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Relay ​

A secure bridge between your WordPress site’s internals and your monitoring tools.

Introduction ​

Relay is the spiritual successor to the WP Sites Monitor, rebuilt from the ground up with the insights we gained from that project. It's designed to be an ultra-lightweight, no-frills WordPress plugin that gathers essential site data and passes it on to your monitoring tool of choice.

Tailored for developers and agencies — especially those who use Composer or automate plugin updates, Relay offers a streamlined way to keep tabs on sites without the overhead of bulky management plugins.

Relay vs Sites Monitor ​

The biggest change? Relay is purpose-built to only collect and relay site data (hence the name). There are no UI blocks, big settings pages, or unnecessary API calls. This lean approach keeps the plugin focused, fast, and efficient.

You're free to integrate it with any monitoring system, or use our own open-source tool, Hub. Best of all, Relay is completely free.

Getting started ​

Follow the steps below to install and start using the plugin.

1. Install and activate the plugin ​

Download the plugin from the WordPress plugin directory. Then, install and activate it via your WordPress dashboard.

2. Overview of endpoints ​

When you visit https://your-site.com/wp-json/relay/v1/core, you will see a JSON response containing the available endpoints. Since Relay is relatively small, it only has one endpoint at the moment:

json
{
  "endpoints": {
    "core": {
      "description": "Site information",
      "methods": ["GET"],
      "route": "/wp-json/relay/v1/core"
    }
  }
}

Note that the endpoints are not accessible by default. You need to authenticate your requests to access the data. Continue to the next step to learn how to do that.

3. Insert or generate an API key ​

Once you activate the plugin a "Relay" settings page will be added to your WordPress dashboard under the "Settings" menu. Here, you can either insert an existing API key or generate a new one. Save the page after inserting or generating the key.

4. Access the API endpoint ​

Now that you have your API key, you can access the API endpoint. You can use any HTTP client to make a GET request to the endpoint, including tools like Postman or cURL.

Your request should include the API key in the headers. Here’s an example using cURL:

bash
curl --request GET \
  --url https://your-site.com/wp-json/relay/v1/core \
  --header 'X-RELAY-API-KEY: LABmHjK27OnEPRR9H'

5. Visualize the data ​

Use the API to collect data from your WordPress site and display it in your preferred monitoring tool. Alternatively, you can use our lightweight monitoring tool, Hub to visualize the data directly.

FAQ ​

How about security?

Relay is designed with security in mind. The data it exposes is limited to what is necessary for monitoring purposes, and access is controlled via an API key system. This means that only users with the correct API key can access the data.

Why is this plugin not using WordPress Application Passwords?

While application passwords are a great feature for authenticating API requests, we opted for a custom API key system in Relay for these reasons:

  1. Easier management and integration with various monitoring tools without the need for additional user management overhead.
  2. If an application password is compromised, someone could potentially gain access to more than just the Relay API.

Changelog ​

1.3.1: Jun 10, 2025 ​

  • Fix: use the correct option key on multisite installations

1.3.0: Jun 10, 2025 ​

  • Add: a settings page for inserting or generating an api key
  • Change: rely on the custom api key instead of WordPress capabilities for api access
  • Change: only allow plugin to be activated on the network of a multisite installation

1.2.0: Jun 5, 2025 ​

  • Add: info about directory sizes to the api
  • Change: code improvements

1.1.0: May 11, 2025 ​

  • Add: support for multisite and subsite information

1.0.0: May 9, 2025 ​

  • Initial release