FlashPanel

WordPress Management ​

The WordPress page lets you manage a WordPress website directly in FlashPanel: log in to the admin dashboard quickly, update WordPress, plugins and themes, optimize the database and enable Nginx caching for WP Rocket.

Accessing the WordPress page ​

The WordPress item appears in the site's menu when the website was installed with the WordPress option, or declared as WordPress using the Self Upload option.

The top of the page shows the current WordPress version and the Auto Login button.

INFO

If Lockdown is enabled on the website, updating and changing plugins and themes is disabled. Turn Lockdown off before updating.

One-click login to WordPress admin ​

Click the Auto Login button at the top of the WordPress page. A new tab opens and you are logged straight into the WordPress admin dashboard without entering a password.

WARNING

Auto login is only available for servers on a paid plan. On the free plan, you are redirected to the WordPress login page with the message Auto login is only available for paid plans; log in with your admin account as usual.

Quick actions ​

The quick actions table contains the most common update buttons, each with a note next to it:

ButtonWhat it does
core-updateUpdates WordPress to the latest version. Only shown when a new version is available
plugin-updateUpdates all active plugins
theme-updateUpdates the current active theme

Click the button and follow the progress on the button or on the site's Events page.

WARNING

Back up your website before updating. Updates can occasionally cause compatibility issues with plugins, themes or custom code.

Feature tools ​

Edit wp-config.php ​

Click the wp-config.php tile to open the WordPress configuration file in the editor, make your changes and save the file.

WARNING

Editing wp-config.php incorrectly can take your website down. Back up the file before editing.

WordPress Optimize ​

Clean up unnecessary data in the WordPress database.

  1. Click the WordPress Optimize tile
  2. In the Database Optimize dialog, select the items to run:
    • Clean all post revisions
    • Clean all auto-draft posts
    • Clean all trashed posts
    • Remove spam and trashed comments
    • Remove unapproved comments
    • Remove expired transient options (optionally also All (not only expired))
    • Remove pingbacks, Remove trackbacks
    • Clean orphaned post, user and comment meta data
  3. Click Run optimization

The dialog also shows when previous optimizations were run.

WARNING

Items marked with the warning icon perform more intensive database operations. If the database server crashes while an optimization is running, data might be corrupted. Back up the database before running them.

NGINX WordPress Rocket ​

Rocket-Nginx is an Nginx configuration for the WP Rocket caching plugin. When enabled, Nginx serves pages cached by WP Rocket directly without running WordPress or PHP, and adds headers so browsers cache CSS, JS and media files. This tile only appears when the server uses Nginx; once enabled, it shows a green check mark.

Enable Nginx configuration for WP Rocket ​

  1. Install and activate the WP Rocket plugin in the WordPress admin dashboard
  2. On the WordPress page in FlashPanel, click the NGINX WordPress Rocket tile
  3. Click Enable (click Disable to turn it off)
  4. Check the result: open the website in your browser, press F12 > Network tab, reload the page and inspect the page's response headers. If you see X-Rocket-Nginx-Serving-Static: HIT, Nginx is serving the page from cache

Configure WP-Cron ​

WARNING

When pages are served from cache, WordPress does not run on every visit. Since WP-Cron only runs when WordPress handles a request, scheduled tasks (scheduled posts, emails...) may not run on time. You should disable WP-Cron and create a real cron job on the server.

  1. Open wp-config.php (the wp-config.php tile above) and add the following line before the That's all, stop editing! line:

    php
    define( 'DISABLE_WP_CRON', true );

  2. Open the server management page, select CronJob and click the CronJob button to create a new cron job:

    • Command (editor):

      bash
      cd /home/flashpanel/domain.com && php8.3 wp-cron.php

      Replace /home/flashpanel/domain.com with the website's root directory and php8.3 with the PHP version the website uses.

    • User: select the user that owns the website

    • Cron Expression: */15 * * * * (every 15 minutes)

  3. Click Add CronJob

See also CronJob.

WordPress User Update ​

Change the password of a WordPress account without logging in to the admin dashboard.

  1. Click the WordPress User Update tile
  2. Enter the account's ID, username or email in the id / username / email field
  3. Enter the new Password or click the key icon to generate a random one
  4. Click Submit

Managing plugins and themes ​

At the bottom of the page there are two tabs, Plugins and Themes, showing the number of installed items, for example Plugins (15). Each tab is a table with the columns Plugin Name, Status, Version, Update Version, Update, Auto Update and Action.

Activating or deactivating ​

Toggle the switch in the Status column of the row. The label next to the switch shows the current status (active, inactive or must-use).

Enabling auto updates ​

Turn on the switch in the Auto Update column to let WordPress update the plugin or theme automatically when a new version is released.

Updating a plugin or theme ​

When a new version is available, the Update Version column shows it and the Update column shows an Update button. Click the button to update.

Installing new plugins or themes ​

  1. Click the Install Plugin (or Install Theme) button above the table
  2. Type the plugin or theme name to search and select the item to install
  3. (Optional) Enter a Version (optional); leave it empty to install the latest version
  4. (Optional) Check Activate plugin after installation (or theme)
  5. Click Install

Deleting a plugin or theme ​

Click the Delete button in the Action column and confirm. This cannot be undone.

Reloading the list ​

Click the reload icon above the table to refresh the list after changing plugins or themes elsewhere (for example in the WordPress admin dashboard).

INFO

must-use plugins cannot be deactivated, updated or deleted from this page.

Troubleshooting ​

Enable debug mode ​

When the website shows a blank page or a "critical error" message, turn on WordPress debug logging to find the PHP error:

  1. Click the wp-config.php tile and find the line define( 'WP_DEBUG', false );.

  2. Replace it with:

    php
    define( 'WP_DEBUG', true );
// Write errors to wp-content/debug.log
define( 'WP_DEBUG_LOG', true );
// Do not show errors to visitors
define( 'WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY', false );

  3. Save the file and reload the page that has the error.

  4. Read wp-content/debug.log in the File Manager, or follow it live from the website folder in the terminal with tail -f wp-content/debug.log.

WARNING

When you are done, set WP_DEBUG back to false and delete debug.log. The file can be opened from the browser and may expose sensitive information.

Cannot upload .glb files ​

Uploading a .glb (3D model) file to the Media Library fails with "This file cannot be processed by the web server." Despite the message, the web server is not involved: WordPress rejects the file before uploading it, because .glb is not in its list of allowed file types.

Allow the file type by adding this code to the active theme's functions.php (preferably in a child theme, so theme updates don't remove it):

php
add_filter('upload_mimes', function ($mimes) {
    $mimes['glb'] = 'model/gltf-binary';
    return $mimes;
});

Then upload the file again from Media > Add New.