Start using Patchstack

Getting started guide

Welcome to Patchstack!
Patchstack is a powerful tool that helps to protect your WordPress applications from attacks and identify security vulnerabilities within all your WordPress plugins, themes, and core. It is powered by the WordPress ecosystem’s most active community of ethical hackers. Patchstack is trusted by leading WordPress experts such as GoDaddy, Pagely, Cloudways, GridPane, Plesk, and others.

This guide will walk you through the whole product, showing you how to set up Patchstack on your site and make the most of it in the future.

Step #1 — Register your account

Step #2 — Add & connect your site(s) to Patchstack

Install and sync the Patchstack plugin with your WordPress site(s).
To add the first site:

Navigate to Dashboard
Click on the green Connect site button.
Go through the steps shown in the dialogue
Install the plugin .zip file to your WordPress site

Check the more detailed tutorial here

Step #3 — Review vulnerabilities

Patchstack shows your site for existing plugin & theme vulnerabilities. After that, check your dashboard to see a detailed breakdown of vulnerabilities by patch prioriy and severiy score.

Take immediate action on the High Priority vulnerabilities.

Learn more about vulnerabilities

Step #4 — Enable real-time protection

Hackers only need a few hours to exploit a known vulnerability — before the plugin developers can issue an update. Enable real-time protection with vPatching to protect your site(s) for $5 / month per site.

vPatching doesn’t modify your website code. It’s 100% safe and works as a targeted security rule to block the exploit of specific vulnerabilities.

Enable real-time-protection - just toggle the Protection switch in the sites list and go process the payment.

Step #5 — Check your software for updates

Check the status of your plugins and themes. Apply the necessary updates, and decide whether you’d like to:

Auto-update only vulnerable software; or
Auto-update all software (plugins, themes and/or WordPress core versions)

Learn more

Step #6 — Enable protection modules

With real-time protection enabled, select which protection modules you’d like to use to protect your site. From vPatching to Community IP blocklist, Patchstack blocks exploits with highly-targeted security rules.

Learn more about protection modules

Step #7 — Set up your WordPress hardening

Fortify your site(s) against threats with specific WordPress hardening features, including: disabling the theme editor, adjusting .htaccess features, setting up login protection, and using reCaptcha.

Explore hardening

Step #8 — Generate a report

Understand your threat activity and how Patchstack protected you with practical reports. Create a Snapshot report of your site to have an overiew of the current state of security about your site.

Using reports

For Developer / Business plan users

Step #9 — Set up your custom alerts

By default, Patchstack will alert you when we identify and vPatch a vulnerability in your plugins or themes. However, you can also set up custom alerts for firewall hits, attempted logins, and more. On a Developer / Business plan, you can integrate Slack, to send notifications to a Slack channel.

Creating alert triggers tutorial

Step #10 — Create custom protection rules

In addition to Patchstack’s built-in protection modules, you can write custom JSON-formatted firewall rules, to filter all sorts of traffic.

Explore custom protection rules

Step #11 — Schedule reports

Get monthly overviews per site for each site in your account. Schedule them to arrive in your inbox just in time for your monthly reporting!

How to schedule reports in Patchstack

Step #12 — Monitor your activity log

Your activity log will show actions taking place on your WordPress site — perfect when collaborating with a big team.

Explore the activity log

Anything else?

Need more help

Explore around in this Help Center or contact our team live via support chat.

Need more sites

Explore the Developer plan or the Volume upgrade add-on. If you need any help, let us know via the support chat!

Need more seats

Explore the Seats upgrade.