Monitoring Preferences

Summary: Monitoring Preferences automatically monitors your WordPress site's SEO health. It regularly checks your pages and alerts you about SEO, crawl health, performance, content freshness, and competitor changes.

Monitoring Preferences is the control centre for Antimanual’s automated SEO monitoring system. Once configured, it runs scheduled background audits across your published content without any manual intervention, detecting issues such as:

• Pages whose SEO score has dropped below your configured threshold
• Pages whose SEO score regressed by 5 or more points since the previous run
• Pages that have not been updated within your chosen freshness window
• HTTP errors, permanent redirects, broken links, and insecure mixed-content assets
• Pages that exceed your page-load time or HTML-size budgets
• Homepage availability problems
• SEO score changes on tracked competitor pages

Results are delivered through whichever notification channels you configure — email, Slack, or the in-plugin dashboard inbox — and a weekly digest summarises the most recent run every Monday.

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Requirements and Availability

• Plugin: Antimanual (free plugin). No Pro licence is required for Monitoring Preferences.
• WordPress role: Only users with the Manage Options capability (typically Administrators) can access and save Monitoring Preferences.
• Module switch: The SEO Monitoring module must be enabled in Antimanual → Modules. If the module is disabled, no scheduled events fire and the schedule is not armed, even if monitoring is turned on in Monitoring Preferences.
• WP-Cron: The monitoring schedule relies on WordPress’s built-in WP-Cron system. If DISABLE_WP_CRON is defined as true in wp-config.php, scheduled runs will not fire automatically. In that case you must configure a real server-side cron job to call wp-cron.php, or use the Run now button.

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How to Access Monitoring Preferences

1. Log in to the WordPress admin dashboard.
2. In the left-hand menu, locate the Antimanual navigation group.
3. Under the Marketing Tools category, click Monitoring Preferences.

The Monitoring Preferences page opens at the Schedule section by default.

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Page Layout

The page is divided into six sections, accessible from the left sidebar:

Sidebar item	What it configures
Schedule	Master on/off switch and run timing
Scope & Threshold	Which pages are checked and what score triggers an alert
Content Freshness	Stale-content detection
Technical Health	Crawl errors, performance budgets, and uptime
Competitor Tracking	External URLs to score alongside your own content
Alerts & Delivery	Notification channels, recipients, and what to send

A summary panel at the top of the page (the hero) shows the current monitoring status, scan frequency, last run time, total issues detected in the last run, and the average SEO health score.

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Step 1 — Configure the Schedule

Open the Schedule section.

Status panel

Before the settings, a status panel shows:

Field	Description
Next run	When the next automated run is scheduled, or “Running now…” if a run is in progress
Last run	Relative time since the last run finished
Pages checked	Number of pages audited in the most recent run
Issues found	Total findings from the most recent run
Avg score	Average SEO score across all pages checked

Two action buttons are always visible here:

• Run now — starts an immediate monitoring run using the saved preferences. If you have unsaved changes, you are asked to save them first.
• Refresh — re-reads the runner status without reloading the page.

A WP-Cron warning is shown if DISABLE_WP_CRON is active on your site.

Automated Monitoring (master switch)

Setting: Run monitoring automatically

Toggle this on to arm the schedule. When off, no background runs are scheduled and no alerts are sent. You can still trigger a run manually with Run now at any time.

Default: Off

Run Time

Setting: Frequency

Choose how often automated audits run:

Option	Behaviour
Daily	Runs every day at the configured time
Weekly	Runs once a week on the selected weekday
Monthly	Runs once a month on the selected day of the month

Default: Weekly

Setting: Time of day

The time at which the run starts, expressed in your site’s configured timezone (shown as a hint next to the field). Off-peak hours such as 03:00 are recommended to avoid affecting visitor traffic.

Default: 03:00

Setting: Day of week (Weekly frequency only)

Select which day of the week the run starts. Sunday = 0, Monday = 1, … Saturday = 6.

Default: Monday (1)

Setting: Day of month (Monthly frequency only)

Enter a number between 1 and 28. The value is capped at 28 to ensure the run happens in every calendar month.

Default: 1

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Step 2 — Configure Scope & Threshold

Open the Scope & Threshold section.

Pages to Monitor

Setting: Source

Choose which published content each run covers:

Option	Behaviour
All Published Pages	The run checks the most-recently-modified published content first, up to the maximum pages cap
Only Scanned Pages	Only pages that a previous run or manual audit has already scored are re-checked

Default: All Published Pages

Setting: Post types (All Published Pages only)

Select which registered public post types are included. Only post types that have the WordPress block editor or a standard editor are shown. You can select multiple types.

Default: Post, Page

Setting: Maximum pages per run

The run stops after this many pages. If your hosting environment is slow, reduce this number. Pages not reached on one run are picked up on the next.

• Minimum: 5
• Maximum: 500
• Default: 100

Exclusions

Setting: Skip these paths

Add URL path patterns to exclude from monitoring. Paths are relative to the site root and must start with /. The wildcard character * matches any sub-path (for example, /checkout/* excludes everything under /checkout/).

You can paste a full URL into the field; the plugin extracts the path automatically.

• Maximum: 20 exclusion patterns
• Default: None (every matching page is monitored)

Alert Threshold

Setting: Score Alert Threshold

A page is flagged when its SEO score falls below this value. The slider runs from 0 to 100 in steps of 5. Set a higher value for stricter alerting.

Additionally, any page whose score falls 5 or more points below its score from the previous run is also flagged — even if the current score is still above this threshold.

• Range: 0–100
• Default: 50

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Step 3 — Configure Content Freshness

Open the Content Freshness section.

Stale Content

Setting: Content Freshness Alerts

Toggle on to flag pages that have not been updated within the chosen freshness period.

Default: On

Setting: Freshness Period

Choose how long a page may go without being updated before it is flagged as stale:

Option	Value
30 days	30
60 days	60
90 days	90
6 months	180
1 year	365

Default: 90 days

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Step 4 — Configure Technical Health

Open the Technical Health section.

The monitoring runner performs live HTTP requests to check each page. Up to 25 live checks are performed per run across all technical health checks combined.

Crawl Health

Setting: Crawl Health Monitoring

Toggle on to fetch monitored pages and report HTTP-level problems.

Default: On

Setting: Alert on these HTTP issues (visible when Crawl Health Monitoring is on)

Select which HTTP conditions trigger an alert. Multiple options can be selected:

Option	What it detects
404 Not Found	Pages returning an HTTP 404 response
301 Redirects	Pages returning a permanent redirect (HTTP 301 or 308)
500 Server Errors	Pages returning HTTP 500 or higher
Mixed Content	Pages served over HTTPS that load assets over HTTP
Broken Links	Links within the page content that return HTTP 400 or higher

For Broken Links, up to 8 links per page are checked per run. Results are cached for 6 hours.

Default: 404 Not Found, 500 Server Errors, Broken Links

Performance Budget

Setting: Performance Budget Alerts

Toggle on to be alerted when pages exceed your configured speed or size limits.

Default: On

Setting: Max Page Load Time (visible when Performance Budget Alerts is on)

Alert when a page takes longer than this many seconds for the server to return the HTML response. This measures server response time, not full browser render time.

• Range: 1–10 seconds, in 0.5-second steps
• Default: 3 seconds

Setting: Max Page Size (visible when Performance Budget Alerts is on)

Alert when a page’s HTML document exceeds this size in megabytes.

• Range: 0.5–10 MB, in 0.5 MB steps
• Default: 3 MB

Availability

Setting: Uptime Monitoring

Toggle on to request your site’s homepage at the start of every monitoring run. An alert is generated if the homepage does not respond or returns an HTTP error.

This check runs once per monitoring run (not continuously), so it detects sustained outages rather than brief blips.

Default: Off

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Step 5 — Configure Competitor Tracking

Open the Competitor Tracking section.

Tracked Pages

Setting: Add a competitor URL

Enter the full URL of a competitor page you want to track. The URL must start with http:// or https://. Each run fetches the page, runs an SEO audit on it, and compares the score against the previous run. You are notified when the score changes by 5 or more points in either direction.

• Maximum: 5 competitor URLs
• Track specific pages (e.g. a competitor’s pricing page), not just their homepage
• Default: None

To remove a tracked URL, click the remove button next to it in the list.

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Step 6 — Configure Alerts & Delivery

Open the Alerts & Delivery section.

Delivery Channels

Setting: Notification Channels

Select which channels receive every alert. At least one channel must be selected to save the preferences.

Channel	Description
Email	Sends an HTML email (with a plain-text fallback) to the configured recipients
Slack	Posts a formatted message to a Slack incoming webhook
Dashboard	Stores alerts in a dashboard inbox visible on this page

Default: Email

Setting: Alert Email Addresses (visible when Email channel is selected)

Add one or more email addresses to receive alerts. Press Add or hit Enter after typing each address. You can add up to 10 addresses.

If the list is left empty, alerts are sent to the site’s admin email address (Settings → General → Administration Email Address).

Setting: Slack Webhook URL (visible when Slack channel is selected)

Paste your Slack incoming webhook URL. It must start with https://hooks.slack.com/. Create one in your Slack workspace under Apps → Incoming Webhooks.

Testing Delivery

Click Send test alert to send a sample alert through every configured channel immediately. The result of each channel attempt is shown inline — a green checkmark for success, a red X with a message for failure.

[!TIP]
Save your preferences before sending a test alert. The test uses the saved delivery settings, not unsaved changes.

What To Send

Setting: Instant Issue Alerts

When on, an alert is sent at the end of any monitoring run that found one or more issues.

Default: On

Setting: Weekly Digest

When on, a summary of the most recent run is sent every Monday at the configured run time, regardless of whether issues were found. The next scheduled digest time is shown next to this toggle.

Default: On

Setting: Include Fix Suggestions

When on, each finding in alerts and the digest includes a short suggested fix in addition to the issue list.

Default: On

[!NOTE]
If both Instant Issue Alerts and Weekly Digest are turned off, monitoring runs silently — no notifications are ever sent.

Recent Alerts (visible when Dashboard channel is selected)

When the Dashboard channel is active, the last 10 stored alerts are shown in this card. Each entry displays the alert subject, when it was sent, a summary sentence, and the first five findings with their severity labels.

Click Clear alerts to remove all stored alerts from the dashboard inbox.

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Step 7 — Save the Settings

After configuring any section, click Save Preferences (visible at the bottom of the left sidebar). The button is available whenever unsaved changes exist across any section.

A success toast confirms the save. The schedule is immediately updated to match the new settings — you do not need to wait for the next page load.

To discard all unsaved changes and restore every preference to its original value, click Reset and confirm the dialog. Nothing is changed on the server until you save after a reset.

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Monitoring Status

The status panel at the top of the Schedule section reflects the current runner state in real time:

Status field	What it shows
Next run	Scheduled time for the next automated run (relative), or “Running now…”
Last run	Time since the previous run finished
Pages checked	Number of pages audited in the most recent run
Issues found	Total findings from the most recent run, broken down by type
Avg score	Average SEO score computed across all audited pages

While a run is in progress, a progress bar shows how many pages have been processed out of the total queued for the current run.

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How the Monitoring Process Works

When a scheduled or manual run starts, the following steps occur in order:

1. Uptime check — if Uptime Monitoring is enabled, the homepage is fetched and the response is evaluated.
2. Page audits — each page in scope is fetched, an SEO audit is run, and the score is compared against both the configured threshold and the page’s score from the previous run.
3. Content freshness check — each page’s last-modified date is compared against the Freshness Period.
4. Technical health checks — if Crawl Health Monitoring or Performance Budget Alerts are enabled, live HTTP requests check each page for errors, redirects, broken links, mixed content, response time, and HTML size. Up to 25 live checks are performed per run.
5. Competitor checks — each tracked competitor URL is fetched, audited, and compared against its previous score.
6. Notification — if Instant Issue Alerts is enabled and findings were recorded, an alert is sent through every configured channel. The score baseline is updated for the next run.

Large sites are processed in batches across multiple WP-Cron ticks rather than a single request. If a run cannot finish in one tick (25 seconds), a continuation event is queued automatically and picks up where the previous tick stopped.

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Troubleshooting

No scheduled run is firing

• Confirm the SEO Monitoring module is enabled under Antimanual → Modules.
• Confirm the Run monitoring automatically toggle is on in the Schedule section.
• If the Schedule section shows a WP-Cron warning, your site has DISABLE_WP_CRON set. Configure a real system cron job to call wp-cron.php at regular intervals, or use Run now to trigger a run manually.
• Use Run now to verify that monitoring itself works independently of the schedule.

No alerts are being received

• Open Alerts & Delivery and confirm at least one channel is selected under Notification Channels.
• Confirm Instant Issue Alerts is on.
• For the Email channel: click Send test alert and check the result. If it reports an error, check your site’s outgoing mail configuration (wp_mail()).
• For the Slack channel: confirm the Slack Webhook URL starts with https://hooks.slack.com/. Click Send test alert to verify the webhook is reachable. A Slack error code and message are shown if delivery fails.
• If both Instant Issue Alerts and Weekly Digest are off, no notifications are sent even when issues are found.

A run starts but never finishes

An in-flight run that has not advanced within one hour is automatically discarded so a new run can start. If you suspect a stale run, wait up to 60 minutes and then use Run now to start a fresh run.

Competitor pages are not being checked

Ensure each competitor URL in the Competitor Tracking section is a complete, accessible URL beginning with https:// and pointing to a page that can be fetched from your server. Up to 5 competitor URLs are checked per run.

Need Further Assistance?

If you encounter any issues or have questions regarding Monitoring Preferences, please visit our official support channels:

• Support Portal: https://helpdesk.spider-themes.net/ask/