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Free Centralized WordPress Management

Currently under development, estimated release January 2025.

BarkWP lets you manage your WordPress websites from a convenient admin dashboard. Whether you just have a few personal sites, or are an agency with a thousand client sites to maintain, you’ll find BarkWP to be a great time-saver!

BarkWP consists of two parts. It’s essential you understand the two components and how they work together.

  1. BarkWPlugin is a WordPress plugin. This is installed on every site you wish to manage.
  2. BarkWPanel is a PHP/MySQL web app that runs on a standard web server. You log in here to manage your sites, and then you can then view information and perform actions on those sites from any browser.

Under the hood, BarkWPanel communicates via the client sites through BarkWPlugin’s secure API.

BarkWP Features

More details coming soon, but to start with, here are the basic features:

  • View information like WordPress version and more – all your sites in one glance
  • Manage automatic WordPress updates – choose between all updates, minor updates only, or no updates at all.
  • Log in to WordPress as any existing user with a temporary login – no need to dig up that password manager – log into your managed sites in one click!
  • Add or remove sites in moments with no custom code. Adopting a WordPress site as simple as installing BarkWPlugin, setting the host IP of your BarkWPanel server, then going into BarkWPanel, putting in the API key from BarkWPlugin, and you’re done. If you ever want to unmanage a site, just deactive and/or uninstall BarkWPlugin.
  • Sites running BarkWPlugin don’t rely on the BarkWPanel server to function. In fact, they will never communicate with the server unless it’s in direct response to an API call made by the BarkWPanel web app. An outage of your BarkWPanel server or other issue will not affect the WordPress sites in any way.
  • Security is a top priority. From thoughtful API design and host IP restriction on BarkWPlugin to mandatory 2FA on BarkWPanel, you can feel confident in BarkWP. And, as it’s 100% open source, you can check out the code for yourself.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is BarkWP free?

Yes. BarkWP is free, open-source software – both the server web app “BarkWPanel” and the WordPress plugin “BarkWPlugin” are yours to use as you please at no charge.

Is BarkWP secure?

Yes, at least I think so! Much effort has been put into the security of BarkWP, and security is the #1 priority. Even though this is a free program and a side project to me, I aim to make timely updates in the unlikely case I should ever become aware of a security issue.

What if I no longer want to manage a particular site?

No problem! Deactivating and/or uninstalling BarkWPlugin in WordPress disables all the plugin’s functionality without changing anything else on the site, and BarkWPanel can no longer do anything to the website. Simply removing the site from BarkWPanel can be done at any time without affecting the site at all.

Can I manage a site from more than one BarkWPanel?

I’m not sure why you’d want to do this, but there is no reason you couldn’t. Just be sure every BarkWPanel server IP is in the BarkWPlugin settings in WordPress.

What do I do if I need help, or run into an issue?

Head over the to the Help & Support page for documentation and contact information.

Does the BarkWPlugin version have to match the BarkWPanel version?

No. The WordPress plugin (BarkWPlugin) and site manager web app (BarkWPanel) are completely separate with different release schedules. so version numbers will not always match. Generally, backwards compatibility will be maintained, unless we have to break compatibility for the sake of security, as security is more important than convenience. As BarkWPanel is in most cases aware of the BarkWPlugin version, if features are added to BarkWPanel later, we can simply disable those new features if a managed site is running too old of a version of BarkWPlugin.

Can BarkWPanel manage anything besides WordPress sites? What if I have a website built in another CMS?

No. BarkWPanel is only designed to work with WordPress sites with BarkWPlugin installed. BarkWP will not work with any other CMS.

I need web hosting for my WordPress sites and/or the BarkWPanel web app. Any suggestions?

You could type “best web hosting” into your favorite search engine and get thousands of misleading articles ridden with affiliate links paid for by the handful of private equity firms that own most of the biggest hosting brands in the industry. Or, you could skip all that mess, and check out HostPoppy – a friendly, local business that cares about you as a customer.


A pawcrafted project by Michael Staake, @web_dev_pup on Twitter (X).