With The Hub, you can easily manage, monitor, scan, access, and maintain unlimited WordPress sites — all in one place! Everything you need for security, performance, SEO, white labeling, and streamlined site management is available in just a few clicks.
This article shows you how to get the most out of The Hub and how to use it to its full potential. As you’ll see, there’s a TON you can do.
We’ll be covering how to:
Manage Your Plugins & Themes
Keep Tabs on Your Sites’ Security
Set Your Site Up for Maximum Performance
View Your Site’s Insights (in detail)
Easily Manage Your SEO
Customize White Label Reports
Create Filters and Labels
Make Advanced White Labels
Access and Take Control of Backups
All of these features can be accessed from the tabs above The Hub Overview screen.
The Hub Overview screen.
You’ll need to have your site connected to The Hub first. If you need help with this, please see how to add a site here.
Once you have your sites connected, you can enable the SSO (Single Sign-On). This is so you can securely access your sites from The Hub without having to sign in separately for each one.
Check out this quick video or documentation to see how easy it is to set up SSO.
Now that we have the foundation for getting started with The Hub set, let’s go through each of these sections:
1. Automate’s help. Automate is our automatic update WordPress manager.
Click on Plugins & Themes to get started.
From here, see all of the active and inactive plugins you have from the Plugins tab. They’re arranged by Core, Active, and Inactive plugins. It also shows what version of each plugin you currently have.
Every plugin you have is listed in this area.
You can bulk activate, deactivate, mark as a favorite, or delete. Or, you can do the same functions on individual plugins.
Same time and do things in bulk.
And if you’d like to add a plugin, you can do so with a click of a button.
This will take you to all of our available plugins.
The Themes tab will show you what themes you have available for your WordPress site by Active and Inactive. Delete themes from here and also add a new one by clicking Add Theme. It also shows what versions of the themes you have.
The themes can also be deleted in bulk or individually. Plus, you can customize the theme by clicking on the magic wand, which will then take you to the WordPress admin.
Check for updates in the Updates tab.
It will show you all of the plugins that need to be updated and the version that it will update to. You can update all of them in bulk or individually. It will even give you the option to update plugins that aren’t activated.
By checking the box on top, these updates will be done in bulk by clicking the blue ‘Update’ button.
If you’re not fond of manual updates, you can set up Automate to do all of the updating for you from the Automate tab.
It’s quick and easy to get started using automatic updates. If you’re initially getting it set up, Automate walks you through the process.
Clicking the ‘Get Started’ button will get Automate started.
After clicking Get Started, he’ll ask if you’re keen on updating manually or if you want to auto-update all. Then, you can customize how frequently you want Automate to check for updates or choose the every three hours option.
Customize the frequency to whatever you’d like.
Not only that, you can pick the option to backup your entire site before each update with Auto Backup. Auto backups will ensure your site stays in good shape in case any mishaps happen after an update.
Choose whether you want auto backups or not before each update.
Then, you can choose to have a Safe Update Check. This will tell you if your site is down and show you any visual changes on your pages that you select. You can decide to have this for your homepage, up to five custom pages, or not to do this at all.
Choose if you’d like the safe update feature or not.
You’ll also get an option for Safe Update Alerts, where you’ll get an email sent to you if there’s a specific percentage change.
Choose 25%, a custom percentage, or ‘no’ if you don’t want email alerts.
Once Automate’s all set up, it will show you the schedule of when updates occur, if the auto backup is on, and all of your plugins that are updated.
You can turn off an update on specific plugins and change the frequency of updates at any time from the Settings tab.
All the updates are shown in one place.
From the Activity Log, you can see up-to-date updates. Plus, you can view results in detail with the dropdown in each specific area.
The Activity Log has all of your updated activity listed by date and time.
As you can see, keeping your plugins and themes updated and in good shape is as simple as it gets in The Hub.
For more information on Automate and Plugins & Themes, be sure to check out our documentation.
2. Defender. He’s our answer to protect against hackers, brute force attacks, and malicious bots. Once Defender is installed on your site, all security precautions are accessible through The Hub.
Access the security area by clicking on Security in The Hub overview or from the Security tab.
Both options will get you to better security.
Click on Security and you’ll get a 360 view of all of the security features categorized by individual sections.
There is a ton that can be done to boost your site’s security.
The Security section shows you the total number of security issues and when the next scheduled scan is set to run. You can also set up a scheduled scan and run one instantly.
Want to run a scan? Click on Run Scan to do so.
In the Firewall tab, you can protect your login area and have any suspicious activity locked out.
It shows what type of Firewall you have set up.
WAF is the first layer of protection that blocks hackers and bot attacks before they even get close to your site. The Firewall section shows you what type of firewall protection you have.
Here, you can also enter IPs in the Allowlist, Blocklist, User AgentAllowlist, User Agent Blocklist, URL Allowlist, and Disabled Rule Ids.
With one-click, your security gets beefed-up.
Click on View Logs to instantly view your WAF logs directly in The Hub.
All the WAF logs are in one place.
You’ll instantly see how many potentially malicious files there are to review in the Malware Detection area. Access them by clicking View Issues.
Also, enable and set up Email Notifications for when Defender has finished Malware scans.
In this example, you can see there are 11 files to review potentially malicious files.
With the Audit Logging area, track, and log events when changes are made to your website. You can view the last 24 hours, seven days, or 30 days. It also shows you when the previous event and the number of events were logged.
Choose how far back you’d like to view the events logged.
Add an extra boost of security to your login area with Two-Factor Authentication. The Hub will show you the status of it (whether it’s on or off). You can also turn on the Lost Phone Authentication from this area.
The status’ of two-factor authentication and lost phone authentication are displayed.
To keep tabs on what’s happening with your security, you can set up tailored security reports, so you don’t even need to check The Hub. Set it up in the Your Reports area. They’ll be delivered right to your inbox.
Set up reports for Malware Detection, Firewall, and Audit Logging — all a few clicks away!
It indicates what reports are active and when they’re set up.
With the reports, you can change the date, time of day, and frequency of reports at any time.
The Recommendations area will show you security tweaks that you can make to enhance your security against hackers and bots trying to break in.
They are organized by Action (recommended tweaks) and Actioned (already taken care of tweaks). You can also set up email notifications when recommendations occur.
The current PHP and WordPress version is also on display.
With Blocklist Monitor, automatically check to see if you’re on Google’s blocklist monitor. It examines this for your WordPress site every six hours. If you do happen to end up on the blacklist, we’ll automatically send you an email.
The green checkmark means your status is good for Google.
For even more enhanced protection against the most aggressive hackers and bots, there are Advanced Tools, such as X-Frame-Options, X-XSS-Protection, X-Content-Type-Options, and Mask Login Area. They can be enabled in just a few clicks.
Decide what advanced tools you’d like to enable.
Getting the most out of your security is all done from The Hub. Hackers up to no good, and bots don’t stand a chance. And often, they’re stopped in their tracks before even getting close to your site.
For detailed information, be sure to read our article, Securing Your WordPress Site with Defender and The Hub.
3. Hummingbird and Smush – it’s easier than ever to monitor and enhance your site’s speed from The Hub.
Hummingbird delivers quicker loading pages by using an easy-to-use interface and one-click automated optimization features. You can have complete control of your site’s optimization with advanced settings & options, technical recommendations, simple to understand score metrics, continuous monitoring of performance issues, and more.
Smush will bulk optimize every image on your site with one-click. Smush fixes Google PageSpeed with the best image optimizer WordPress has ever known.
These two plugins, combined with The Hub, make keeping tabs and optimizing your site’s performance a breeze.
All of this is accessed in the Performance tab or the Performance section in The Hub overview.
The Performance tab and section in The Hub overview is quick to access from the Overview section.
When you’re in the Performance area, you’ll see all that you’re able to do regarding speed.
There’s a lot you can do to tweak performance.
The Performance area is where you can run a speed performance test and see your score.
Check your score based on desktop and mobile. It will also allow you to schedule speed performance tests and view when the last one was.
Run a test in one-click.
By clicking on the ellipsis, you can view even more options, including:
Run Test
View in WP Admin
View Full Report
Ignore Warnings
Display Options
An option to Deactivate the performance feature is also done from here.
There’s a lot that can be done in one-click.
There’s a ton you can accomplish to tweak your score for optimal performance. Be sure to read our documentation for more details.
With the Response Time section, you can monitor your server response time. It will let you know when your website is down or too slow for your visitors. You can adjust the timeline to the last 24 hours, the previous seven days, or the last 30 days.
Response time is monitored all the time to keep tabs on your site staying active.
With the Speed Test, you can run a Google page speed test and get itemized insights — with fixes on how to improve your site’s performance.
The Score Metrics is based on:
First Contentful Paint
First Meaningful Paint
Speed Index
First CPU Idle
Time to Interactive
To learn more about what the above score metrics mean, see these tutorials:
How to Improve First Contentful and Meaningful Paint
How to Improve Google Pagespeed User Interaction Metrics in WordPress
When clicking each metric, it will open up a new tab in Hummingbird, where you can view recommendations on how to fix it.
The speed test includes areas where you can improve your site’s performance.
The Audits tab will show you the results of a performance test, opportunities to fix performance, diagnostics, and passed audits.
With this test, you can see there’s one opportunity for improvement.
Finally, in the speed test section, the Historic Field Data tab will show you historical data when you have a well-established website.
You’ll be able to keep your site running at top-speed with all of the information provided in The Hub and by improving performance issues when necessary.
Moving on to the Image Optimization area, you can view if you have Smush on or off under Super-Smush savings. Plus, it shows you the total savings (in KBs), images smushed, and images resized.
Also, manage the Smush CDN, turn on Lazy Load, and access additional tools (e.g. resize detection).
Image optimization is all in one place.
With GZIP Compression, you can compress your webpages and stylesheets before sending them to your visitor’s browser, which drastically reduces travel time.
It shows you your server type and whether HTML, Javascript, and CSS are on.
Asset Optimization will optimize your assets by compressing and organizing them in a way that improves page load times. There are automated options, or you can configure each file yourself.
This area shows you the total reductions, total files, whether WPMU DEV CDN is on or off, and allows quick access to additional settings. Plus, it will show you what files you have set up to optimize automatically (e.g. Javascript & CSS).
Adjust settings in Hummingbird by clicking on the gear icon.
Caching stores files temporarily on your visitors’ website so that they don’t have to download assets twice. You can manage caching from The Hub and Hummingbird by changing the recommended expiry, changing your server type, and checking the status.
The lifespan of the caches is also indicated.
There’s also the option to turn on or off Page Caching, Gravatar Caching, and RSS. Also, you can Clear Cache by choosing what caches you want to clear.
Clicking ‘Clear Cache’ is all you need to do once you have your selected options.
The Advanced Tools allows you to turn on or off URL Query Strings, WooCommerce Cart Fragments, and Emojis to boost your performance.
Also schedule a database cleanup and view dispensable entries.
There are many minor tweaks you can make to enhance performance with Advanced Tools.
With Your Reports, you can create customized reports that get sent directly to your inbox.
Reports are just a few clicks away.
4. Optimizing Your WordPress Site Performance with Smush, Hummingbird, and The Hub.
5. SmartCrawl and The Hub make managing WordPress SEO easy. You can optimize your website or network for more traffic and improve your search engine results.
Get to your site’s content analysis’, conduct automated SEO reports, scans, and more from the SEO area in The Hub Overview or the SEO tab.
Your SEO is covered, thanks to SmartCrawl and The Hub.
The SEO opens up everything you’ll need to rank higher in the SERPs.
There’s a ton you can do for your SEO — all in one place.
You can see your current SEO score from the SEO area, know when the last checkup was, and run a checkup with a button click.
Run a checkup and more from the SEO area.
SEO Checkup area is designed to quickly and efficiently take care of SEO issues to help optimize your website for search engines and social media.
This area enables you to view your issues and take care of them in just a few clicks. Plus, you can see your resolved & ignored issues and schedule a regular SEO checkup that will send reports directly to your inbox.
Want to set up a scheduled scan? Simply hit ‘Set Up,’ and you’ll be able to get one going.
The Content Analysis is where you can view your overall SEO analysis and overall readability analysis. It will give you recommendations on how to rank highly and ensure your site is easy for the average person to read.
The SEO analysis is either Good or Poor and Easy, Okay, and Difficult rank the readability.
From the Site Crawler area, you can run a scan to detect URL issues. That goes for broken URLs, 404s, multiple redirections, and absent URLs. All of these factors can disrupt rankings in search engines.
From here, you can run or schedule a scan. Also, it will display the number of issues, missing URLs, and total URLs discovered. Lastly, you can see when your last site crawler to scan was conducted.
Want to run a scan? Click the ‘Run Scan’ button, and you’re all set!
In the Social area, control and optimize how your WordPress site will appear on social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter.
This is done by enabling OpenGraph, Twitter Cards, and for Pinterest, you can add verification so that it attributes your website when content from it is pinned to the platform.
It will display what features you have on.
To get SEO checkup and Site Crawler reports delivered right to your inbox, you can enable this from the Your Reports area.
You can get a report scheduled in just a few clicks.
With Automatic Linking, you can set it up to automatically look for keywords that match posts and pages and then link them to your website.
You can even add custom links and exclusions!
There are a lot of categories to link automatically.
With the Titles & Meta area, you control how your WordPress site’s pages, posts, and custom post types appear in search engines.
When clicked, you’ll also get recommendations about wordcount and what to include in your descriptions.
This section also shows the number of Public Post Types.
Let search engines know whether you’re an organization or a person with Schema. With Schema, you can also add all of your social profiles, so search engines understand what social profiles to attribute your web content.
This shows whether you’re an organization or a person.
Also, connect with Moz to get even more detailed SEO reporting for your site. You’ll need to create an account, then once activated, it will be an accessible section for you in The Hub.
To get even more details on using SEO with The Hub, read our article, Easily Configure Your WordPress SEO with SmartCrawl and The Hub.
6. click here.
7. More Labels & Languages — The Hub Just Gets Better.
8. WPMU DEV dashboard plugin (which should be installed already if you’re a member) and The Hub Client plugin.
Two great options for white labeling are a few clicks away!
When it comes to white labeling in your WordPress admin, simply go to the WPMU DEV dashboard on your WordPress site. From there, you’ll see a section called Whitelabel.
Once you click ‘Activate,’ you’ll be ready to white label.
Now, you can white label the branding, footer text, admin menu labels (with the help of our white label plugin, Branda Pro), and remove our documentation, tutorials & products.
Our superheroes will be okay with it if you don’t want them here.
With The Hub Client, you can completely white label the Hub and client’s dashboard, so The Hub becomes YOUR Hub customized to your brand.
Once the plugin is downloaded, all white labeling can be done on the Hub Client dashboard. From this spot, you can change the settings to suit your preference. That includes:
Adding your brand name
Replacing the WPMU DEV logo with your own
Choosing a color scheme for the navigation background, navigation text, and navigation test selected & hover
Configuring the navigation
Setting up the client page
Managing users & roles
Including terms of service URL
Adding a privacy policies URL
White label as much or as little as you’d like.
Practically everything can be white labeled for you and your clients.
Example of the login area for your clients after adding a custom Dev Man image and colors.
For more on The Hub Client, be sure to read our detailed article, How to Simply Set Up Users & Roles for You and Your Clients.
And for more on Branda and her awesome white labeling capabilities, read our article about getting the most out of using Branda.
9. find out more here.
managed hosting, 24/7 live expert support, exclusive members community, and much more.
We’re continuously working to improve The Hub. Everything from new tabs to labels & languages, The Hub just keeps getting better. Thanks to our team of developers, the best is yet to come.
Be sure to keep tabs on what’s next with The Hub with our Roadmap.
For centralized and effective WordPress site management, there’s no sub for The Hub. Be sure to get the most out of it today.
