPress Toolkit. It does not remove the installation, it only hides it from WordPress Toolkit. You can attach it to WordPress Toolkit again after you scan for WordPress installations.
Or you can delete WordPress installation forever.
Detach or delete WordPress websites separately or multiple websites at a time.

Implementing WordPress Toolkit

Using the WordPress Toolkit to manage your WordPress sites can save you time and stress in the long run. That’s why Extilum is offering the WordPress Toolkit for free on all WordPress hosting plans. For any other questions, contact us!