Plugin connection

The Scanfully plugin sends your site’s data to Scanfully every 3 hours: site health, plugins and their updates, and the activity log. Scanfully keeps an eye on those reports. When they stop, it tells you, finds out why, and says what to do.

Uptime, certificate and DNS checks don’t need the plugin, so they go on either way. What stops is everything that comes from WordPress: site health, plugin updates and vulnerabilities, the activity log, the email check and the shop details of WooCommerce.

Where you see it

Site overview: a banner with what happened, why, since when and what to do, with Check connection. The plugin also shows up in What needs your attention. See Site overview.
Sites list: a Plugin not reporting, Plugin deactivated, Plugin disconnected or Plugin deleted pill under Needs attention, and a plugins not reporting tile above the list. See Sites.
Site health: the same banner above a report that may be out of date. See Site health.
Alerts: the Plugin stopped reporting and Plugin reporting again events. See Alerts.
The AI apps you connect with MCP can tell which sites stopped reporting and why.

The states

Connected: the plugin reported within the last 12 hours. Nothing to do.
Not reporting: no report for 12 hours, four missed reports in a row. Scanfully names the reason; see Why a plugin stops reporting.
Deactivated: the plugin was deactivated in wp-admin.
Disconnected: the site was disconnected in the plugin’s settings.
Deleted: the plugin was deleted from the site.

A site whose plugin was never connected shows none of this; its screens say to connect the plugin, as before.

Check connection

When the plugin stops reporting, Scanfully asks it to send its data, waits 15 minutes for it, and asks again once a day while it lasts. That answer is how it finds most reasons.

Check connection on the banner does the same right away, for example after you fixed the problem. One click is enough: when the plugin takes the request, the banner goes away by itself once the data arrives, and if no data arrives within 15 minutes it names the reason. If the request never reached the plugin, for example because a firewall blocked it, a click after you fixed that asks again right away. When nothing changed, the banner says when it checked.

You don’t need the button when you fixed the problem some other way: the banner goes away by itself as soon as the plugin reports again.

Why a plugin stops reporting

Connection refused

Scanfully refuses the plugin’s connection: the tokens it connects with are no longer valid. This happens after restoring an old backup of the site, or copying the site to another server.

What to do: connect the site again. Open Scanfully in wp-admin, disconnect it and connect it again. The page can still say Connected, because the plugin doesn’t know its tokens are refused. See Connect your website to Scanfully.

Plugin inactive

The plugin’s sync route is not there. The Scanfully plugin is deactivated, deleted or too old, or the site’s REST API is turned off.

What to do: check in wp-admin, under Plugins, that the Scanfully plugin is active and up to date. If it is, check that no security plugin turns off the WordPress REST API.

Scheduled tasks don’t run

The plugin answers, but its reports don’t arrive. The plugin sends them with WordPress’s scheduled tasks (WP-Cron, through Action Scheduler), and those don’t seem to run.

What to do: check that WP-Cron runs.

WP-Cron runs when someone visits the site. A quiet site, or a site behind a full-page cache that answers every visit itself, may run it rarely or never.
With define( 'DISABLE_WP_CRON', true ); in wp-config.php, a real cron job on the server has to call wp-cron.php. Check with your host that it does.
In wp-admin, Tools > Scheduled Actions (on a WooCommerce site WooCommerce > Status > Scheduled Actions) lists the plugin’s tasks in the scanfully group. Tasks that are long overdue, or failed, point to a cron problem.

Site health data is not showing has more about this.

Can’t reach Scanfully

The plugin’s requests to Scanfully fail. The banner quotes the error of the last failed request, for example cURL error 28: Operation timed out.

What to do: check that the server can make HTTPS requests to api.scanfully.com. Things that stop them:

A firewall on the server, or a security plugin, that blocks outgoing requests.
define( 'WP_HTTP_BLOCK_EXTERNAL', true ); in wp-config.php without api.scanfully.com in WP_ACCESSIBLE_HOSTS.
An outdated certificate bundle on the server, so the secure connection to Scanfully fails. Your host can update it.

Scanfully can’t reach the plugin

Scanfully can’t reach the plugin’s route while the site itself answers: a firewall or security plugin blocks the WordPress REST API for Scanfully.

Scanfully only says this after two tries at least 15 minutes apart, because one failed try can be a passing problem. After the first one the banner says it tries again, and you don’t get an alert yet.

What to do: allow requests to /wp-json/scanfully/v1/ in the firewall or security plugin. Scanfully has no fixed IP addresses to allow (see Scanfully IP addresses); a custom request header that the firewall lets through works instead.

Site data does not arrive

The plugin reaches Scanfully, but its site data does not arrive. This is on Scanfully’s side, and Scanfully looks into it. You don’t get an alert for it.

What to do: nothing yet. If it lasts more than a day, contact Scanfully support.

Site down

The site is down, so the plugin can’t report. The downtime already says why, so there is no plugin banner or alert while it lasts.

A plugin usually catches up by itself once the site is back. If the downtime is why it went quiet and it still hasn’t reported an hour after the site recovered, Scanfully asks it for its data. If none arrives, the banner shows the reason.

A downtime of only some of the site’s pages doesn’t count as this. Neither does one that began after the plugin had already gone quiet: once it ends, the banner shows the reason again.

What to do: fix the downtime first. See Downtime causes.

Unknown

The plugin stopped reporting and Scanfully can’t tell why. This is the reason when Scanfully can’t ask the plugin: the site is monitored over http:// instead of https://, or the plugin’s connection has expired.

What to do: open Scanfully in wp-admin and check that the site is still connected. If it is, go through Scheduled tasks don’t run and Can’t reach Scanfully.

Switched off in WordPress

Deactivated

Someone deactivated the Scanfully plugin in wp-admin. The banner says who and when. The site stays connected: when the plugin is activated again, it reports with the same connection.

What to do: activate the Scanfully plugin again in wp-admin, under Plugins.

Disconnected

Someone disconnected the site in the plugin’s settings. The banner says who and when.

What to do: connect the site again. Open Scanfully in wp-admin and connect it.

Deleted

The Scanfully plugin was deleted from the site. The banner says when, and who when WordPress tells.

What to do: install the Scanfully plugin again and connect the site. See Connect your website to Scanfully.

Alerts

Two events in the Plugin health category of your notifications:

Plugin stopped reporting (a warning): once when the plugin stops reporting, with the reason in the subject, for example “The Scanfully plugin on example.com stopped reporting: its scheduled tasks don’t run”, and what to do. A deactivated, disconnected or deleted plugin is alerted after 15 to 30 minutes, so activating or connecting it again right away sends nothing. If it is back on but still doesn’t report, you get one more alert with the reason.
Plugin reporting again (informational): as soon as the plugin’s data arrives after that alert.

You don’t get Plugin stopped reporting while the site is down, or for Site data does not arrive. As a warning, it waits for quiet hours to end and can go into the daily digest.

The Everything else notification, and notifications that include every event outside Uptime, have both events. Add them to other notifications in the notification editor; see Create a notification.

While the plugin doesn’t report, the email check’s Email plugin unreachable alert waits, as Plugin stopped reporting already says it.