Canary Site Monitor
Canary Site Monitor checks a WordPress site for common failure conditions and reports what it finds in plain language, so problems are noticed before they affect visitors.
Most things that go wrong on a WordPress site go wrong quietly. A plugin deactivates after an update. Bots generate hundreds of 404 responses a day. Database tables drift out of sync with the plugins that own them. None of it announces itself, and by the time it becomes visible it has usually been happening for a while.
Checks run on WP-Cron schedules, not on front-end page loads, and the results appear on a dashboard in the WordPress admin.
Features
- Database scanner – compares your live table structure against the expected schema for WooCommerce, Yoast SEO, Rank Math SEO, Redirection and Flamingo. Detects missing tables, missing columns, column type mismatches, collation mismatches, and orphaned or MyISAM tables.
- Plugin watchdog – records plugin activations and deactivations with timestamp, user and IP address, and raises an alert when three or more plugins are deactivated at once.
- 404 flood monitor – logs 404 requests, identifies known bots and crawlers, and raises an alert when a single IP address exceeds a threshold you configure.
- Site-wide table audit – lists every database table with its row count, storage engine, size and status.
- Admin dashboard – a health score, metric cards and a list of recent alerts.
- CSV export – download the 404 log, plugin change history or database issue log.
Every feature listed above is fully functional. Nothing in this plugin is locked, time-limited or gated behind a licence key.
Canary Site Monitor reads and reports. It does not modify your database, your plugins or your site configuration.
This is not a security plugin. It does not scan for malware and does not provide a firewall.
A separate paid plugin is available
A separate commercial plugin, distributed from getwpcanary.com, adds database repair, a daily email digest, debug log analysis, cron health checks, and PHP resource monitoring. That code is not included in this plugin and is not required for anything described above.
External services
This plugin uses one external service: Freemius, which provides account registration and licence management for the separate paid plugin.
No data is sent unless you choose to send it. On activation the plugin shows an opt-in screen offering to connect your account. That screen can be skipped, and if you skip it the plugin runs in anonymous mode and transmits nothing. All features work fully whether you opt in or not.
If you do opt in, or if you enter a licence key, the following is sent to Freemius: your site URL, WordPress version, PHP version, the list of active plugins and the active theme, and the email address of the account you register with. This is sent when you opt in, and afterwards when a licence is validated.
Freemius terms of service: https://freemius.com/terms/ Freemius privacy policy: https://freemius.com/privacy/
No other data leaves your site. Alert emails are generated on your own server and sent with the standard WordPress wp_mail() function. Their contents are not transmitted to the plugin author or to any third party.