WordPress Site Health: What is it?

WordPress Site Health: What is it?

WordPress 5.2 introduced a brand new feature called Site Health. This is a tool that monitors the health of your website and informs you about possible Problems or improvements informed. It's important to keep an eye on this page, as this is also where all the major plugins put their notifications. Let's dive in.

What is Site Health?

Site Health is a Tool in WordPress, with which you can monitor the performance of your website. It consists of two parts: a status screen and an info screen. You can find the Site Health tool via Tools> Site Health in your WordPress backend. In addition to the WordPress-checks, plugin developers can also integrate Site Health.

Since it contains important information, you would expect that Notifications in an additional way are displayed. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Currently, you can't set an email reminder for it or find a widget in the dashboard. Fortunately, the latter will be added in WordPress 5.4, which will be released at the end of March 2020.

You can find Site Health in the "Extras" menu in the backend of your WordPress

Status page

On the status screen, WordPress runs a Performance and safety analysis through which your website is checked and Notifications and recommendations gives. At the top of the page, you'll also see a colored circle that gives you an idea of how healthy your site is. Do you see red? You have work to do.

All notifications can be reduced so that you can click on the title to view more information. There you can also find links to more information about this problem and its procedure.

Get more context quickly by clicking on a status message

Info page

On the second page you will find a Info screen with detailed information about the Configuration of your website. You can use this information to get help from ORC web hosting or your developer if you encounter any problems. Just copy and paste the information as needed!

Checking your WordPress settings is simple

Why should I be interested in Site Health?

Just as you should take care of your own health, you should also take care of the health of your website. You could think of Site Health as a kind of doctor - it finds problems and suggests solutions. These improvements range from upgrading your PHP version, to disabling unused plugins for security reasons, to implementing HTTPS, to checking if the REST API is available. Just click on a notification to see more steps or more information about the check. You will also see which plugin notified you about the improvements.

In the future, Site Health will be the right place for these kinds of reviews and notifications. Increasingly, WordPress plugins will add relevant reviews and notifications to the Site Health dashboard. This makes it an important part of your journey to building a fantastic, secure and up-to-date website.