Designed for agencies, developers, and businesses that manage multiple websites, PulseGrid provides a self-hosted alternative to third-party monitoring services.

The central management interface is in WordPress, while monitoring covers any public website.

By deploying agents on different WordPress instances, you build a resilient, redundant grid that ensures accurate regional monitoring and full visibility across your client portfolio.

Key Benefits

• Self-hosted uptime monitoring without relying on external services.
• Redundancy and regional coverage with distributed monitoring agents.
• Centralised management and reporting directly inside WordPress.
• Email alerts for real-time incident detection.
• Detailed performance and uptime reports are stored in the admin for long-term insights.
• Easy to scale. Add more agents to extend coverage and reliability.

Main Features

• Centralised Dashboard - Manage workers, monitored sites, notification settings, and reports from one place.
• Distributed Monitoring - Deploy worker agents on separate WordPress instances for redundancy and geographic accuracy.
• Worker Status Tracking - Monitor agent health (online, offline, maintenance) at a glance.
• Configurable Site Checks - Define custom intervals, timeouts, and error types for each monitored site.
• Email Notifications - Get instant alerts when a site goes down or an agent has issues.
• Admin Reports - Review detailed uptime logs, historical performance, and incident summaries.
• REST API - Secure communication between the central server and agents for seamless data aggregation.
• Agent Offline Support - PulseGrid automatically allocates websites when one of the workers goes offline.
• Database & Cron Jobs - Automated scheduling of checks and synchronisation with robust data storage.

Core Requirements

• WordPress Version: 6.0 or higher (tested up to 6.8.2)
• PHP Version: 8.0 or higher

Server Requirements

• HTTPS Support: Required for all inter-service communication between PulseGrid and worker nodes
• SSL/TLS: Valid SSL certificate for secure API communication
• Cron Jobs: External cron support (system cron or similar) for automated monitoring tasks
• Memory: Minimum 256MB PHP memory limit (512MB recommended for optimal performance)
• Disk Space: Minimum 100MB free space for logs and database storage

PHP Extensions (Standard WordPress requirements)

• curl - For HTTP requests to monitored sites
• json - For API data handling
• mbstring - For multibyte string processing
• openssl - For HMAC authentication and SSL verification

Network Requirements

• Outbound HTTPS: Ability to make HTTPS requests to monitored websites
• Inbound HTTPS: For worker nodes to communicate back to PulseGrid

Infrastructure Requirements

• Custom headers must be allowed through all network layers

  
  

  • X-PG-Signature - HMAC signature for request authentication
  • X-PG-Timestamp - Unix timestamp for replay attack prevention  
  • X-PG-Worker-ID - Worker node unique identifier

A) Installation

Important: PulseGrid consists of two plugins that work together to provide distributed website monitoring:

• PulseGrid - Central Command plugin that manages monitoring workers and provides a unified dashboard
• PulseGrid Agent - Monitoring worker plugin that performs actual website checks

A.1) Installing PulseGrid Central Command

Install this on your main WordPress site, which will act as the monitoring coordinator:

• Manual Installation
  • Unzip the pulsegrid.zip file and upload the pulsegrid folder to /wp-content/plugins/
  • In your WordPress admin panel, go to Plugins
  • Locate the PulseGrid plugin in the list and click Activate
• Using The WP Admin
  • In your WordPress admin panel, go to Plugins -> Add New
  • Click the Upload Plugin button
  • Select the pulsegrid.zip file and click Install Now
  • Once the installation is complete, click Activate Plugin

A.2) Installing PulseGrid Agent Workers

Install this on separate WordPress sites that will act as monitoring workers:

• Manual Installation
  • Unzip the pulsegrid-agent.zip file and upload the pulsegrid-agent folder to /wp-content/plugins/
  • In your WordPress admin panel, go to Plugins
  • Locate the PulseGrid Agent plugin in the list and click Activate
• Using The WP Admin
  • In your WordPress admin panel, go to Plugins -> Add New
  • Click the Upload Plugin button
  • Select the pulsegrid-agent.zip file and click Install Now
  • Once the installation is complete, click Activate Plugin

Note: You can install both plugins on the same WordPress site for testing, but for production use, it's recommended to have the agent workers on different servers/locations for true distributed monitoring.

B) PulseGrid Central Setup

Configure the central command plugin that will coordinate all monitoring activities.

Initial Configuration

1. After activating PulseGrid, go to PulseGrid -> Settings in your WordPress admin
2. Configure the following essential settings:
   • Central Email: Email address for system notifications (defaults to admin email)
   • API Key: Secure key for worker communication (auto-generated)
   • Network Key: Encryption key for secure network communication
   • Consensus Threshold: Number of agents required to confirm downtime (default: 2)
   • Default Check Interval: How often sites are monitored in seconds (default: 300)
3. Click Save Settings

Security Settings

• HTTPS Enforcement: Enable if all agents use HTTPS (recommended for production)

C) PulseGrid Agent Setup

Configure monitoring worker agents that will perform website checks.

Step 1: Agent Registration - Manual

1. After activating PulseGrid Agent, go to PulseGrid Agent -> Settings
2. Enter the following information:
   • Central Server URL: Full URL to your PulseGrid Central installation (e.g., https://central.example.com)
   • API Key: Copy this from PulseGrid Central -> Settings
   • Save
3. • Go to Dashboard
   • Click Test Central Connection to verify connectivity
   • Click Register Agent to complete registration

Step 2: Monitoring Configuration - For this, go back to the site where you installed PulseGrid

• Edit the Worker and update the following settings:

1. Enable Monitoring: Turn on website monitoring for this agent
2. Enable Peer Monitoring: Allow this agent to participate in downtime verification
3. Check Interval: How often this agent checks assigned sites (seconds)
4. Heartbeat Interval: How often the agent reports to the central server (seconds)
5. Max Sites: Maximum number of sites this agent can monitor
6. Timeout: Request timeout for website checks (seconds)

D) Workers Management

Manage your monitoring agents from the central dashboard.

Adding Workers

1. Go to PulseGrid -> Workers in the central installation
2. Click Add Worker
3. Fill in the worker details:
   • Worker URL: Full URL to the agent's WordPress site
   • Description: Descriptive name for the agent
   • Change any other settings and/or disable UI widgets for the worker side
   • Click Add Worker

Worker Status Monitoring

• Online: Worker is active and responding to heartbeats
• Offline: Worker has missed heartbeat checks
• Maintenance: Worker is temporarily disabled
• Error: Worker reported errors in the last communication

E) Sites Management

Add and configure websites to monitor.

Adding Sites

1. Go to PulseGrid -> Sites
2. Click Add New Site
3. Configure the following:
   • Site URL: Full URL to monitor (including https://)
   • Site Name: Descriptive name for the website
   • Check Interval: Override default monitoring frequency for this site
   • Notification Emails: Specific email address for this site's alerts (optional)
   • Assigned Worker: Select a worker to handle this site (optional)
   • Check Types: Select monitoring types:
     • HTTP Status: Check for proper HTTP response codes
     • Response Time: Check for proper HTTP response times
     • SSL Certificate: Monitor SSL certificate validity and expiration
     • Content Check: Verify specific content exists on the page
       • Expected Content: Text that should appear on the page (optional)
4. Click Save Site

F) Notifications & Templates

Configure alert notifications and customise email templates.

Notification Templates

1. Go to PulseGrid -> Templates
2. Default templates are created automatically:
   • Site Down: Sent when a website goes offline
   • Site Up: Sent when a website recovers
   • Worker Offline: Sent when a monitoring agent goes offline
   • Worker Online: Sent when a monitoring agent comes back online
3. Click Edit to customise templates with variables:
   • {{site_url}} - Website URL
   • {{site_name}} - Website name
   • {{worker_name}} - Agent name
   • {{error_type}} - Type of detected error
   • {{timestamp}} - When the event occurred

Managing Notifications

• Go to PulseGrid -> Notifications to view sent notifications
• Filter by status: Pending, Sent, Failed

G) Monitoring & Reports

View monitoring results and generate uptime reports.

Dashboard Overview

• PulseGrid -> Dashboard provides:
  • Active workers count
  • Total monitored sites
  • Average uptime percentage
  • Recent alerts and status changes

Detailed Reports

• Go to PulseGrid -> Reports for:
  • Uptime Statistics: Site availability over time periods
  • Response Time Trends: Performance monitoring data

H) Advanced Configuration

Advanced settings for power users and enterprise deployments.

Distributed Verification

• Consensus Threshold: Number of agents that must confirm downtime before alerting

Performance Tuning

• Check Intervals: Balance between monitoring frequency and server load
• Worker Limits: Optimise site distribution across agents

Security Hardening

• HTTPS Enforcement: Require encrypted communication
• Network Key Rotation: Periodically update encryption keys
• API Key Management: Secure worker authentication