Quick Snapshot of All Your Sites
The mySites.guru snapshot runs automatically twice a day - or on demand - across every site in your account. Over 140 data points, collected in seconds. PHP version, CMS config, user accounts, security headers, the lot.
It’s not a photo of your site. It’s a fast check of what’s configured properly and what isn’t.
What exactly is the mySites.guru snapshot?
Within mySites.guru, where you can add unlimited Joomla and WordPress sites to your account, you’ll see two main areas of checks on the Manage Site page: the Snapshot and the Audit.
The snapshot checks complete within milliseconds. The audit goes deeper - inspecting every line of code in every file on your webspace - so it takes longer.
Both give you a long list of best-practice checks and flag the things that need attention.
The snapshot covers your platform (Joomla/WordPress) configuration, writing settings, discussion settings, user accounts and access, plugins and extensions, file information, database integrity, and hosting environment.
Each check displays the current status on your site, the trend (whether it’s changed, increased, or decreased), a Learn More button, and either a quick toggle or a link to the investigation page where you can dig into the reported issue and fix it.
The screenshots below are from an older version of the interface. We've since redesigned the dashboard, but the process works the same way.
Resolve problems with a single click
Some of the Discussion Settings checks for WordPress:
On the right you can see that these checks can be resolved with a toggle switch - a single click and your site is following best practice again.
Automated, twice daily, and on demand
Once a site is connected to mySites.guru, the snapshot data refreshes automatically twice a day. Hit “Take a new snapshot” any time you want fresh data.
A huge number of checks
We check everything we consider best practice for secure and well-configured websites. You might not agree with every recommendation, and that’s fine.
One section of the Joomla snapshot:
And the full page view (if you have good eyesight):
That’s just some of the snapshot checks.
The snapshot powers other features too
At the end of each snapshot, mySites.guru gathers a list of your extensions, plugins, templates, and themes, then checks each one for available updates. This data feeds into tools like the Active Theme and Template List, which lets you see and compare every site’s template across your entire portfolio.
Depending on your settings, you can enable automatic updates for these - but that’s a topic for another post.
The snapshot also captures your site version, PHP version, and other environment details that feed into the dashboard overview.
Identifying hacks
The snapshot isn’t designed to find hacks - that’s the security audit’s job. But it does catch things. We push new checks frequently, and when we spot attack trends, we add checks for those too.
For example, there was a specific attack that created usernames matching the pattern Joomla.user.helper.XXXX. You probably wouldn’t notice one suspicious username among thousands of users - but the mySites.guru snapshot would, flagging it for you to investigate.
