Quality support is one of the cornerstones of the ManageWP service. After all, what’s the point in having a great product if people cannot get prompt assistance when they need it?
Back in February we revealed how well our support system is performing in terms of numbers, but numbers don’t count for everything. In an ideal world our support team would be rendered redundant by a perfectly performing app on perfectly performing platforms, but that aint gonna happen. In the meantime, all we can do is strive to be the best that we can be.
With that in mind, today we want to reveal some of the most commonly-asked questions of our support team and provide you with comprehensive answers. It is our hope that by doing so, you will not even have to contact our support and wait for an ultra-quick reply — you can just grab the answer you need here.
1. Why Am I Unable to Add My Site(s) to the ManageWP Dashboard?
First of all (and I’m sure you’ve already done this), check to make sure that your site (a) is actually a WordPress site, and (b) is currently live and available to view in your browser.
Next, check whether you have the ManageWP worker plugin installed and activated on your site. Without this plugin the app will not able to establish a means of communication with your site.
Our most recent ManageWP update incorporated automatic installing of the worker plugin — just provide your Administrator profile’s password when prompted. Otherwise, you need to install the plugin manually.
If that isn’t the problem then the ManageWP IP addresses may be blocked by your hosting provider. To resolve this issue just contact your hosting provider and ask them to whitelist our IP addresses.
Next, check the location of your ‘wp-admin’ folder. It should be contained within your website’s root directory — if not, ManageWP won’t be able to find it.
Finally, your .htaccess file may be preventing ManageWP from accessing your ‘wp-admin’ folder. The easiest workaround is to enter your site’s address in ManageWP as ‘http://yoursite.com/wp-login.php’ rather than just ‘http://yoursite.com/’.
2. Why Don’t I See Available Theme/Plugin Updates for My Sites?
It is typically a security or caching plugin that causes this issue.
For example, Better WP Security has “Hide Updated Notifications” options which must of course be unchecked in order for you to see available updates. Check to see if you have any such options turned on with your WordPress installation.
If you have a caching plugin (such as W3 Total Cache) then clearing the cache (either by selecting the relevant option or by deactivating then reactivating the plugin) should resolve the issue.
3. Do You Recommend a Specific Hosting Provider?
In short, no.
ManageWP does not have specific requirements for hosting providers. Any service that supports WordPress hosting will work with ManageWP.
However, some of our functions depend upon hosting server setups. You should check a couple of things with your host to ensure that your package will be fully compatible with ManageWP:
- PHP Memory and Execution Time limits: what are they and can they be changed? 256mb memory limit and 600 seconds execution time is usually enough.
- Is the PHP Exec function blocked? It needs to be unblocked or at least permitted to pass through our system.
- Do they use SUPHP or a similar solution that will allow you to modify and create files with PHP if PHP is run under your account username?
4. Why is There a Difference Between Google and ManageWP Analytics?
ManageWP analytics counts and displays the exact number of times your WordPress website was loaded during any given day. It counts every visit, every page refresh, and both visits or page reloads through PHP as a single visit.
On the other hand, by default Google Analytics filters out bots and only counts unique visitors.
5. Why Aren’t My Scheduled Backups Running?
First of all, backups will only run if your site has visitors.
Second, if you have a backup task with a large number of sites, you should create 3-4 smaller backup tasks and schedule them for different times. That should help.
If those aren’t the cause of the issue then there is likely a problem with your server settings. Ask your hosting provider to:
- Increase the PHP execution time to 600 seconds and the memory limit to 256mb.
- Enable the PHP Exec function
- Allow you access to the ‘mysqldump’ command
What Questions Do You Have?
Believe it or not, the above five questions make up a huge proportion of the support questions we deal with on a daily basis. However, there are of course many other questions that we field (often one of a kind). The scope of both WordPress and ManageWP makes for an interesting support challenge, and we love a challenge!
So don’t be shy — if you have any questions about the ManageWP service or are struggling to do something, please ask us in the comments section and we’ll do our best to help you!
Photo Credit: HVargas
Mark
This must have been posted prior to the GoDaddy acquisition. Has anyone revealed how well the support system is running presently?
Marko Tanaskovic
Quite true. The article is from 2013, and the acquisition happened in 2016.
Bonaventura Di Bello
Once ManageWP Worker in installed and site is added to ManageWP dashboard, is there a way to completely disable standard login access (to enhance security through brute force attempts disabling) while preserving ManageWP accesso to websites? If so, I would like to add it to my article about ManageWP…
Marko Tanaskovic
You should not disable standard login access to your website. You could harden it or even add two-factor authentication for access, but you should not disable it.
Jamie
Hi Vladimir,
Is there a way that we can not have shared credentials for a website? I would like to have 1 click login but have each person have their own login so that we can see who made certain changes?
Thanks
Nevena Tomovic
Hey Jamie,
Thanks for your comment.
You can indeed do that by using the Collaborator tool, where you can control permissions and work with either your team or your clients. Here is more about the feature – https://managewp.com/features/collaborate
Abe
Hi there. I see how I can send reports to individual owners of websites, once I am the sites individual dashboards. Is there not a way to send all the reports with one click to any email addresses attached to that client, or will I need to do each report separately?
Thanks – I love what I’m seeing here 🙂
Abe
Clint Crisher
Invalid IP at login and I have moved my website to new hosting. Is there anyway to get access or should I just delete this account?
Petar Atanasovski
Hello Clint, this is Petar from ManageWP Customer Happiness team. I’ve disabled the IP restriction (http://managewp.com/user-guide/how-to-use-managewp/secure/restrict-access-to-managewp-by-ip-address) for your account, you should be able to log in normally now. If I can assist somehow further, you can send me an email to petar.atanasovski@managewp.com. All the best.
Robert
Despite the problems I have handling a huge account with websites with your management tool, the ManageWP support is by far the best I have ever seen. That’s worth a big compliment!
ivycat
Hey Vladimir,
On #5, you mention, “backups will only run if your site has visitors,” which, I assume, is due to the way that WP Cron works; you need a visit on the site to initiate the cron job.
So, would it be a possibility that, when I add a site to a backup job that ManageWP schedules a cron on one of your servers to ping the site I’ve added at the specified time to ensure that the backup is created?
I know this is more infrastructure on your end, but it could help ensure that lesser-visited sites get more reliably scheduled backups.
vprelovac
That’s exactly what we are thinking too. It will make backups far more reliable – we are working on this.
ivycat
Terrific! Thanks for the great service, hard work, and the helpful blog, Vladimir & Co.!