The StretchWP Dashboard Plugin and Pairing

Overview

Every managed StretchWP site runs the StretchWP dashboard plugin — the on-site component that connects your WordPress installation to your StretchSuite workspace. The act of connecting a site to the platform is called pairing. Pairing is what turns a plain WordPress install into a managed one: it's the secure link that carries telemetry up to your workspace and management actions down to your site.

On sites the Stretch team provisions for you, the dashboard plugin is installed and paired automatically at provision time — so most customers never have to think about it. This article explains what it does so you understand what you're seeing in the control panel.

What pairing enables

Once a site is paired, three things become possible:

1. Live telemetry. The plugin sends a regular heartbeat and an inventory report to your workspace — WordPress and PHP versions, the list of installed plugins and their versions, backup history, and health signals. This is what fills the Overview, Plugins, Backups, and Health tabs.
2. One-click login. Pairing lets StretchWP ask the site to mint a short-lived, single-use wp-admin login link, so you can get into WordPress without a password. (See One-click WordPress login and credentials.)
3. Signed managed updates and commands. The platform can deliver cryptographically signed plugin updates and management commands (such as backup, malware scan, and update) that the plugin verifies before acting on. (See Managed plugin updates and the StretchWP plugin suite.)

Without pairing, a site can still be hosted, but the workspace can't show live telemetry, can't offer one-click login, and can't deliver managed updates.

How the connection stays secure

You don't have to manage any of this, but it's worth knowing how it's protected:

• Each paired site holds its own shared secret issued at pairing time. Every message between the site and the platform is signed with that secret, so the platform only trusts data from the genuine site and the site only acts on genuine platform instructions.
• Requests carry a timestamp and are rejected if they're too old or replayed, which blocks tampering and replay attacks.
• Managed plugin packages are cryptographically signed and verified on the site before installation, so a paired site will never install a package that doesn't carry a valid platform signature.

The practical upshot: telemetry you see in the workspace is authentic, and updates applied to your site are verified — not pulled from an anonymous third-party repository.

How pairing happens

1. On provisioned sites — the Stretch team provisions the site with the dashboard plugin installed and paired to the Hub automatically. You'll see live telemetry appear within a few minutes of the site going live.
2. On migrated or existing sites — when the Stretch team migrates a site onto StretchWP, pairing is completed as part of that process.

Either way, once pairing is done, the control panel's tabs begin to fill in on the next heartbeat.

Example

A newly approved starter site appears on the launcher. When you first open it, the Plugins and Health tabs briefly show "No inventory yet". A few minutes later the dashboard plugin sends its first heartbeat and inventory: the Overview tiles populate with the WordPress and PHP versions, the Plugins tab lists the installed plugins, and the Health tab shows a fresh probe. That's pairing working — the site is now reporting to your workspace.

Tips

• Empty tabs right after provisioning are normal. They fill in on the first heartbeat; give a new site a few minutes.
• Don't remove or deactivate the dashboard plugin. It's the connection to your workspace — removing it breaks telemetry and one-click login. On managed sites it's treated as mandatory.
• Telemetry is near-real-time, not instant. Data reflects the last heartbeat, so a change you just made in WordPress may take a few minutes to appear in the workspace.

FAQ

Do I have to install or configure anything? No. On managed sites the dashboard plugin is installed and paired for you. This article is background so you understand what the telemetry and one-click login depend on.

The Login button says the site isn't paired. What does that mean? Pairing hasn't completed yet, so the platform can't mint a login link. Use the WP admin URL on the Credentials tab in the meantime, and contact the Stretch team if the site should already be paired.

Why do some tabs stay empty? A tab stays empty until the plugin reports that particular data. New or recently paired sites populate their inventory, backups, and health over the first few heartbeats.