Your Managed WordPress dashboard is where you manage everything about your website — its domains, backups, files, updates, and more — without needing to log into WordPress itself for routine tasks. This short tour shows you how it’s laid out so you always know where to go.
Your website and its environments
You open this dashboard from your HostPapa account, where you also choose which website you’re working on. Inside the dashboard, each website can have one or more environments — separate, fully working copies of the site:
- Production — your live website, the one visitors see.
- Staging — an optional copy for testing changes safely before they go live. Staging isn’t created automatically; you add it when you want it (see Create a staging environment).
When your website has more than one environment, a bar across the top shows which environment you’re working on, with a selector to switch between them:
The environment selector, switching between Production and Staging:
* “Environment” = a copy of your site. You’ll see the word environment throughout the dashboard. Think of it as one running copy of your website (its files, database, domains, and backups). Most of the time you’ll be on Production; switch to Staging to test.
The seven tabs
Everything is organised into tabs across the top. Here’s what each one is for:
| Tab Name | What you can do there |
| Overview | See the environment’s status and web address at a glance. One-click Login to WP, Navigate to website, Flush cache, and Database access (your database credentials, for tools that need them). Quick links to your SSH and FTP connection details. |
| Domains | Connect your own domain name, check its DNS and SSL status, and remove domains. |
| Backups | Create backups, restore to an earlier point (including from another environment), and review restore history. |
| Access | Set up FTP (SFTP) accounts and SSH keys to reach your files and command line. |
| Management | The built-in File Manager, plus WordPress Core, Themes, and Plugins (versions and auto-updates). |
| Monitoring | Your traffic Analytics, plus Origin, Edge, and Security logs. |
| Settings | Change the environment’s PHP version — and, on a staging environment, delete it when you’re done with it. |
The tab bar stays the same whether you’re viewing Production or Staging, and always acts on the environment currently shown in the selector. Two things work differently on Staging: you can add custom domains only on Production (Staging keeps its temporary address), and only Staging can be deleted from Settings.
The URL field shows the environment’s current web address. New environments get a temporary address automatically so you can start working right away; add your own domain any time on the Connect your domain (and point your DNS) tab.
