The Flywheel dashboard explained

Once you're logged in to Flywheel and have clicked on your site, you'll see the site dashboard. This is your control center for that WordPress installation. Here's what everything means.

The main site dashboard

When you open a site in Flywheel, you land on its Overview tab. The other tabs take you to specific sections:

• Overview — your site's domains, collaborators, SSL certificates, IP address, and Privacy Mode.
• Plugins — the plugins installed on your site, their versions, and whether an update or a known vulnerability has been flagged.
• Performance — reports from Flywheel's Performance Insights add-on, if your site has it.
• Stats — visits for the current billing period, storage used, and bandwidth.
• Backups — the backups Flywheel has made of your site in the last 30 days.
• Staging — your staging site. This tab only appears once staging is turned on.
• Advanced — technical settings such as the cache, PHP version, logs, and database.

A WP Admin button, on every page of the site dashboard, is a quick shortcut to your WordPress admin.

Key sections explained

Overview

The Overview tab is the first thing you see and gives you a quick health check. Its Domains card shows the DNS status and SSL status of each domain, so you can see at a glance whether your site is connected and secure. Alerts, such as an SSL certificate that is about to expire, arrive in Flywheel's Communication Center: click the bell icon in the main menu.

Staging

This is where you manage your staging site — a private copy of your website for testing changes. Here's how it works:

• Create a staging site — switch on Enable Staging on the Advanced tab. Flywheel copies your live site, then adds a Staging tab to the dashboard.
• Push to live — on the Staging tab, click Move staging changes to live site. You choose whether the staging database also replaces the live one, or only files are copied.
• Copy live to staging — click Reset Staging to replace the staging site with a fresh copy of your live site.

See staging sites on Flywheel for a full walkthrough.

Backups

The Backups tab shows your backup history. Flywheel takes an automatic backup every night. You can:

• View the list of available backups.
• Restore a backup. You'll confirm by typing your Flywheel password.
• Create a backup on demand.
• Download a backup. Flywheel emails you a download link.

See backups on Flywheel.

SSL

SSL is managed from the Overview tab. The SSL Certificates card lists the certificates installed on your site, and the Domains card shows each domain's SSL status. From there you can:

• See whether each domain is covered, and by which type of certificate.
• Add Flywheel's free Simple SSL certificate to a domain.
• Remove a certificate.

Flywheel renews Simple SSL certificates automatically. On well-configured sites, each domain's SSL status shows a certificate type and you don't need to do anything. See SSL on Flywheel.

Domains

The Domains card on the Overview tab lists the domain name(s) connected to your site, including the temporary domain Flywheel gives every site. This is where you'd add a custom domain, check a domain's DNS status, or use the three-dot menu next to a domain to make it the primary one, point its DNS, or remove it. A domain that's set as primary can't be removed until you make a different one primary.

Collaborators

The Collaborators card on the Overview tab lists the site's owner and anyone else who has access. Click + Add Collaborators to invite someone by name, Flywheel username, or email address. To remove someone, use the three-dot menu next to their name. Each collaborator uses their own Flywheel login and gets access to this specific site. Collaborators can do almost everything the owner can. What they can't do is manage billing, delete or cancel the site, reset it, rename it, or see its Managed Plugin Updates settings.

When you need to give us access, add support@chykalophia.com as a collaborator — unless your project lead has specified a different address.

Advanced tab (site settings)

Flywheel keeps its site settings on the Advanced tab, including:

• Flush Cache — clears Flywheel's cache so recent changes show up straight away
• PHP version (for technical reference — we manage this)
• Switches for staging, Development Mode, WP_DEBUG and WP_CACHE (for developer use)
• Log exports and database access (for developer use)

SFTP (file transfer, for developer use) has no separate credentials here. Your SFTP username and password are the same ones you use to log in to Flywheel, and they can't be set to anything different.

Common questions

I can see the dashboard but it looks different from this description — why?

Flywheel updates its interface occasionally. The features described here are all present, but the layout or labels may vary slightly. If you can't find something, contact us.

What is the 'Caching' or 'Performance' section?

There's no separate caching section. The Performance tab is for Flywheel's Performance Insights add-on, a report on your site's performance with recommendations. Caching is controlled from the Advanced tab: if you ever need to clear the cache (usually after a site update), click Flush Cache there.

How do I get to my WordPress admin from Flywheel?

Click the WP Admin button on your site's dashboard. With Flywheel's Seamless Login, this usually signs you straight in to WordPress. If it can't, you'll see the normal WordPress login screen instead.

Related guides

• Flywheel hosting: overview
• Logging in to Flywheel
• Staging sites on Flywheel
• Backups on Flywheel
• SSL on Flywheel

Learn more

• Flywheel help: Dashboard tour