The following are recent changes on this service.
2026-08-21: Codex is now installed alongside Claude Code on new and reinstalled sites. SSH in and run codex, then sign in with your own ChatGPT or API account. Both clients use the same Woop! Host guidance, WordPress skills and managed browser tools.
2026-08-14: Resident Engineer skills on current stacks now use wphost-* names. In Claude Code, /wp-backup is now /wphost-backup. Codex uses $wphost-backup. The older /wp-* names are not installed.
2026-08-12: You can now create, inspect and restore backups yourself over SSH with wphost-backups.sh. Restore the whole site or select only files, the database, a plugin, theme, uploads directory, file path or selected database tables. You can stage or preview a restore before changing the live site, and every live restore takes a fresh backup first. See https://woop.host/stackinfo.jsp#backups
2026-08-12: Backups now keep a protected, inspectable history of site files and database changes. The Resident Engineer can list restore points, show what changed, stage a recovery for review, or restore the whole site or only a plugin, theme, uploads, file path or selected database tables. A live restore takes a fresh backup and local snapshot first. From the command line: wphost-backups.sh --help
2026-08-11: You can now hand a design to Claude Design (after signing in to Claude Design from Claude Code) and bring it straight back into your site for implementation.
2026-08-11: Your site's claude code instance can now see your site (via playwright-cli and chromium installed into the environment). It takes real browser screenshots at desktop, tablet and phone widths and reads the browser console, so it can diagnose layout and JavaScript problems rather than only checking that a page loads.
2026-08-11: Web code write access can be controlled from the panel. New and reinstalled sites begin writable during setup; read-only mode protects themes, plugins, upgrade directories and wp-config.php from PHP, while ssh, sftp, WP-CLI and the Resident Engineer retain site-owner access. Bounded grants close automatically.
2026-07-28: The wp-admin theme/plugin file editor is now disabled on new sites (DISALLOW_FILE_EDIT).
2026-07-28: Auto-updates only cover plugins and themes with WordPress' own auto-update switch on. Anything installed after your site was built defaults to off, so check the Plugins screen.
2026-07-28: New stack guide covering ssh, sftp, database access, backups, updates and email. Notices in wp-admin link straight to the relevant section. https://woop.host/stackinfo.jsp
2026-07-27: Installing a theme or plugin from wp-admin now shows an explanation and a panel link instead of WordPress' dead-end FTP credentials form.
2026-07-26: Added logging for emails your site sends - time, recipients, subject, and the plugin, file and function that triggered it. Message bodies are never recorded. Off with WPHOST_MAIL_TRACE.
2026-07-26: SMTP settings in wp-config.php are now WPHOST_SMTP_* (host, port, user, pass, user_displayname). All five are required or the configuration is ignored.
2026-07-26: Scheduled tasks - scheduled posts, WooCommerce jobs, plugin cron - run reliably again. A guard bug meant the 5-minutely WP-Cron job had never actually run.
2026-07-26: Monitoring now flags sites where the varnish cache purge plugin has been deactivated - the usual cause of "my edits aren't showing".
2026-07-19: A site can be migrated in by the Resident Engineer - it pulls files and database from the old server over ssh, backs up what's here first, then fixes URLs and permissions. e.g. see https://blog.rimuhosting.com/2026/07/20/we-migrated-a-wordpress-site-in-seven-minutes-then-i-interviewed-the-two-ais-who-did-it/
2026-07-19: Claude Code is installed on your server as a Resident Engineer - ssh in and run 'claude'. It signs in with your own Claude subscription. claude-guest gives a throwaway session for working on a client's site. See https://woop.host/woop-resident-engineer/
2026-06-28: Enabling daily incremental backups of files and database using rdiff-backup.
2026-06-24: wphost plugin updated to permit SITE_SMTP_* settings in wp-config.php if you wish to use your own SMTP server.
2026-06-24: Enabled google-sitemap-generator plugin including url rewriting to support that e.g. /sitemap.xml.
2026-05-03: wpuser jail setup with defaults for wp cli (e.g. default path of /var/www/wordpress).
2026-05-03: Base distro updated from Debian 12 to Debian 13. Available on new sites and on software stack re-installs. This brings the PHP version to 8.4
2026-02-22: Started adding some email status monitoring to help identify bounces and other undeliverable emails. Handy to identify form spam and exploited plugins.
2026-02-17: Excluded rucss_resources table from internal safety backups. Big table created by rocket plugin to help figure out unused css. Will regenerate on its own.
2025-11-19: LE certificate renewal will retain domain names on the certificate - if the certificate has a useful life - in the event of issues preventing the domain reaching the service. e.g. temporary domain name resolution issues, or cloudflare outages.
2025-10-14: logrotate setup for WordPress debug.log file.
2025-09-15: DISABLE_WP_CRON set, and 5 minutely cron job added. More efficient - faster, and more reliable on low traffic sites.
2025-09-15: Error logs displayed on the site are simplified so only the last error of each type is shown.
2025-09-15: .user.ini files supported for custom php values. For example in /var/www/wordpress/wp-admin/.user.ini you could add memory_limit=768M
2025-09-15: Increased PHP memory from 256MB to 512MB for /wp-admin scripts. Set WP_MAX_MEMORY_LIMIT to 512MB.
2025-09-15: Fixed a bug preventing a password being set on the woopadmin temporary WordPress admin user.
2025-09-15: permit mysql client 'tunneling' over ssh. e.g. ssh -N -L 3307:localhost:3306 wpuser@site-xxxx.woop.host, then mysql -u wpuser -p -P 3307 -h localhost --ssl-verify-server-cert=false dbname
2025-06-30: Removed staple-ocsp on SSL certificate issuance, due to deprecation of that feature by LetsEncrypt.
2025-06-30: Enabled shell access for the wpuser ssh user. More commands made available to the wpuser ssh user: e.g. zip, tar, git, rsync, scp, du, git, git-shell, svn, svnserve, sftp-server, zcat, sha1sum, find, egrep
2025-05-31: Added database credentials to ~wpuser/.my.cnf so that mysql default to the current details.
2025-05-31: A software stack reinstall dist upgrades older distros to the Debian 12 distro
2025-03-31: Improved varnish/caching of requests
Woop! Host: WordPress hosting service. A Rimu Hosting Ltd business. RimuHosting services include:
© RimuHosting Ltd 2019-2026. RimuHosting, Woop!, and the Woop! hands logo are RimuHosting™ trademarks. WordPress and the WordPress logo are the trademarks of the WordPress foundation.
