HBMHBM Rocket
ALL DOCS
DOCUMENTATION

Getting started

6 MIN READ

This guide walks through adding your first site to HBM Rocket, installing the agent, and watching the first audit complete. Total time: about ten minutes.

1. Sign in

If you have a waitlisted account, an invite was sent to your work email. Click the link to set a password, or sign in directly.

2. Add a site

From the dashboard, click Add site. Provide a display name (whatever your team will recognize) and the canonical URL with https. Submit.

The control plane provisions the site, generates a 64 character HMAC secret, and queues two initial Lighthouse audits (mobile and desktop). The secret is shown once. Copy it now.

The secret is the only credential the agent uses to authenticate to the control plane. If you lose it, rotate it from the site detail page; the next heartbeat will pick up the new value.

3. Install the agent on the WordPress site

Two options: WP-CLI (preferred) or upload the ZIP through the WordPress admin.

WP-CLI

# 1. SSH to the site
ssh your-site-alias
cd /path/to/wp-root

# 2. Install and activate the plugin
wp plugin install https://speed.homebuildermarketers.com/static/hbm-rocket.zip --activate

# 3. Set the per site secret
wp option update hbm_rocket_secret <PASTED_SECRET>

# 4. Send the first heartbeat
wp hbm-rocket heartbeat

Through wp-admin

  • Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin → choose hbm-rocket.zip
  • Activate
  • Settings → HBM Rocket → paste the secret → Save

4. Watch the first heartbeat arrive

Within five minutes the dashboard will flip the site from PENDING to HEALTHY. Plugin version, WordPress version, PHP version, theme, and server software are reported automatically.

5. First audit

Mobile and desktop Lighthouse runs were queued at site creation time. They complete in 30 to 60 seconds each. The score appears on the site detail page along with the Core Web Vitals breakdown and a chart that grows as more audits run.

If the score on day one looks bad, do not panic. The plugin has not pushed any artifacts yet. Critical CSS regeneration runs within an hour of first heartbeat, and the score will move within 24 hours.

6. Optional: connect Cloudflare

If your DNS is on Cloudflare, the integration adds automatic edge cache rules and post save purges. From Optimize → Integrations, click Connect on the Cloudflare card, paste an API token with Zone.Cache Purge and Zone.Cache Rules permissions, choose your zone.

7. Optional: set up alerts

From Optimize → Integrations connect Slack or Resend. By default we send alerts only on critical regressions. Tune the per site target SLOs from the site detail page if 85 mobile and 90 desktop is not where you want them.

What happens after this

  • Heartbeat every five minutes
  • Critical CSS regenerated weekly and on theme changes
  • Unused CSS scan weekly
  • Cache warmup after every content change
  • Lighthouse audits nightly
  • Self heal triggered if a metric regresses past target
Getting started | HBM Rocket