WordPress Manager

The WordPress Manager is your all-in-one tool inside OpenPanel for installing and managing WordPress websites — without ever needing to log in to wp-admin. It makes handling multiple sites fast, simple, and efficient.

Manage WordPress sites​

The WordPress Manager lets you adjust settings, create backups, update plugins, toggle debugging, and more — all directly from OpenPanel. No need to open multiple dashboards or remember dozens of logins. Perfect for agencies, developers, and anyone managing several WordPress sites at once.

WP Manager​

On the main WP Manager page you can:

• View installations: see the domain, WordPress version, install date, admin email.
• Refresh website data: if you’ve changed a domain, updated WordPress manually, or modified the admin email.
• Manage themes and plugins sets: define which themes and plugins are auto-installed on every new site.
• Install WordPress: set up a fresh WordPress installation in a few clicks.
• Scan for existing installations: detect and import manually installed WordPress sites.
• Change to Table/Grid view: display sites in either Grid (default) or Table mode.

Install WordPress​

Installing WordPress is quick and automatic. OpenPanel takes care of everything — downloading WordPress from WordPress.org, creating the database, linking it to your domain, and configuring your new site.

1. Add your domain name first.
2. Open Websites from the sidebar and click + New Website.
3. Choose Install WordPress.

Then fill in the form:

• Website name
• Site description (optional)
• Domain name (optionally a subfolder)
• Admin username
• Admin password
• WordPress version

Click Start Installation and you’re done.

📘 Read the full guide: How to Install WordPress® With OpenPanel

Scanning (Importing) Installations​

If you already have WordPress installed manually, you can import it into the WP Manager. The system scans your hosting files for wp-config.php and automatically adds the found websites.

📘 Read the full guide: How to Migrate a WordPress® Installation to OpenPanel

Themes and Plugins Sets​

Tired of installing the same setup every time? Create Theme Set and Plugin Set that automatically apply to new WordPress installs.

For example, you might set up a default combo like:

• Elementor theme + child theme
• Elementor plugin
• Classic Editor plugin

Every time you install a new site — boom, it’s ready with your preferred setup.

📘 Read the full guide: WordPress Plugin & Theme Sets in OpenPanel

Bulk Actions​

Tick the checkbox of one or more sites, or the checkbox in the table header to select every site shown by the current search. A bar appears at the bottom of the page with the number selected, a Clear link and these actions:

Bulk actions are in the Table view, click Switch to Table view if the sites are shown as cards.

Click an action, confirm it, and it runs on the selected sites one after another. When it's done the page reloads with a notice listing the sites it worked for, or which ones failed and why.

Refresh Website Data​

If you’ve made manual changes to your site (like updating WordPress core or changing the admin email), click Refresh Data to sync everything with WP Manager.

Grid vs. Table View​

You can view your sites in a grid with screenshots or a simple table view. Switch views anytime using a button.

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Site Manager​

Auto Login to wp-admin​

Use Login as Admin for one-click secure access to your WordPress dashboard — no password needed.

Temporary Link​

Preview your site even before your domain is connected or SSL is ready. Temporary links last 15 minutes.

Click Live Preview to generate one:

Screenshot​

Website screenshots refresh automatically every 24 hours. Need it sooner? Click the refresh icon over the screenshot.

Versions​

• WordPress Version – The WordPress version is retrieved from the database and verified via an AJAX request to the website itself, ensuring the displayed version is accurate. If an update is available, a badge will appear next to the version number.
• PHP Version – The PHP version is read from the domain’s VirtualHost configuration file, guaranteeing that the version shown matches the one actually configured for the domain.
• MySQL/MariaDB Version – Displays whether the site uses MySQL or MariaDB, along with the version number obtained directly from the terminal.
• Created – Indicates the date and time when the website was first added to WP Manager.

Speed​

Website performance is monitored daily using Google PageSpeed Insights. For both mobile and desktop devices, you can view the check time along with key metrics such as First Contentful Paint, Speed Index, and Time to Interactive.

You can also add your own PageSpeed Insights API key to customize the data collection.

Safe Browsing​

Checks your domain against the Google Safe Browsing API for malware, social engineering, unwanted software, and other flagged threats. Results are cached for 12 hours.

Vulnerability Scan​

Scans the site's WordPress core, plugin, and theme versions for known vulnerabilities. A fresh scan runs automatically if no cached report exists yet, or can be triggered manually.

Firewall​

If CorazaWAF is enabled on the server, and your account has access to the WAF feature, you will see a Firewall widget displaying current status for the domain, an option to change it and number of denied/challenged requests in the last hour.

Overview​

Under Overview tab you can view:

• Files: Folder path and Folder Size
• Database: Size, Host, Name, Table Prefix, User, Password and link to open phpMyAdmin

Options​

Options tab displays current WordPress settings and allows you to change them.

Available options:

• Site URl
• Homepage URL
• Site Name
• Blog Description
• Administrator Email
• Enable New User Registration
• Enable SEO Visibility
• Enable Pingbacks

Cache​

The Cache tab shows how fast the site's home page loads with and without caching, and lets you turn each cache level on or off for this site.

Home page response time

Click Measure now (or Measure again) to time the home page. The requests are made on the server itself, so they skip the network, Caddy and the WAF:

• With cache: the page as your visitors get it now, from Varnish when the page cache is on, otherwise from the webserver with OPcache and Redis as set below.
• No cache at all: the page rendered in a separate PHP process with OPcache off and Redis disabled. It runs next to your site, so visitors are not affected.

Each measurement takes a few seconds, the shown time is the median of several requests. The tiles next to it show:

• Pages from cache: share of recent page requests to this site that Varnish answered from cache.
• Queries from Redis: share of object cache lookups answered from Redis in the last hour, plus the number of keys and memory this site uses.
• Last measurement: when the site was last measured, how much time the cache saves per visit, and a trend of the last 10 measurements.

Cache levels

• Page cache (Varnish): serves ready-made pages without touching PHP. Admin area, logged-in users, cart and checkout always stay dynamic. Turning it on starts Varnish for your account if it isn't running yet. Lifetime sets how long a page stays in the cache for this domain (1 minute to 1 day, default 1 hour).
• Object cache (Redis): answers repeated database queries from your private Redis. Turning it on starts Redis if needed, and installs, activates and configures the free Redis Object Cache plugin. Turning it off disables the plugin.
• OPcache: keeps compiled WordPress and plugin code in memory. The switch turns it off or on for this site only, the memory usage shown covers all your sites on the same PHP version. Not available on OpenLiteSpeed.

Purge all clears this site's pages from Varnish and its keys from Redis.

Varnish and Redis controls are only available if they are included in your hosting plan.

Maintenance mode​

Enable or disable maintenance mode directly from WP Manager. You can even edit the maintenance.php file right from the panel.

Security​

Keep your site safe with built-in security tools.

From here, you can:

• Shuffle WordPress salts
• Check core file integrity
• Reinstall WordPress core if needed
• Scan the site for malware, with a warning when files from this site are already in quarantine

Security Measures​

Server-level rules that harden the site. They are applied by the webserver before a request reaches PHP, so they also stop requests that WordPress plugins never see. Toggle each one on or off from the Security tab:

Rules can also be managed from the terminal with opencli websites-secure.

Updates​

Control how WordPress handles updates for the core, plugins, and themes. By default, only minor core updates are auto-enabled.

If a newer WordPress core version is available, you will see 'Click to update WordPress core' button which when clicked will perform WordPress update to the newest version available.

Debugging​

Toggle WordPress’s built-in debugging tools (WP_DEBUG, WP_DEBUG_LOG, etc.) directly from WP Manager.

These are great for testing or development sites — not recommended for production. For details, check Debugging in WordPress for more information on these options.

Backups​

Create and restore backups anytime — files, database, or both.

Create a Backup:

• Choose what to back up (files, database, or both).
• Click Generate Backup.

Restore a Backup: To restore, click Restore, pick a backup date, and confirm.

Clone​

Create a clone (copy files and database tables, replace links in database, fluch wp cache and rewrite rules).

Create a clone:

• Under 'Target' select the desired domain and optionally 'Database' to be used.
• Click Clone Website.

Remove​

Want to stop managing a site in WP Manager (without deleting it)?

Use Detach — your files and database remain untouched.

To completely remove a website — files, database, and all — click Uninstall, then confirm.

Related guides: Create a WordPress staging site · Use WP-CLI · Fix the white screen / critical error · Redis object cache