I’ve been managing WordPress client hosting since 2004. Over the last two decades, I’ve used almost every fleet management tool on the market: ManageWP, InfiniteWP, MainWP, WPMU DEV Hub, and half a dozen custom scripts in between.
Like a lot of agency owners, I got tired of the SaaS subscription tax. Paying $2 to $5 per site every single month just to monitor uptime and trigger updates on 200 sites adds up fast. But even worse than the price was the software bloat: monolithic dashboards filled with features we never asked for, slow database queries, and zero ability to customize the platform for how our team actually works.
When we started building Clockwork Control, the goal was simple: build a fast, modern, self-hosted command center for WordPress agency owners.
In Clockwork Control v1.2.0, we laid the cornerstone of that vision by introducing our Pluggable Modular Architecture.
1. Escaping the Monolith: Pluggable Modules
In most agency tools, every feature is hardcoded into the core application. Even if you never use Hetzner, Twilio, or Bill.com, those tables, background jobs, and navigation tabs sit in your database forever.
In v1.2.0, we rewrote Clockwork Control so that almost everything is an isolated, toggleable module:
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ CLOCKWORK CONTROL CORE │
│ Sites Fleet • Servers • Users • Permissions │
└───────────────────────────┬────────────────────────────┘
│
┌───────────────────┼───────────────────┐
▼ ▼ ▼
┌───────────────┐ ┌───────────────┐ ┌───────────────┐
│ Hosting Panel │ │ Backup Relay │ │ Notifications │
│ • SpinupWP │ │ • S3 Bucket │ │ • Slack │
│ • GridPane │ │ • DigitalOc. │ │ • Mattermost │
│ • Pressable │ │ • Glacier │ │ • Mailgun │
└───────────────┘ └───────────────┘ └───────────────┘Why Modular Design Wins for Agencies
- Pick and Choose Only What You Use: If you host on GridPane and use Slack, you enable those two modules. Pressable, Hetzner, Cloudways, and Twilio stay completely disabled.
- Zero Database Bloat: Disabled modules don’t register cron workers, don’t ping external APIs, and don’t render menu items.
- Isolate Failures: If an upstream API provider experiences an outage, that module fails gracefully in its own sandbox without taking down your entire command center.
2. Central Operations & Settings Hub
Once we moved to a modular structure, we needed a fast, intuitive way to configure everything. We built the Settings Hub (/settings):
- Instant Search Across Settings: Need to find where to paste an S3 secret key or adjust cron timeouts? Just type in the search bar.
- Clean Two-Tier Navigation: Easily switch between Operations, Hosting Panels, Notifications, Security Feeds, and System Updates.
- Module Status Badges: See which modules are active, verified in production, or waiting for API credentials at a single glance.
3. The DigitalOcean Backup Relay & S3 Air Gap
One of the biggest security mistakes I see agencies make is running backups that push directly from client WordPress servers straight to an AWS S3 root bucket using credentials stored in wp-config.php.
If a client site gets compromised through an outdated plugin, the attacker finds those AWS keys in the database or config file and can delete your entire backup bucket.
In v1.2.0, we introduced the DigitalOcean Backup Relay Architecture:
[Client WordPress Site]
│ (Local database & file dump)
▼
[Encrypted SSH / Relay Push]
│
▼
[Clockwork Control Backup Relay Droplet]
│ (Verifies HMAC signature, validates checksum)
▼
[Private S3 Bucket with Object Lock / Air Gap]Client sites never have direct write or delete permissions on your master S3 archive. All dumps route through the Relay Droplet, which verifies the payload before cold-storing it. If a site gets hacked, your offsite backups remain 100% untouched and safe.
4. ICANN RDAP Domain Expiration Tracking
How many times has a client’s website gone down, not because the server crashed, but because their marketing manager left the company and the domain registration expired without anyone noticing?
v1.2.0 integrates direct ICANN RDAP Domain Tracking:
- Monitors registrar expiration dates for all client domains automatically.
- Alerts your team at 60, 30, and 7 days before expiration.
- Prevents the nightmare of losing a client’s domain name to domain squatters.
The Foundation is Set
v1.2.0 was the release where Clockwork Control stopped being an internal script and became a true, extensible open-source platform.
You can update anytime with:
php artisan clockwork:updateThanks to everyone who has given feedback so far. There’s a lot more coming!
