The WP Engine User Portal explained

A plain-English tour of the WP Engine User Portal — what each section does and how to find key features for your site.

The WP Engine User Portal (my.wpengine.com) is where you manage your hosting account, sites, backups, and settings. There's a lot in it, but once you know where things are it's easy to navigate.

Quick summary

The WP Engine User Portal is organized around "Sites". Each site holds up to three environments: Production, Staging and Development. Select an environment to see its overview, manage backups, check SSL, and view usage stats. We handle most of this for you — but knowing where things are is useful.

The main portal home

After logging in, you'll find:

Sites — your sites, listed by name, with their environments and status.
Dashboard — a plan overview (sites, storage, bandwidth and visits used), account notifications, and recent activity. Only Owners and Full users can see it.
Main menu — links to Dashboard, Sites, Insights, Users, Billing, and account Settings.

Click a site name to open the Overview page for its Production environment.

The site overview

Each environment has its own Overview page with:

Environment selector — toggle between Production, Staging, and Development.
Quick actions — create a backup, clear all caches, open phpMyAdmin, or copy the environment to or from another one (Push to / Pull from).
Quick stats — visits, bandwidth, and storage usage.
One-click WordPress admin link — takes you directly to your WordPress dashboard.
Updates — any plugin, theme, WordPress or PHP updates available for that environment.

Key sections in the site dashboard

These pages are in each environment's menu. You may need to expand the Manage section to see some of them.

Backup points

The Backups page lists the environment's backup points, both automatic and manual. From here you can:

Create a new backup point
Restore to a specific backup point
Download a backup as a ZIP file (select Prepare ZIP first)

See backups on WP Engine for a full walkthrough.

Environment management

WP Engine's multi-environment setup is a key feature. From the site overview, you can switch between:

Production — your live website
Staging — for testing changes, such as plugin updates
Development — for building larger changes, such as a new design

Each environment has its own URL and can be managed independently. You can copy content between environments and push changes from staging to production.

See staging on WP Engine for details.

SSH Gateway / SFTP

The Users and SFTP page manages SFTP logins for your site's files, and the environment's Overview page shows the SSH address for WP Engine's SSH Gateway. These are for developers — you won't need them as a site owner.

Redirect rules

WP Engine lets you set up server-level redirects from the portal. New redirects go in the Rewrite rules tab of the Web Rules page; the older Redirect rules page is retired for new redirects and only still works for sites that already have redirects there. We manage this for you.

CDN & caching

The Cache page is where you clear WP Engine's caches (including the page cache and the network cache that covers the CDN), turn object cache on or off, and see any custom cache exclusions. See caching on WP Engine.

SSL

Shows the status of your site's SSL certificate. See SSL on WP Engine.

Domains

Lists the domains connected to this environment and allows adding or removing domains.

Account-level settings

At the account level (not the site level), you can manage:

Users — invite or remove people who can access the portal
Billing — view invoices, update payment method, change plans
Profile — your personal account settings

Common questions

What is an 'Install'?

It's WP Engine's word for a single WordPress installation. The portal now groups these into sites: each site holds up to three environments (Production, Staging and Development), and each environment is its own separate WordPress installation. You'll still see "install" in some places, such as the portal's web addresses. One account can have multiple sites.

Why does the portal look different from what's described here?

WP Engine updates its interface periodically. The features described are all present, but layout and labels may vary slightly. If you can't find something, contact us.

How do I see if my site is using too much bandwidth?

The site overview shows current usage. You can also find detailed usage stats in the account-level usage section.

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

WP Engine: User Portal overview

The WP Engine User Portal explained

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