OpenStation vs SiteSignal

wp-admin forgets. OpenStation doesn’t. You know the moment. You’re deep in a post and you need one image from the Media Library. You click over, find it, click back, and everything you had going is gone. Your scroll position, your half-typed thought, the three other things you had queued up in your head. That’s not a bug you hit. That’s the design. wp-admin shows you one screen at a time, and every navigation throws the last one away. It has worked this way since 2003, like a fridge that empties itself every time you close the door. WordPress has rebuilt almost everything else. The editor, the site editor, the patterns, the styles. The admin’s one-screen-at-a-time model is the layer nobody touched. OpenStation touches it. Install it and admin screens become draggable, resizable windows. Edit a post while the Media Library sits open next to it. Drag an image from one window straight into the other. Keep comments open in the corner. Reload the browser and your window layout — open pages, positions, sizes, and window states — comes back where you left it. OpenStation itself is free, GPL, and opt-in per user. One click in the admin bar turns it on for you. One click turns it off. Nobody else on your site sees anything change, and deactivating the plugin restores the classic admin exactly. No Core patches and no lock-in. Optional AI providers may charge for their service. Built and maintained by Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, Jetpack, WooCommerce, and Tumblr. Work on more than one thing at once Admin pages open as windows, including pages added by most other plugins. Drag them, resize them, snap them, tile them, minimize them to a taskbar. The admin menu becomes a dock of icons. Two editors open at once is one click away. Never lose your place Moving between open windows leaves each page in place. Across reloads, OpenStation remembers your open pages, window positions, sizes and states, virtual desktops, and focus. Closing a window with unsaved changes warns you first. A desk you can actually put things on Drop posts, media, and links right onto the wallpaper. Sort them into folders. Trash them to a Trash that actually holds things. The stuff you’re working on this week can just sit out where you can see it. One desktop per job Virtual desktops, the way your operating system does them. One for writing. One for the store. One for comment triage. One for that redesign you keep poking at. Switch between them without closing anything. Find anything with Cmd+K The full WordPress command palette, plus slash commands from your plugins, all under one keystroke. Turn on the optional AI assistant and you can ask it things like “which post had the comment asking for the recipe?” and it searches your own content to answer. (Requires an AI provider configured in Settings → Connectors on WordPress 7.0+. Details under “External services” below.) See how your site fits together The Corkboard is an interactive, zoomable map of how your posts, pages, and products link to each other. Pan around it. Find the orphans. Find the hubs. Running a store? Orders, Products, Coupons, and Customers become browsable folders with stock and sale ribbons. Open a customer to see their lifetime spend and what they buy most. Follow a product to its buyers, or a coupon to who redeemed it. Make it yours Wallpapers, from color presets to animated scenes to your own photo. Live widgets pinned to the desktop: drafts, stats, recent comments, a focus timer. Uploadable desktop themes, including a built-in Legacy theme that brings the old WordPress blue back in one click. And Mio, a soft-body desk companion that drifts across your wallpaper and gets bumped around by your windows. Off by default. You’ll turn it on. For developers Extend OpenStation through documented PHP and JavaScript APIs. Register windows, icons, wallpapers, widgets, commands, and settings tabs through stable openstation_register_* PHP APIs and a typed JavaScript API; customize dock items through documented hooks; add AI tools with the WordPress Abilities API. Copy-paste examples live in the developer docs on GitHub. External services No external service is required for OpenStation’s desktop interface. The optional AI Assistant and two user-initiated enrichment features make the external requests described below. AI Assistant The optional AI Assistant sends data to the AI provider you configure in WordPress’s Settings → Connectors (for example OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google). Generation is routed through WordPress 7.0’s built-in AI Client, which supplies the credentials stored in Connectors. The plugin never handles an API key itself. With no provider configured in Connectors, no external AI requests are made. When the AI Assistant is enabled and a user invokes it (via Cmd+K or the slash-command palette): What is sent: the user’s prompt, the conversation history for the active session, and tool-call metadata. The plugin’s built-in tools (search_posts, search_pages, search_comments) run WordPress’s native keyword search and may include excerpts of the matching posts/pages/comments in tool results, which are then sent back to the provider as part of the agentic loop. When it is sent: on user-initiated AI requests, and (if an administrator enables “Score new comments with AI”) on comment-save hooks for spam analysis. Posts, pages, and taxonomy terms are not sent automatically. Why it is sent: to obtain model completions and tool-call decisions that drive the AI Assistant. Who provides the service: whichever provider you configured in Settings → Connectors. Which provider (and endpoint) receives the data depends entirely on that configuration. Review the chosen provider’s own terms and privacy policy (e.g. OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google). URL shortcut favicons When an authorized user creates a desktop shortcut to an external URL, OpenStation asks that URL for its page HTML and favicon so the shortcut can display the site’s icon. The request is made from your WordPress server and sends the requested URL, the server’s IP address, an OpenStation user-agent string, and normal HTTP request metadata to the operator of that site. This happens only when a user creates the shortcut. The destination site’s terms and privacy policy apply. WordPress.org plugin information When an authorized user opens or refreshes parts of OpenStation’s Plugins window, OpenStation may request public plugin details, update metadata, and review excerpts from WordPress.org. These requests send plugin slugs, the site’s locale, and normal HTTP request metadata to WordPress.org. This information is used only to display and manage plugins. Review the WordPress.org Privacy Policy. OpenStation’s OAuth relay does not contact a service by itself. Third-party plugins that configure the relay may contact their own providers and are responsible for disclosing those services. Credits OpenStation is brought to you by Automattic. The plugin is open source under GPLv2-or-later; contributions are welcome on GitHub. Third-party libraries The plugin bundles the following third-party JavaScript library, loaded on demand only when a feature that needs it is in use: PixiJS (MIT License) — used by the Corkboard window, built-in canvas wallpapers (e.g. the animated WordPress logo), the Mio desk companion, and the Inkfall typing game. PixiJS is loaded from the plugin’s own assets/vendor/ directory; no CDN requests are made. Data files The Inkfall game’s word list (assets/games/inkfall/words.txt) is generated from the following sources (attribution also ships in the file’s header): FrequencyWords by Hermit Dave (CC-BY-SA 4.0) — English word-frequency ranking derived from the OpenSubtitles corpus. english-words by dwyl (Unlicense) — used as a validity filter. LDNOOBW English list (CC-BY 4.0) — used as an exclusion filter.

SiteSignal is an AI Visibility & Website Health Platform designed to help organisations understand how their brand is represented by AI systems and maintain the technical clarity, stability, and reliability those systems rely on. SiteSignal unifies five core areas: – AI Visibility — how often and how accurately AI systems mention your brand – AI Visibility Strategy — insights and recommendations for improving visibility – Website Health — foundational structural and technical signals – Website Performance — speed, stability, and reliability – Technical Audits — continuous assessment of clarity, structure, metadata, and discoverability factors The SiteSignal WordPress plugin acts as a secure data connection between your website and the SiteSignal platform. It collects verified technical, structural, security, and performance signals from your site and transmits them to your SiteSignal dashboard for continuous analysis and monitoring. Through this plugin, SiteSignal is able to: – Monitor foundational website health signals – Track performance stability and availability – Validate structural clarity and technical integrity – Support continuous technical audits – Ensure accurate and consistent data for AI visibility analysis The plugin does not perform optimisation, marketing actions, or visibility manipulation. Its role is strictly to provide reliable technical data that powers analysis inside the SiteSignal platform. External Services: This plugin connects to external services including ip-api.com for IP geolocation, api.wordpress.org for WordPress core information, and api.github.com for enhanced plugin analysis. See the “External Services” section below for complete details about data transmission and privacy. Key Features Login Monitoring – Track successful and failed login attempts with detailed information including IP addresses, user agents, and geographic data WordPress Core Status – Monitor WordPress version and check for available updates Plugin Monitoring – Track active plugins, their versions, and available updates with intermediate version information Theme Monitoring – Monitor active theme status and available updates File Integrity Checking – Verify WordPress core files against official checksums to detect unauthorized modifications WooCommerce Integration – Monitor recent orders when WooCommerce is active REST API Support – External access to monitoring data via secure API endpoints Sync Functionality – Incremental data synchronization with external monitoring systems Security Features API key verification with external monitoring systems Secure authentication for REST API endpoints Input sanitization and validation File integrity monitoring with checksum verification Login attempt tracking with geographic information Nonce protection for form submissions REST API Endpoints When an API key is configured, the following endpoints are available: /wp-site-monitor/v1/site-info – General site information /wp-site-monitor/v1/logins – Login attempt logs /wp-site-monitor/v1/logins/sync – Incremental login data sync /wp-site-monitor/v1/core-version – WordPress core version status /wp-site-monitor/v1/plugins – Active plugins information /wp-site-monitor/v1/themes – Theme information /wp-site-monitor/v1/integrity – File integrity check results /wp-site-monitor/v1/orders – WooCommerce orders (if WooCommerce is active) Use Cases Website Security Monitoring – Track login attempts and detect suspicious activity Maintenance Management – Monitor WordPress core, plugin, and theme updates across multiple sites File Integrity Verification – Detect unauthorized changes to WordPress core files External Monitoring Integration – Connect with external monitoring systems via REST API WooCommerce Store Monitoring – Keep track of recent orders and store activity Requirements WordPress 5.0 or higher PHP 7.4 or higher Optional: WooCommerce plugin for order monitoring features External Services This plugin connects to the following external services to provide its functionality: IP Geolocation Service (ip-api.com) Purpose: Obtain geographical location information for login monitoring and security analysis Data sent: User’s IP address only When: Each time a user logs in to your WordPress site (if geolocation is enabled) Frequency: Once per login attempt Data retention: This plugin does not store data from this service permanently Privacy Policy: http://ip-api.com/docs/legal Terms of Service: http://ip-api.com/docs/legal User Control: Site administrators can disable geolocation in plugin settings WordPress Core API (api.wordpress.org) Purpose: Check for available WordPress core updates, plugin information, and core file checksums Data sent: Current WordPress version, site URL (as User-Agent header), plugin slugs, and locale information When: During scheduled update checks and plugin analysis (typically daily) Frequency: Multiple times per day during normal plugin operation Data retention: This plugin does not store data from this service permanently Privacy Policy: https://wordpress.org/about/privacy/ Terms of Service: https://wordpress.org/about/gpl/ User Control: This is essential for plugin functionality and cannot be disabled GitHub API (api.github.com) Purpose: Analyze plugin update information from GitHub repositories for enhanced update type detection Data sent: Repository information and release data requests When: During plugin update analysis (when available) Frequency: During plugin update checks (typically daily) Data retention: This plugin caches repository information temporarily (24 hours) Privacy Policy: https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/privacy-policies/github-privacy-statement Terms of Service: https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-terms-of-service User Control: This is part of the enhanced plugin analysis feature Data Handling and Privacy Local Storage: All monitoring data is stored locally in your WordPress database No Personal Data: The plugin does not collect personal user information beyond what’s necessary for monitoring Data Retention: Login logs are automatically deleted based on your configured retention period (default: 90 days) External Transmission: Data is only sent to external services as described above User Rights: Site administrators can clear all plugin data at any time GDPR Compliance This plugin respects user privacy and GDPR guidelines: * IP address geolocation is optional and can be disabled * Login monitoring data is stored locally and automatically purged * No personal data is transmitted to external services beyond IP addresses for geolocation * Users can request deletion of their monitoring data through the site administrator Disabling External Services Geolocation: Can be disabled in plugin settings (Settings > Geolocation) WordPress API: Cannot be disabled as it’s essential for core functionality GitHub API: Used automatically when available, no separate disable option Privacy Policy Data Collection SiteSignal collects and stores the following information locally in your WordPress database: Login Attempts: Usernames, IP addresses, user agents, timestamps, and login success/failure status System Information: WordPress version, plugin/theme information, file checksums WooCommerce Data: Order information if WooCommerce is active (order IDs, customer names, amounts, status) External Services This plugin connects to external services as detailed in the “External Services” section above: * IP geolocation via ip-api.com (optional) * WordPress core information via api.wordpress.org (required) * GitHub repository analysis via api.github.com (automatic) Data Retention Login logs are automatically deleted based on your configured retention period (default: 90 days) System monitoring data is refreshed during each check External service data is not stored permanently User Rights Site administrators can clear all plugin data at any time Geolocation can be disabled in plugin settings Users can request deletion of their login attempt data through the site administrator GDPR Compliance This plugin respects user privacy and follows GDPR guidelines. No personal data is transmitted to external services except IP addresses for optional geolocation purposes.