
DashCanopy Setup Guide
Everything you need to get up and running
This guide is written for everyone — no technical background needed. We'll explain everything in plain English, step by step. If you can use a website, you can use DashCanopy.
What is DashCanopy?
Imagine you own five websites — a blog, an online shop, a portfolio, a client site, and a side project. Every morning you open five different browser tabs, log into five different dashboards, and check if everything is working. That takes 20 minutes and it's easy to miss something.
DashCanopy is the one tab that replaces all of them. It shows all your websites as tiles on a single screen. Each tile tells you:
- Is the site online right now? (green = yes, red = no)
- How fast is it responding? (slow sites show as yellow)
- How many visitors does it have today?
- Has anything gone wrong recently?
- A quick link to open the site's admin panel
You can add any website — it doesn't matter what platform it's built on. WordPress, Shopify, Squarespace, a custom site, or anything else. As long as it has a URL, DashCanopy can monitor it.
Signing In
DashCanopy uses a single sign-on system — you don't need to create a new username and password. You log in using your existing account (the same one you use for other Manus apps).
Go to the DashCanopy homepage
Click 'Sign in to get started'
You're in!
Adding Your First Site
Adding a site takes about 30 seconds. You just need the website's name and its URL (the web address).
Click the '+ Add Site' button
Fill in the site name
Enter the URL
https://. For example: https://myblog.com(Optional) Add a description and category
Click Save
Understanding Status Colours
Every site tile has a coloured status badge in the corner. Here's what each colour means:
What it means: Your site is working perfectly. DashCanopy pinged it and got a fast response (under 2 seconds).
What to do: No action needed — everything is fine!
What it means: Your site is online but responding slowly (between 2 and 5 seconds). This could mean high traffic, a slow server, or a heavy plugin.
What to do: Check if you have any recently installed plugins or if traffic is unusually high. Consider upgrading your hosting if this happens often.
What it means: DashCanopy couldn't reach your site. It either returned an error or didn't respond at all.
What to do: Try visiting your site in a browser. If it's down, contact your hosting provider. Check the diagnostics panel on the tile for more details.
What it means: DashCanopy hasn't checked this site yet, or the last check didn't complete.
What to do: Click the refresh button on the tile to trigger a manual check.
Setting Up Live Stats
By default, DashCanopy only checks if your site is online. To see live visitor counts and revenue on your tiles, you need to add a stats endpoint to your site.
A stats endpoint is a special URL on your site that DashCanopy visits to get numbers. It returns a small piece of data (called JSON) that looks like this:
{
"visitors": 142,
"revenue_cents": 4999,
"recent_activity": "3 new orders today"
}revenue_cents is in cents — so 4999 means $49.99. This avoids decimal point confusion.For WordPress sites
Add this code to your theme's functions.php file (or use a custom plugin):
add_action('rest_api_init', function() {
register_rest_route('dashcanopy/v1', '/stats', [
'methods' => 'GET',
'callback' => function() {
// Replace these with real data from your site
return [
'visitors' => 0, // your daily visitor count
'revenue_cents' => 0, // your daily revenue in cents
'recent_activity' => 'Site is running',
];
},
'permission_callback' => '__return_true',
]);
});After adding this code, your stats URL will be:
https://yoursite.com/wp-json/dashcanopy/v1/statsFor any other platform
Create a file or route at /api/stats on your site that returns JSON in the format shown above. The exact method depends on your platform.
Adding the stats URL to DashCanopy
Edit your site tile
Paste your stats URL
Add an API key (optional)
Save and wait
Webhooks (Advanced)
A webhook is a way for your website to push information to DashCanopy in real time. Instead of DashCanopy asking "what's new?" every 60 seconds, your site can shout "something just happened!" the moment it occurs.
Common uses for webhooks:
- A new order was placed on your shop
- A new user signed up
- A form was submitted
- An error occurred on your site
- A scheduled job completed
How to find your webhook URL
Edit your site tile
Copy the webhook URL
Paste it into your site's webhook settings
What to send
Your site should send a POST request with a JSON body. Here's a simple example:
{
"event": "new_order",
"message": "Order #1042 placed — $49.99",
"severity": "info"
}DashCanopy will log this event and create a notification in your bell icon feed. The severity field can be info, warning, or error.
Notifications
The bell icon (🔔) in the top-right of your dashboard is your notification centre. It shows a red badge when there are unread notifications.
DashCanopy creates notifications automatically when:
- A site goes offline
- A site comes back online after being down
- A site's response time gets very slow
- A webhook event arrives from one of your sites
- New activity is detected on your connected network hub (if configured)
Click the bell icon
Click a notification to mark it as read
Delete notifications you no longer need
Glossary
Here are some technical terms you might see in DashCanopy, explained in plain English: