Hostinger Cache Watchdog

Automatically monitors your WooCommerce shop page every minute, clears all caches when products go missing, and sends Slack alerts at every step — including a live screenshot when products come back online.

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The Problem

WooCommerce shops on cached hosting (Hostinger, SiteGround, etc.) can silently serve a broken, product-less shop page to customers — while everything looks fine in your WordPress dashboard. You only find out when a customer complains or you happen to visit the site.

Hostinger Cache Watchdog fixes this. It watches your shop page every minute, catches the issue the moment it happens, clears all caches automatically, and keeps you informed via Slack at every step.

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How It Works

Every minute, the plugin fetches your live shop page and checks whether your theme's product list actually rendered. If products go missing, it immediately:

1. 🚨 Alerts you on Slack — red message with timestamp
2. 🧹 Clears every cache layer — LiteSpeed, WP Rocket, W3TC, WP Super Cache, Autoptimize, SG Optimizer, WP Object Cache, and WooCommerce transients
3. 🟠 Sends a second Slack alert — confirming which caches were cleared
4. ✅ Sends a recovery alert — green message with a live screenshot of your restored shop, once products are detected again

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Features

• Minute-by-minute monitoring via WordPress cron (or a real server cron job)
• Smart detection using your theme's actual HTML attributes — no generic WooCommerce class guessing
• Automatic cache clearing across 7+ popular cache plugins simultaneously
• Three-stage Slack notifications — alert → cleared → recovered (with screenshot)
• Live shop screenshot in the recovery notification via thum.io
• Admin dashboard with live status, one-click manual check, manual cache clear, and test Slack message
• Activity log with colour-coded entries (500-line rolling log)
• No false positives — network errors and non-200 responses are safely ignored

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Requirements

• WordPress 5.0+
• WooCommerce 3.0+
• PHP 7.4+
• A Slack workspace with an Incoming Webhook URL

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Installation

Option 1 — Manual Upload

1. Download the latest release as a .zip
2. In your WordPress admin go to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin
3. Upload the zip and click Install Now, then Activate

Option 2 — FTP / File Manager

1. Upload hostinger-cache-watchdog.php to /wp-content/plugins/hostinger-cache-watchdog/
2. Activate from Plugins → Installed Plugins

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Configuration

1. Add Your Slack Webhook

Go to Settings → 🐶 Cache Watchdog and paste your Slack Incoming Webhook URL.

Don't have one yet? Create a Slack webhook →

2. Set Up a Real Cron Job (Recommended)

WordPress cron only fires when someone visits your site. For reliable every-minute checks, add a real server cron job.

In Hostinger cPanel → Advanced → Cron Jobs, add:

* * * * * php /home/your-username/public_html/wp-cron.php

Set the frequency to Every Minute or enter * * * * * manually.

3. Send a Test Notification

Click 💬 Send Test Slack Message in the admin panel to confirm your webhook is working. The test message includes a live screenshot of your shop.

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Admin Panel

Navigate to Settings → 🐶 Cache Watchdog to access:

Section	Description
📊 Live Status	Current shop health (Products Online / Products Missing) and next scheduled check time
⚡ Actions	Run a manual check, clear all caches now, or send a test Slack message
⚙️ Settings	Slack Webhook URL configuration
📋 Activity Log	Rolling 500-line log with colour-coded entries, newest first
📖 Setup Guide	Cron job instructions and notification flow explanation

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Slack Notifications

The plugin sends up to three Slack messages per incident:

Colour	Trigger	Content
🔴 Red	Products not found	Site URL, timestamp, "clearing cache now"
🟠 Orange	Cache cleared	List of every cache layer that was purged
🟢 Green	Products restored	Down since / recovered timestamps + live screenshot

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Supported Cache Plugins

Hostinger Cache Watchdog will automatically detect and clear whichever of these are active:

• LiteSpeed Cache
• WP Rocket
• W3 Total Cache
• WP Super Cache
• Autoptimize
• SG Optimizer (SiteGround)
• WordPress Object Cache (wp_cache_flush)
• WooCommerce Transients (direct DB purge)

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Product Detection

The plugin detects products by checking your theme's rendered HTML for:

data-lazy-container="products"
data-product-item="true"

Both must be present for the shop to be considered healthy. This matches the actual markup output by the theme and avoids false positives from generic page elements like id="content" which are present on every page regardless of product status.

Note: If you switch themes, verify these attributes still appear in your shop page's HTML source and update the scw_fetch_and_detect() function if needed.

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File Structure

hostinger-cache-watchdog/
└── hostinger-cache-watchdog.php   # Single-file plugin

The plugin also creates one file outside the plugin directory:

wp-content/
└── hostinger-cache-watchdog.log   # Rolling activity log (max 500 lines)

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Frequently Asked Questions

Why is the check not running every minute? WordPress cron is triggered by page visits, not a real clock. If your site has low traffic, checks may be infrequent. Set up a real server cron job as described in the Configuration section.

Will this slow down my site? No. The cron job runs in the background and is not triggered by customer page loads. Cache clearing only happens when products are actually missing.

What if my site goes down entirely (500 error, etc.)? The plugin treats non-200 HTTP responses as "skip this check" rather than triggering a false alarm. Only a 200 response with missing product HTML triggers alerts.

Can I customise which channel alerts go to? Yes — the channel is determined by your Slack webhook configuration, not the plugin. Create separate webhooks for different channels if needed.

The recovery alert fired but the screenshot looks blank. Why? Screenshots are generated by thum.io, a free third-party service. Occasionally it may be slow or rate-limited. The shop data itself is confirmed healthy by the plugin's own HTML check regardless of the screenshot.

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Changelog

2.0.0

• Rewrote product detection to use theme-specific HTML attributes instead of generic WooCommerce classes
• Removed unreliable id="content" check that caused false positives
• Added three-stage Slack notification flow (alert → cleared → recovered)
• Added live screenshot in recovery notification via thum.io
• Added admin dashboard with live status, manual actions, and activity log
• Added support for SG Optimizer cache clearing
• Rolling log trimming (keeps last 500 entries)

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Contributing

Pull requests are welcome. For major changes, please open an issue first to discuss what you'd like to change.

1. Fork the repository
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b feature/your-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add your feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/your-feature)
5. Open a Pull Request

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Author

Nazrul Islam — nazrulislam.dev

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License

This plugin is licensed under the GPL-2.0 License.