Lighthouse Integration

Audit every child site’s performance, accessibility and SEO with Lighthouse from your MainWP Dashboard.

Lighthouse scores in your sites list, widgets and reports

The Lighthouse Integration is a Pro MainWP add-on that audits the performance, accessibility, best practices and SEO of your child sites through the Google PageSpeed Insights API. Lighthouse reports for each site open from your MainWP Dashboard, and the scores show up as columns in your sites list.

Testing sites one by one

Testing each client site on its own is slow, repetitive work, and the scores end up scattered across separate tabs. The Lighthouse Integration lists the latest scores for all your sites on one Dashboard page. You start audits there or let them run on a schedule, and the scores also appear in the Manage Sites table, in widgets and in client reports.

Features

The Lighthouse Integration covers running audits, reading the results and passing scores on to clients and your own tools.

Feature	What it means for you
Audits for all, some, or one site	Click Audit All Sites on the Lighthouse Dashboard, pick sites from the Bulk Actions menu, or use the Audit Site action on a single site. Each audit scores performance, accessibility, best practices and SEO.
Scheduled audits	Turn on Automatically audit sites and set the Automated audit frequency, and audits run on their own.
Lighthouse reports	Open the Lighthouse Report action on any site to see the full report. Choose the report language and whether audits use the Desktop strategy, the Mobile strategy, or both.
Score columns in your sites list	Add Performance Score columns for Desktop and Mobile to the Manage Sites table from the Page Settings menu. The Manage Sites and Monitoring tables also show First Contentful Paint and whether a score went up or down since the last audit.
Widgets	The Operations page widget lists your best and worst performing sites. The widget on a child site’s Overview page shows its Desktop and Mobile scores and how they changed since the previous audit.
Score notifications	Set a Notifications threshold. When any tracked Lighthouse score is at or below that value, the add-on can send a Lighthouse notification.
WP-CLI and REST API	Run audits and read results from the command line with `wp mainwp-lighthouse audit` and `wp mainwp-lighthouse results`, or through the MainWP REST API.
Client report tokens	With Pro Reports, add Desktop and Mobile scores, the audit list and the last check time to client reports with tokens such as `[lighthouse.performance.desktop]`, `[lighthouse.seo.mobile]` and `[lighthouse.lastcheck.desktop]`.

Requirements

The Lighthouse Integration needs a Google PageSpeed Insights API key and runs entirely from your MainWP Dashboard.

Item	Requirement
License	MainWP Pro
Google PageSpeed Insights API key	Required to run audits. You create it in your Google account and paste it into the add-on settings.
Child sites	Nothing to install. The add-on connects your Dashboard to the Google PageSpeed Insights API and audits each site from there.
Client report tokens (optional)	MainWP Pro Reports Extension
REST API v1 (optional)	Send audit requests to `/wp-json/mainwp/v1/lighthouse/audit` as POST, which the endpoint requires since version 5.3.

Setup: add an API key and run audits

Setting up the Lighthouse Integration takes an API key from Google, the add-on itself, and a first audit, with scheduling as an optional last step.

Get a Google PageSpeed Insights API key

Click Get a Key, select an existing project or create a new one, and click Next.

Copy the API key and click Done.

Install the add-on and add your API key

In your MainWP Dashboard, go to Add-ons > Manage Add-ons and click Install Add-ons.

Select the Lighthouse add-on, click Install, then click Activate Add-ons.

Go to Add-ons > Monitoring > Lighthouse > Settings, paste your Google PageSpeed Insights API key, and click Save Settings.

Run your first audit

Go to Add-ons > Monitoring > Lighthouse > Dashboard.

Click Audit All Sites and wait until the add-on completes the process.

To audit a selection of sites, use the Bulk Actions menu. To audit one site, use the Audit Site action in its Action Menu.

Schedule automatic audits

Go to Add-ons > Monitoring > Lighthouse > Settings.

Enable Automatically audit sites and set the Automated audit frequency.

Click Save Settings.

Full instructions for settings, widgets, WP-CLI and the REST API: Lighthouse Integration documentation.

How audits run

The Lighthouse Integration runs on your MainWP Dashboard and uses the Google PageSpeed Insights API, with your API key, to audit each child site. As of version 5.2, the Lighthouse Dashboard table loads and filters its data on the server, and the add-on processes up to 50 items per run to reduce memory use.

Lighthouse FAQ

Can I run Lighthouse audits from WP-CLI or the REST API?

Yes, the Lighthouse Integration runs audits and returns results through WP-CLI and the MainWP REST API. Use wp mainwp-lighthouse audit 125,126 or wp mainwp-lighthouse audit --all to run audits, and wp mainwp-lighthouse results with site IDs or --all to view them. For REST API v1, send requests to /wp-json/mainwp/v1/lighthouse/audit as POST.

Can the Lighthouse Integration notify me when a score drops?

Yes, set a Notifications threshold in the Lighthouse Integration settings. When any tracked Lighthouse score is at or below that value, the add-on can send a Lighthouse notification.

How do I give long Lighthouse audits more time to finish?

Raise Maximum execution time under Add-ons > Monitoring > Lighthouse > Settings first. If audits need more time after that, raise Maximum script run time up to the maximum your server allows. On slow web servers, a longer Throttling delay time slows reporting down and may give more accurate results.