Uptime in wp-admin

The plugin's Uptime Monitor page manages your brokenlinkchecker.io monitors from inside WordPress. By the end of this page you will have your site and its WP-Cron under watch.

Plan: the Uptime Monitor works on every plan once the site is connected. Free includes 10 monitors checked every 5 minutes. Uptime Monitor overview and plan limits lists every plan.

Before you start#

Connect the site to your account first. Until then, the page shows a preview with sample data and a Connect site and start monitoring button. Connect your site walks through it.

The checks run on brokenlinkchecker.io, not on your server. Your site gets no extra load from them.

Monitor this site#

1. Open Uptime Monitor in the Broken Links menu.
2. Click Monitor this site.

The plugin creates a monitor for your site address. It checks at the fastest interval your plan allows.

The line at the top shows how many monitors of your plan you use. If your account has a project for the same domain, the monitor also shows on that project's Uptime Monitor page.

Watch WP-Cron#

WP-Cron runs the scheduled tasks of WordPress, such as scheduled posts and the plugin's own scheduled scans. When it stops, those tasks stop quietly, and a heartbeat monitor tells you.

1. On the Watch WP-Cron card, click Watch WP-Cron.
2. The plugin creates a heartbeat monitor called "WP cron" that expects a ping every hour.
3. The card now shows your ping URL. Click Copy link if you need it elsewhere.
4. Copy the code snippet under it. Paste it in a site-specific plugin or in your theme's functions.php file.

The snippet asks WP-Cron to call your ping URL once an hour. When the pings stop, you get an alert. Heartbeat monitors explains the timing.

The monitor table#

Each row shows the Monitor, its 24h uptime, its 30d uptime, the Avg response and the Last check. The status reads Up, Down, Checking or Paused.

SSL expiry and domain expiry monitors you created on the website show up here too. They show an expiry date instead of uptime numbers.

The Recent incidents table below lists when each incident started, the monitor, the cause and how long it lasted.

Edit a monitor#

1. Click Edit on the row.
2. Change the Name, the URL or the Check interval.
3. For a website monitor, set Alert after a number of failed checks.
4. Under Alert emails, enter the addresses for alerts, separated by commas.
5. Click Save, or Cancel to keep the old values.

A heartbeat monitor has no URL, and it offers intervals of 5 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour or 1 day.

Pause or delete a monitor#

• Pause stops the checks. The row then reads Paused. Click Resume to start again.
• Delete removes the monitor. Its check history goes with it.

How alerts work#

Alerts come from brokenlinkchecker.io by email, not from your WordPress site. A second location confirms every failed check before it counts, so one bad request does not wake you. How downtime is confirmed explains the rule.

Alert channels, status pages and maintenance windows live on the website. Uptime Monitor overview and plan limits is the place to start.