The website maintenance blog at Watchful covers all things WordPress including hosting, software, updates, backups and agency life.
Watchful’s vulnerability scanner gets a major upgrade with new malware and reputation checks, CVE detection, automated scanning, and intelligent security notifications.
Content Security Policy, usually abbreviated as CSP, is an HTTP response header that allows a website to tell browsers which sources and behaviors should be permitted when displaying its pages. A complete CSP can control many different aspects of a website. However, you do not need to implement a complicated Read more
HTTP Strict Transport Security, usually abbreviated as HSTS, is a security header that tells web browsers to access your website using HTTPS only. Once a browser receives an HSTS header from your website, future attempts to visit the site over HTTP are automatically upgraded to HTTPS. The browser will also Read more
The X-Frame-Options HTTP response header helps control whether pages from your website can be displayed inside a frame or iframe on another website. If this header is missing, another site may be able to embed your pages inside its own content. This can increase the risk of clickjacking, where a Read more
PHP is the programming language that powers WordPress. Depending on your server configuration, the exact version of PHP running your website may be included in its HTTP response headers. For example, your server might return: X-Powered-By: PHP/8.2.33 Visitors do not normally see HTTP response headers when browsing your website, but Read more
Watchful Premium users can now receive optional email alerts when Lighthouse detects a significant website performance decline of 25% or more.
Firewalls sometimes block legitimate services and trusted visitors. Learn how to allowlist IP addresses in Cloudflare, hosting firewalls, and WordPress or Joomla! security tools without unnecessarily weakening your website’s protection.
Learn why your website’s IP address may change, how to check whether the change is expected, and how to troubleshoot unexpected or repeated IP address changes.
Watchful client reports now include Lighthouse scores and history graphs, making it easier to share website quality trends with clients.
WordPress includes a built-in debugging system that can help identify problems with plugins, themes and custom code. When debug logging is enabled using the default settings, WordPress typically writes PHP errors, warnings and notices to: wp-content/debug.log The information in this file can be extremely useful when troubleshooting a website. Unfortunately, Read more