This software package is bundled with the Extension Manager.

Activate Monitor

First, you’ll need to activate Monitor.

After activating the extension, you’ll find a menu link displayed next to the activation button. That link will direct you to the Monitor registration page.

Registration

On the registration page, you’ll find a privacy statement. Beneath it, you can connect your website.

When you hit the “Register” button, your site will be registered.

Your website will also automatically be enqueued for a crawl.

Crawling

Crawling a website from our servers can take from a few seconds up to three minutes.

This is done in scheduled one-minute intervals. When many sites are in the queue, some might be moved up front at the next interval.

If you wish to enqueue a crawl, click on the “Request Crawl” button in the Control Panel.

Updating

To receive the latest Monitor data, hit “Update Data”.

If you just initiated a crawl request, you might receive outdated or incorrect data. It takes time to crawl a website, after all.

Because Monitor is a two-part system, changes are differentiated via Extension and API.

1.2.12

Release date: November 19th, 2024

• API – Our servers:
  • June 13th, 2024:
    • Improved: Scheduled tasks are now performed twice as often.
    • Fixed: When a site is deleted due to inactivity, reconnecting is now possible.
    • Fixed: We found that not all site data was purged in the past, so we manually truncated the databases. You may find that recrawling is necessary.
• Extension:
  • Improved: To accomodate the increased frequency of scheduled tasks, we halved all wait times for crawls requesting and data fetching.
  • Improved: When registering the site, the data timeout is set to prevent immediate fetching of data that doesn’t exist.
  • Fixed: API errors are handled more gracefully.
  • Fixed: Resolved an issue where not all actions invoked a reconnection resolution when required.

1.2.11

Release date: November 2nd, 2023

• Extension:
  • Fixed: No longer conflicts with The SEO Framework’s debugging features.

1.2.10

Release date: June 22nd, 2023

• API – Our servers:
  • April 21st, 2023:
    • Added: WordPress sitemaps are now crawled by the sitemap tester.

1.2.9

Release date: February 7th, 2023

• Extension:
  • Fixed: Connection errors are now forwarded correctly.
• API – Our servers:
  • January 27th, 2023:
    • Improved: Licensing errors are now more descriptive.

1.2.8

Release date: October 4th, 2022

• Extension:
  • Improved: The valid sitemap message is now more descriptive.
  • Improved: Modernized code with a focus on improving performance.
• API – Our servers:
  • September 27th, 2022:
    • Improved: Improved lookups for descriptions, canonical URLs, and icons, now supporting more vigorous minification plugins.

1.2.7

Release date: February 9th, 2021

• API – Our servers:
  • July 5th, 2020:
    • Fixed: The HTTPS test no longer expects subsequent redirects when the site can be served from both HTTP and HTTPS.
  • July 7th, 2020:
    • Fixed: The mixed scheme test no longer defaults to mixed, but correctly tests both the HTTP and HTTPS versions of your site.

1.2.6

Release date: June 2nd, 2020

• Changed: This extension’s admin access can now be controlled via the global constant TSF_EXTENSION_MANAGER_EXTENSION_ADMIN_ROLE.
• Fixed: When all data from our server stored on your site is outdated, Monitor will now inform you about it, instead of displaying a blank pane.

1.2.5

Release date: May 15th, 2020

• Extension:
  • Other: This extension is now out of beta! We’re now ready to expand to per-page reviews, which will follow in a future update.
  • Improved: When no title tag is found, a non-generic message is now shown.
  • Changed: Removed the “coming soon” statistics pane.
  • Changed: Removed the “coming soon” issue.
  • Fixed: The PHP error evaluation link now works for the homepage.
  • Fixed: The robots.txt asserter now recognizes and extrudes The SEO Framework v4.0.5 robots’ validator.
• API – Our servers:
  • February 12th, 2020:
    • Fixed: Nonconventional title tags are now recognized.
    • Fixed: Non-header title tags are no longer detected as extraneous.
  • May 14th, 2020:
    • Fixed: 302 redirects are now honored correctly.

1.2.4-beta-5

Release date: December 18th, 2019

• Extension:
  • Changed: The favicon.ico check is now hidden when a meta icon is found. We changed this because modern browsers no longer ping the ico file when a meta-icon is proposed.
• API – Our servers:
  • December 17th, 2019:
    • Fixed: You can now disconnect from the Monitor service after moving domains.

1.2.3-beta-5

Release date: November 5th, 2019

• Improved: To honor the new Extension Manager interface, we restyled the non-default items.

1.2.2-beta-5

Release date: January 28th, 2019

• Changed: This extension now uses TSF’s script loader.

1.2.1-beta-5

Release date: December 4th, 2018

• Extension:
  • Added: The plugin now shows description meta tag information.
  • Changed: The scheme warning is now more severe, because Firefox and Chrome display warnings that are off-putting.
  • Changed: When the canonical URL isn’t found, or is deemed invalid, an error now shows.
  • Changed: The favicon.ico test is now always displayed, regardless of the site icon settings.
  • Changed: Crawling status notifications are now displayed at the top of the page.
  • Fixed: Various keyboard accessibility issues.
• API – Our servers:
  • December 3rd, 2018:
    • The server is now allowed to communicate with v1.2.1.
    • Added description meta tag tests.
    • Reduced false negatives of canonical URL detection.
    • Reduced false negatives of embedded icon detection.
    • A favicon.ico redirect can now be followed.
    • The server now purges all website data older than 90 days automatically.

1.2.0-beta-5

Release date: August 28th, 2018

• Extension:
  • Added: TSF v3.1 support.

1.1.0-beta-5

Release date: March 31st, 2018

• Extension:
  • Improved: The admin layout matches the new and modernized standard.
• API – Extension:
  • Added: The crawler now tests for title tags. It checks if the Title Fix extension is needed, or when you need to consult with your theme developer.
  • Added: Last-crawled date is now fetched and displayed.
  • Added: You can now set uptime monitoring and performance monitoring delays.
    • When enabled, your website can participate in the initial uptime and performance monitoring runtime testing stages.
  • Fixed: When a scripting error occurs on the Monitor servers, you’ll now be notified correctly.
• API – Our servers:
  • January 16th, 2018:
    • Fixed: Data is being sent correctly again (outage lasted 12 hours due to a scripting error).
  • January 15th, 2018:
    • Added: Sites can now manage their monitoring settings independently.
  • December 17th, 2017:
    • Added: We now store title tags.
  • December 20th, 2017:
    • Added: We now record last-crawled date.

1.0.0-beta-4

Release date: August 22nd, 2017

N.B. This version is annotated as 1.0.0-β-3 within the extension activation page.

• Extension:
  • Improved: The privacy policy link on the registration page now opens in a new window and no longer tells us from where you clicked it.
  • Fixed: Manual update buttons are no longer handling clicks of it twice.
  • Fixed: When debugging, the Update Data button no longer fails AJAX calls when parsing data.
• API – Our servers:
  • May 16th, 2017:
    • Fixed: The return data now supports 1.0.0-beta-3 and later, rather than 1.0.0 and later.
      • This outputted a notice on all testing fields and therefore showed no useful information.
  • July 6th, 2017:
    • Fixed: URLs with UTF-8 and UTF-16 characters can now be detected.
      • This improves canonical URL detection on some sites.
      • This improves icon detection when using Jetpack Photon, for example.

1.0.0-beta-3

Release date: May 15th, 2017

• Extension:
  • Changed: The Monitor menu item now is visible for users with the manage_options capability, rather than install_plugins.
  • Fixed: More aggressive buffer cleaning has been put in place to prevent failing AJAX requests.
  • Fixed: The SEO Framework’s internal debugging methods can no longer interfere with the output.
  • Fixed: Server and Browser AJAX errors can now resolve when requesting updates.
  • Fixed: Server and Browser AJAX errors can now resolve when requesting crawl.
• API – Extension:
  • Added: The crawler now tests for Scheme settings. It checks for HTTPS headers and the related canonical URL output.
    • Also vice versa, so if your site isn’t accessible on HTTPS, but your canonical URL states it is, it will warn you.
• API – Our servers:
  • March 18th, 2017:
    • Fixed: When your site embeds external services like YouTube, the crawler no longer crashes.
  • April 1st, 2017:
    • Fixed: When your metadata favicon isn’t outputted by WordPress, it can now also be detected.
  • May 7th, 2017:
    • Added: Only the root file is now checked, rather than subdirectories.
  • May 14th, 2017:
    • Added: We now confirm if your website is accessible on HTTPS.
    • Added: We now check canonical URLs for scheme issues.
    • Fixed: Alternative output of the metadata favicon tag’s closing tag can now be detected too.
    • Fixed: Compressed pages can now also be correctly tested for favicons.
    • Fixed: Single quotes’ favicons metadata can now also be detected.

1.0.0-beta-2

Release date: February 17th, 2017

• Extension:
  • Improved: The “invalid sitemap” notification now suggest you contacting premium support, rather than stating the inconvenient obvious.
  • Fixed: The robots.txt file got marked as static while being dynamic when another plugin or theme affects the output.
  • Fixed: Requesting a crawl through AJAX now works correctly when debugging is disabled.
  • Fixed: Updating data through AJAX now works correctly when debugging is disabled.
• API – Extension:
  • Fixed: A PHP warning was output when making the first connection.
  • Fixed: The disconnection button on decoupled sites now works.
  • Fixed: When your website has been decoupled from the API server, the notices are now more in-line with events.
  • Fixed: When the site has been decoupled from the API server, the remote data will be removed from view.
• API – Our servers:
  • Improved: The API server has been moved to a dedicated server instance. This allows for more accurate measurements for upcoming features.
  • Improved: The API server now parses crawl requests automatically.
  • Fixed: The sitemap detection for more advanced sitemaps now works.
  • Fixed: When an HTTP error is generated when fetching the sitemap, this is now correctly handled.

1.0.0-beta-1

Release date: January 1st, 2017

• Initial extension release.