Utilities

Section number six in the Craft CMS dashboard is Utilities. Here, you will find information about the system and environment your application is in. Additionally, you can perform several upkeep actions. There is not much to say about this part that is not immediately obvious, so let us go down the list of tabs quickly and explain what each of them does.

• Updates - As the name suggests, this is where you will see when an update for Craft or any installed plugins becomes available. Additionally, you can read the release notes for each update in this section;
• System Report - Here, you can read about various things related to your application and the system it is installed on: PHP version, OS version, database driver and version, plugins, modules, etc.;
• Project Config - This section is extremely useful and convenient as it allows you to synchronize your project’s configuration across different environments (development, production, staging, etc.). Each configuration is stored in a YAML file in the /config/project directory. They are human-readable and can be version-controlled. For example, each configuration can be committed to a repository and then pulled to your current application configuration from this section;
• PHP Info - While the System Report section shows the version of your application’s PHP version, PHP Info shows all the other information related to PHP;
• Asset Indexes - From here, you can see a list of asset volumes, and you can manually trigger their indexing. Typically, Craft does that manually whenever you upload or synchronize assets. You can also select to cache remote images (download remotely stored images) and check if empty files or directories should be listed for deletion. This section is handy if you bulk upload or make changes outside of Craft to your assets;
• Queue Manager - In this section, you can monitor all currently running or queued background jobs;
• Caches - Here, you can see all the available caches for your application, and you can flush them as per your needs;
• Deprecation Warnings - If any of your plugins or templates are about to be deprecated, you will see a warning here;
• Database Backup - Create and download backups of your application’s main database from here;
• Find and Replace - In this section, you can search for a specific string across all element content (Entries, Sections, etc.) and replace it with another;
• Migrations - Finally, you can view any pending migrations and apply them or view a history of previous migrations. In the context of Craft, a migration is a script used to change the application’s database, such as adding new fields or modifying tables.

There is a lot of utility packed in this section of Craft CMS, and all of it is useful for managing and keeping track of your project!