PressVitals Site Auditor

PressVitals Site Auditor is a headless-first diagnostic engine. It runs a suite of read-only probes across performance, security, deliverability and database health, assigns each a severity tier, rolls them up into a worst-of verdict, and exposes the result where automation can actually consume it: a token-gated REST report, a daily cron with email alerts, and a categorized admin dashboard.

It is dependency-free — no WooCommerce, no page builder, no other plugin required — and pluggable: every probe is registered through a filter, so the 22+ built-in probes are just the starting point. The architecture is designed to scale to 48+ probes in production; register your own via pvsa_registered_checks.

How is this different from the built-in Site Health?

WordPress core’s Tools → Site Health is excellent, but it is an on-demand, admin-only tool: you open a screen, it runs its status tests, and the Debug tab prints a static environment dump for support. PressVitals is built for a different job — continuous, automated, machine-readable monitoring and auditing:

• Headless / API-first. Core Site Health has no public report API. PressVitals exposes a no-auth /ping liveness probe and a token-gated /report JSON endpoint (HTTP 503 on a failing verdict) so an external uptime monitor, status page, or CI pipeline can read site health without logging in.
• Scheduled + alerting. Core never runs on a schedule and never tells you when something breaks. PressVitals runs daily via WP-Cron and emails the admin when the verdict is fail.
• Severity tiers + worst-of verdict. Core labels results good/recommended/ critical. PressVitals assigns each probe a 1–5 severity tier and computes a single rolled-up verdict suitable for a green/red status signal.
• Probes core does not have. TLS certificate-expiry countdown (core only checks that HTTPS works today), .env/secret-file web exposure, a web-root stray-backup scanner, baseline security headers (HSTS / X-Frame-Options / …), forced-HTTPS redirect, XML-RPC exposure, default-admin-username detection, SPF + DMARC email-DNS records, homepage indexability, and database-bloat (expired transients / revisions / spam) checks.
• Pluggable + configurable. Core’s tests are fixed. PressVitals lets any plugin or theme register probes via a filter and tune every threshold via filters.

Think of it as the layer on top of Site Health: the same read-only philosophy, re-pointed at automation, alerting, and security/ops auditing.

Built-in probes

PressVitals ships 29 built-in probes, grouped by functional category:

• Availability — database connectivity, homepage HTTPS reachability.
• Security — .env not web-accessible (HTTP) and not exposed on disk, web-root stray/backup file scan, TLS certificate expiry, baseline security headers, forced HTTPS, XML-RPC exposure, no default admin user, wp-config.php permissions, user-enumeration exposure, error-display off.
• Errors — error-log size, recent PHP fatal errors.
• Database — core tables present, non-core/orphaned tables, autoloaded-options size, database bloat.
• Files — free disk space, uploads-directory writability, recent backup.
• Email — SPF + DMARC DNS records for the sending domain.
• SEO — homepage is indexable (not noindex).
• Performance — PHP memory limit, persistent object cache.
• Environment — supported PHP version, WordPress core update available, plugin updates pending.

Extend it with your own checks

Probes are not hardcoded — the engine collects them from a filter, so any plugin or theme can register its own:

A callback returns array( 'status' => 'pass'|'warn'|'fail', 'detail' => '…' ).

Developer filters

• pvsa_registered_checks — register/override probes.
• pvsa_setting_{key} — override a stored threshold at read time.
• pvsa_alert_email — change the failure-alert recipient.
• pvsa_http_timeout, pvsa_disk_free_min_bytes, pvsa_memory_min_bytes, pvsa_fatal_lookback_hours, pvsa_fatal_scan_max_bytes — tune environment probes.
• pvsa_ssl_warn_days, pvsa_ssl_fail_days — TLS expiry thresholds.
• pvsa_backup_warn_days, pvsa_backup_fail_days — backup-recency thresholds.
• pvsa_last_backup_timestamp — report your last successful backup time (UNIX) so the backup probe works with any backup plugin, host, or off-site service.
• pvsa_backup_plugins — list of backup-plugin basenames recognised by presence.
• pvsa_max_expired_transients, pvsa_max_revisions, pvsa_max_spam_comments — database-bloat thresholds.
• pvsa_known_tables — full table names to treat as expected (silences the non-core/orphaned-tables probe for legitimate plugin tables).
• pvsa_orphan_tables_warn — non-core table count above which the probe warns.
• pvsa_sending_domain — domain used for the SPF/DMARC lookup.

Compatibility

PressVitals has no plugin dependencies and runs on virtually any WordPress install — single-site or multisite, with or without WooCommerce, page builders, or a backup plugin. It calls only core WordPress APIs and guards every optional PHP function (disk_free_space, stream_socket_client/OpenSSL, dns_get_record, WP_Filesystem), degrading a probe to a neutral pass/skip when something isn’t available rather than erroring. The backup probe is backup-agnostic: it reads UpdraftPlus directly, recognises other common backup plugins, and lets any other backup solution (including host-level backups) report in via pvsa_last_backup_timestamp.

Development

Two local workflows are scaffolded (both Docker-based; neither ships in the package):

Automated tests — wp-env (recommended): requires Docker + Node.js. npm -g install @wordpress/env, then wp-env start and wp-env run tests-cli –env-cwd=wp-content/plugins/pressvitals-site-auditor vendor/bin/phpunit. Switch versions by editing core / phpVersion in .wp-env.json and running wp-env start –update. Without Docker, run the suite the classic way: composer install, bin/install-wp-tests.sh wordpress_test root '' localhost, composer test. A GitHub Actions workflow runs PHPUnit across PHP 7.4 / 8.0 / 8.2 / 8.3.

Manual multi-version testing — docker-compose: docker compose up -d boots three browsable installs at fixed WordPress x PHP combos (WP 6.7/PHP 8.3, WP 6.4/PHP 8.1, WP 6.3/PHP 7.4) on ports 8083 / 8081 / 8074, each with the plugin mounted. See docker-compose.yml for details.