How to monitor

A status page for your WordPress site

Monitor your WordPress site's uptime, catch white-screen errors and slow responses, watch SSL expiry, and publish a status page — no plugin required.

StatusCat2 min read

WordPress powers a huge share of the web, and it fails in specific, recognisable ways: the "white screen of death," a plugin update that breaks the homepage, a slow site under load, or an expired certificate. The good news is you can monitor all of it from the outside — no plugin required, so the monitoring keeps working even when WordPress doesn't.

What to monitor

  • The homepage — an HTTP check with a keyword assertion (crucial for WordPress — see below).
  • Key pages — checkout, login/wp-login.php, and any landing pages that matter.
  • Response time — WordPress can get slow under load; track latency and alert on spikes.
  • SSL certificate — expiry monitoring (SSL guide).
  • Domain expiry — so a lapsed registration never takes you down (DNS & domain guide).

Catch the white screen with a keyword check

This is the single most important tip for WordPress. A PHP error or a bad plugin update can leave your site returning a 200 OK with a blank page — a plain uptime check would call that "up."

Instead, add a keyword assertion: pick a word that always appears on your homepage (your site title, a tagline, a footer credit) and have the monitor require it. If WordPress white-screens, the keyword is missing, and the monitor correctly reports the site as down.

Set it up in StatusCat

  1. Create an HTTP monitor for your homepage.
  2. Add a keyword assertion on a word that should always be present.
  3. Set the interval — every minute is a good default.
  4. Add checks for your login and checkout pages.
  5. Add an SSL check and a domain-expiry check on your domain.
  6. Wire alerts to email, Slack or SMS, and put it all on a status page.

Publish the status page

Create a status page, add your monitors as components, point it at status.yoursite.com, and let customers subscribe for incident updates.

StatusCat monitors WordPress entirely from the outside — no plugin, no performance hit — free for 50 monitors. New to this? Start with what uptime monitoring is.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a WordPress plugin to monitor my site?
No. StatusCat checks your site from the outside over HTTP, so there's no plugin to install, nothing to slow your site down, and nothing that breaks when WordPress does.
How do I catch the WordPress 'white screen of death'?
Use a keyword check. WordPress can return a 200 status while showing a blank white screen or a PHP error. Assert on a word that should appear on your homepage (like your site name), so a broken page counts as down even with a 200.
Can I monitor SSL and my domain expiry too?
Yes — certificate expiry and domain expiry monitoring are included, which matters for WordPress sites that often auto-renew certificates and domains.

Keep reading

GuidesHow to monitor SSL certificate expiry (and never get caught out)Expired TLS certificates cause instant, total outages — and they're completely preventable. Here's how certificate expiry monitoring works and how to set it up in minutes.GuidesHow to monitor an API (the right way)A 200 response doesn't mean your API works. Here's how to monitor an API properly — status, latency, payload correctness, auth and SSL — so you catch real failures before your customers do.GuidesHow to monitor a cron job (with heartbeats)Cron jobs fail silently — the job stops, the server reboots, a deploy breaks the schedule, and nobody notices until data is missing. Here's how heartbeat monitoring catches it.