Siteward Child

Siteward Child is the companion plugin for Siteward, a free, self-hosted dashboard for managing many WordPress sites from one place. Install this plugin on any WordPress site you want to manage centrally, then connect it to your dashboard with a one-time secure handshake.

Once connected, it exposes a single signed REST endpoint that your dashboard uses to read update status, UpdraftPlus backup history and site health, apply updates, and manage plugins. The dashboard always initiates the traffic, and this plugin never contacts any other server. After an update it loads this site’s own homepage to check the site still works.

• Signed, replay-protected REST endpoint (verified against your dashboard’s public key).
• Reports core, plugin and theme updates.
• Reports UpdraftPlus backup history and status.
• Reports basic site health (WP-Cron, load).
• Safe updates: keeps the previous version of each plugin or theme your dashboard updates for 7 days, and puts it back automatically if the update breaks the site. You can also roll back yourself under Settings, Siteward Connection, Rollback.
• Applies updates and, for fleet plugin management, activates, deactivates or uninstalls plugins, but only when instructed by your signed, paired dashboard.

This plugin does nothing on its own until paired with a Siteward dashboard.

Don’t have the dashboard yet? Install the free Siteward plugin on one central site, or read the setup guide at omniswp.com.

1. Upload the siteward-child folder to /wp-content/plugins/, or install it from the Plugins screen.
2. Activate the plugin through the Plugins screen.
3. Go to Settings → Siteward Connection, copy the site’s REST URL and its one-time connection key, and paste them into your Siteward dashboard’s Add Site screen.

1. 

   The connection screen. Copy the REST URL and single-use secret into your Siteward dashboard, and this page switches to Connected.

0.8.1

• New: safe updates. Before your dashboard updates a plugin or theme, the current version is saved. After the update the site checks its own homepage and admin area, and if the update broke the site (a server error, WordPress’s critical error page, or a plugin that can no longer be activated), the previous version is put back automatically and the dashboard is told why. A plain server error is checked again a few times over about 25 seconds before anything is undone, so a slow or busy host catching up after an update is not mistaken for a broken site; WordPress’s critical error page still triggers a rollback straight away.
• New: Rollback tab under Settings, Siteward Connection. Lists the previous versions saved in the last 7 days, with a button to roll back to any of them. A paired dashboard can list and roll back the same saved versions remotely.
• Saved versions are zip files in a randomly named folder inside uploads, deleted after 7 days or at the item’s next update, and removed when the plugin is deleted.

0.7.14

• Safety: the dashboard can no longer deactivate or uninstall Siteward Child itself (or Siteward Advanced Child) through plugin actions, which would cut the site off from the dashboard and, for an uninstall, delete the pairing.
• Fix: uninstalling a plugin from the dashboard now runs its own deactivation cleanup before its files are deleted, so a security plugin can remove its firewall setting first.
• Fix (multisite): a subsite no longer deactivates a network-active plugin for the whole network, and plugins are not deleted from a single subsite, since their files are shared. Both are left for Network Admin.
• Security: each signed request’s single-use code is now claimed in one atomic database write, so two copies of the same request arriving at the same moment can no longer both be accepted.

0.7.12

• Security: the account Siteward Advanced Child’s AI access runs as can never sign in (password, cookie, application password or one-click login), in either edition, and loses its role if AI access is removed. Uninstalling removes it, with AI access’s settings, log and backups.
• New: a Settings link on the Plugins screen, straight to Settings, Siteward Connection.
• Fix: the Siteward logo on the Siteward Connection page is now a crisp vector image, instead of a text character that looked thin and fuzzy on some screens.
• Change: the Siteward Connection page can show more than one tab, for editions that add a screen of their own. Nothing changes on this plugin’s page.
• Change: the connection page is slightly wider.

0.7.10

• Fix: “Sync now” could time out on sites behind a CDN or reverse proxy such as Cloudflare. The health check ran WordPress’s REST API availability test, which calls the site back through its own public address and can hang for 10 seconds when the server cannot reach itself that way. That test is now skipped, as WordPress itself does for scheduled checks, which also removes a false “REST API encountered an unexpected result” warning it reported on every site.

0.7.9

• New: theme update checks now run in the same simulated admin context that plugin checks already used, so a licensed theme such as Divi can report its update to the dashboard instead of only showing it to someone who happens to open the site’s own admin.

0.7.8

• Fix: “Check for updates” was deleting the pending update for licensed themes such as Divi instead of finding it. The check clears the theme update list before rebuilding it, and a background request can only rebuild the WordPress.org part, so the one button you would press when a theme update is missing was the thing removing it.

0.7.7

• Fix: activating, deactivating, uninstalling or updating any plugin no longer discards the pending updates for every other plugin on the site. WordPress clears its whole update list whenever the plugin list changes, which for plugins sold with a licence means an update that cannot be found again from a background check. Updating one plugin could quietly hide a real update for another.
• Fix: theme updates now get the same protection as plugin updates. A licensed theme’s update was being discarded by the routine check in exactly the same way.

0.7.6

• Fix: updates for licensed plugins such as Perfmatters and ACF Pro no longer disappear from the dashboard. Plugins sold with a licence register their update checker only during an admin request, so the routine check, which runs over the REST endpoint, rebuilt the list from WordPress.org alone and deleted the entry the site had already learned about. An update could show on the dashboard, install correctly, and then vanish for no visible reason. A pending update is now kept unless the plugin has been removed or the version on disk shows it was actually applied.

0.7.5

• New: answers a “check for updates” request from the dashboard by asking every licence server again, ignoring the usual throttle. Premium plugins whose licence was just renewed can otherwise keep reporting no update until their cached answer expires.

0.7.4

• New: reports the installed theme list to the dashboard, so theme vulnerabilities can be matched as well as plugin ones. Read-only, like the rest of the reporting.

0.7.3

• Reports this site’s server IP address to its paired dashboard, so the dashboard can group sites that share a server. Nothing is sent anywhere else; the dashboard still initiates every request.

0.7.2

• Critical fix: 0.7.1 could stop itself on load, leaving the site with no connection to its dashboard, no settings page, and a notice that could not be dismissed. This affected normal single installs, not only sites with two editions. Updating to 0.7.2 restores the connection and the settings page automatically; no action is needed on your part.

0.7.1

• Fix: deleting this plugin no longer removes the stored connection when another edition of Siteward Child is still active on the site and using it. Previously that silently unpaired the site from its dashboard.
• Housekeeping: uninstall now also removes the update-snapshot option it creates.
• The plugin inventory response now reports which edition is installed, so a dashboard sees a switch between editions straight away instead of at the next scheduled sync.

0.7.0

• Removed installing plugins from a dashboard-uploaded package, for WordPress.org guideline compliance. This plugin now only updates, activates, deactivates and uninstalls existing plugins. Dashboard-driven installation of new plugins is available in the separately-distributed Siteward Advanced Child.
• Housekeeping: internal option and transient names now share the plugin’s prefix.

0.6.4

• Housekeeping: the direct filesystem method is now forced only during install and uninstall (the actions that write to disk), not on read-only actions like inventory, activate or deactivate.

0.6.3

• Removed the install-from-URL option for WordPress.org guideline compliance. Plugins are now installed only from a ZIP package your dashboard uploads. Updating, activating, deactivating and uninstalling are unchanged.

0.6.2

• Premium/licensed plugin updates (for example Perfmatters or ACF Pro) now show as available on every managed site, not only ones an administrator has recently opened. The status sync and fleet inventory run the same admin-context update check as the apply path, throttled so routine syncs do not hammer licence servers.

0.6.1

• Fix: updating a premium/licensed plugin (for example Perfmatters or ACF Pro) from the dashboard could report “the plugin is at the latest version” and skip the update. Such plugins only publish their update during an admin-context check; the child now forces a genuine, throttle-bypassing update check so the licensed updater runs and the update installs.

0.6.0

• Fleet plugin management: signed actions to inventory, activate, deactivate, uninstall and install (from an uploaded ZIP) plugins from the dashboard. Every slug is traversal-guarded.

0.5.3

• Hardening: constrain update/reactivate targets to installed plugins/themes (validate_file + membership checks); restrict the auto-login redirect to a known allow-list of admin screens.

0.5.2

• Update reliability: keep active plugins active through updates (define DOING_CRON so core never deactivates mid-update), snapshot/restore the active set with a shutdown reconciler, and dependency-order reactivation so WooCommerce and its extensions come back together.

0.5.1

• Fix: plugins could be left deactivated after an update in unattended runs.

0.5.0

• Public release.