The missing visibility dashboard for
managing SpinupWP servers
SpinupWP is great at provisioning servers. But when an automated email gets buried, how do you know origin SSL certs are silently failing behind Cloudflare? Clockwork Control gives you complete fleet visibility across origin certificates, apt security updates, and server load.
Origin SSL Tracking
Tracks real origin Let's Encrypt certificate expiration dates behind Cloudflare edge proxies. Never discover 9 expired origin certs during a crisis.
Deep Apt Visibility
Queries Ubuntu's apt-check cache over SSH to render: "12 packages, 3 security, reboot required by linux-image-generic".
Outage Forensics
When a site 502s, Clockwork Control instantly SSHs into your SpinupWP box, probes maintenance.conf, checks PHP-FPM sockets, and reads error logs into Slack.
SSH fail2ban Jail
Tails Nginx access logs and ingests Wordfence/LLAR lockouts across all droplets into a human review queue, deploying real-IP snippets so Cloudflare is never blocked.
When 9 sites fail SSL renewals, an email is not enough
Here is a real scenario familiar to every growing agency: you host client sites on SpinupWP with Cloudflare active. On the origin server, Let's Encrypt certificates fail to generate or renew for 9 sites.
SpinupWP sends an automated email. But in a busy agency receiving hundreds of notifications, client tickets, and git alerts daily, that email gets buried and missed.
Meanwhile, Cloudflare continues serving its edge backup SSL certificate to visitors. Uptime monitors ping the domain and report 200 OK — SSL Valid. Everything looks green while the origin is completely broken. Until Cloudflare rotates its edge cert, or strict SSL is triggered — instantly plunging 9 client sites into browser security warnings.
Clockwork Control eliminates this blindspot. It queries server certificates directly, surfaces exact origin expiration countdowns on your dashboard, and pings Slack with actionable context before an outage happens.
# Inspecting origin certificate expiration behind Cloudflare:
$ php artisan clockwork:check-origin-ssl --site=client-production.com
• Edge Proxy: Cloudflare Active (Edge SSL: Valid)
• Origin Host: spinup35.app (DigitalOcean 4GB)
• Origin Cert Expiration: 2026-09-08 (5 days remaining — WARNING)
• Renewal Status: Let's Encrypt challenge failing on origin
• Alert Dispatched: Pinned to Slack #ops-infrastructure
• Dashboard Status: Flagged on Control Panel header
SpinupWP runs the servers. Clockwork Control watches them.
SpinupWP is the best tool on the market for provisioning clean Nginx, PHP, and MySQL configurations on cloud VPS providers like DigitalOcean, Hetzner, Vultr, and Linode. But SpinupWP is an infrastructure provisioner, not an ongoing security operations center.
Clockwork Control is the unified monitoring and operations brain that aggregates state, alerts you where you work, and gives you total visibility over your entire hosting fleet.
# Probing SpinupWP server update snapshot non-invasively:
$ php artisan clockwork:poll-system-updates --server=spinup35.app
• Connecting via SSH as systemsgo...
• Reading /usr/lib/update-notifier/apt-check: 14 total; 3 security
• Reading /var/run/reboot-required.pkgs: linux-image-generic, libc6
• Result: Snapshot saved. Flagged for scheduled graceful reboot.
# Executing bulk update with 60-second grace reboot:
$ php artisan clockwork:process-server-updates
• Updates applied cleanly • STATUS: reboot-scheduled (+1 min)
SpinupWP alone vs. SpinupWP + Clockwork Control
Clockwork Control is designed specifically to complete the SpinupWP operational workflow for agencies.
| Capability | SpinupWP Standalone | With Clockwork Control Panel |
|---|---|---|
| Server Provisioning & Nginx Setup | Native, automated Ubuntu & Nginx configuration | ✓Preserved completely — Clockwork Control sits alongside SpinupWP |
| Origin SSL Renewal Visibility | Fires notification email on failure (easy to miss in busy inboxes) | ✓Real-time origin cert expiration timelines on dashboard + instant Slack alerts |
| Apt-Update Visibility | Binary boolean ("Upgrade required: yes/no") | ✓Exact package count, security-vs-normal split, reboot packages list |
| Server Reboot Orchestration | No reboot API or scheduling endpoint | ✓Bulk scheduling, graceful delayed shutdown (shutdown -r +1), post-reboot health verification |
| Outage Root-Cause Diagnosis | None (manual SSH required when sites return 502/503) | ✓Automatic SSH inspection: maintenance.conf, FPM pool sockets, system load, error logs |
| Nginx Access Log Tailing & Bans | None (logs stay on individual droplets) | ✓Inode-tracked cursors, Wordfence/LLAR ingest, human-approved fail2ban jail |
| Cloudflare Anti-Ban Protection | Manual configuration per server | ✓Automated weekly ignoreip jail sync + Nginx CF-Connecting-IP real-IP snippets |
| WP Core Integrity & Malware | None | ✓wp core verify-checksums over SSH + remote Sucuri + blacklist checks |
| Fleet-Wide Pricing | Subscription per server | ✓100% Free & Open-Source (MIT) — unmetered servers and sites |
Import your SpinupWP fleet today
Populate your SpinupWP API token in Clockwork Control and run the importer. All servers and sites will be imported and monitored immediately without touching your production Nginx configs.
# Import all SpinupWP servers and sites into Clockwork Control:
$ php artisan clockwork:import-spinupwp
