The MyKinsta dashboard explained

A plain-English tour of the MyKinsta control panel — what each section does and where to find key features for managing your site.

MyKinsta is one of the clearest, best-organized hosting dashboards we work with. Here's a guide to what you'll find and how to navigate it.

Quick summary

The MyKinsta dashboard is organized around your sites. Go to Sites and click a site name to open its management view, where you'll find pages such as Info, Domains, Backups, Caching, Tools, Redirects and Analytics. Staging is reached through the environment selector, where the current environment name is shown.

The MyKinsta home screen

After logging in, you land on the MyKinsta Dashboard. It gives a quick overview of your plan, including:

Resource usage, including disk space
Data transfer (server bandwidth)
Unique visits to your live sites
CDN usage, where it applies

To see your sites, click Sites in the left-hand menu. That list shows every site on the account. Click a site name to enter its management dashboard.

Site overview (Info tab)

The site's Info page shows a summary of your hosting environment:

Site name — the display name used in MyKinsta
WordPress admin link — Log in to WP Admin or Visit WP Admin, a direct shortcut into WordPress
Environment details and database access — technical details such as where the site's files live, database logins and a link to phpMyAdmin (for developer use)
PHP performance — the PHP threads and memory set for the site (for technical reference)
Environment selector — click the environment name (such as Live) in the site view to switch to a staging environment

Key sections in the site dashboard

Staging

You reach staging through the environment selector: in the site view, click the environment name (such as Live). From there you can:

Create a staging environment — choose Create new environment and clone the live site into it
Push staging to live — deploys tested changes to production
Clear staging cache — each staging environment has its own control panel, separate from live

See staging on Kinsta for a full walkthrough.

Backups

The Backups section shows all available backups with timestamps. You can:

View automatic daily backups
Create a manual backup
Restore to a previous backup
Create a downloadable copy of the site (from the Download tab)

See backups on Kinsta.

Redirects

Kinsta allows creating server-level redirects (301, 302) directly from the dashboard. This is lighter on your site than most plugin-based redirects. We manage this for you.

Domains

Lists all domains connected to the site. From here you can add a custom domain, set the primary domain, and manage domain-specific SSL.

SSL

SSL is handled on the Domains page rather than a page of its own: that's where you renew a domain's certificate or add a custom one. Kinsta provides free Cloudflare SSL certificates for every verified domain. See SSL on Kinsta.

Analytics

One of MyKinsta's standout features is its built-in analytics dashboard. It shows:

Visits over time — traffic trends, for the current billing period by default
Cache — how many requests were served from the cache, missed it or bypassed it
Top 404 errors — URLs returning page-not-found errors
Bandwidth usage — data sent to visitors
Average PHP + MySQL response time — how fast your server builds pages that aren't cached

This is genuinely useful business intelligence — not just technical data.

Tools

The Tools page includes:

Restart PHP — for troubleshooting (we handle this)
Search and replace — a database find-and-replace tool (for developer use)
WordPress debugging, password protection, Force HTTPS and PHP settings — technical settings (for developer use)

Cache clearing is done on the site's own Caching page. Kinsta's APM (Application Performance Monitoring) tool, for detailed performance analysis, also has its own APM page.

Activity Log

A record of actions taken on the site in MyKinsta over the last six months: who did what, when, and whether it worked. Useful for auditing. In the site menu it's called User activity.

Common questions

Why does my dashboard look slightly different from this description?

Kinsta updates MyKinsta regularly. The sections and features described here are present, but their exact placement may vary. If you can't find something, ask us.

How do I see my current bandwidth usage?

Check the Analytics section in your site's dashboard. Bandwidth usage is shown for the current billing period by default. For usage across every site on the plan, check the Dashboard or the company-level Analytics.

What do the cache figures in Analytics mean?

They show how many requests were served from cache (hits) rather than needing a full PHP and database process (misses and bypasses). More hits generally means better performance. MyKinsta also lists the pages that bypass the cache most often, which is where to look if you want to improve things.

Need a hand?

If you're stuck, email support@chykalophia.com and we'll help. Include your website address and a screenshot if you can.

Learn more

Kinsta Docs: WordPress Hosting

The MyKinsta dashboard explained

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