In short: Getting set up takes about five minutes. Create your account, add your site, and install one small plugin. Your first Health Score appears soon after.
Before you begin
To use Maintena you need three things:
- A WordPress website you want to monitor.
- Administrator access to that site, so you can install a plugin.
- A Maintena account. If you do not have one yet, you can create one from the sign-up flow on the main site.
That is all. You do not need to change your hosting, move your site, or install anything on your own computer.
The short version
- Create your Maintena account and add your first site.
- Install the Maintena companion plugin, the WordPress Agent, on that site.
- Connect the plugin using the key Maintena gives you.
- Wait a few minutes for the first check to run.
- Read your Health Score and your first insights.
The rest of this page explains each step.
Step 1: Add your site
Once you are signed in, add the website you want to watch by entering its address. This creates the record Maintena will attach every check, score, and report to. You can add more sites later from the same place.
Step 2: Install the WordPress Agent
Maintena watches your site through a small companion plugin. Install it on your WordPress site the same way you install any plugin, from your site's admin area. The plugin is lightweight and runs quietly in the background.
For the full walkthrough, including exactly what the plugin does and does not send, see The WordPress Agent.
Step 3: Connect
When you add a site, Maintena gives you a secret connection key. Paste that key into the plugin's settings on your WordPress site. This links the two together over a secure, authenticated connection that only you control and can revoke at any time.
Once connected, the plugin begins reporting your site's status to Maintena on a schedule.
Step 4: The first check
Within a few minutes of connecting, Maintena runs its first pass. It records whether your site is reachable, reads the versions of WordPress, your plugins and themes, checks your security certificate, and gathers the signals that feed your score.
You will see your site move from "waiting to connect" to "connected", and your first Health Score will appear.
Step 5: Read your results
From here, your dashboard is the home base. A few good places to start:
- Health Score gives you the one-number summary and the signals behind it.
- Uptime shows whether your site has been reachable, and alerts you if it goes down.
- Business Intelligence connects your traffic and search data into plain-English insights, once you link your Google properties.
- Reports turns all of it into a clean summary you can keep or share.
What happens next
Maintena keeps checking on its own schedule, so your score and signals stay current without you doing anything. If something needs attention, you will hear about it: a site going down, a certificate about to expire, or a plugin with a known vulnerability. On managed plans, your Success Manager turns those findings into action.
Getting help
If you get stuck connecting a site, the most common cause is that the connection key was not pasted correctly, or the plugin has not yet run its first sync. Give it a few minutes, then check the key. For anything else, your Success Manager and the support team are there to help.