Use this plugin to monitor the heart-rate of your WordPress installation.

WordPress uses an API called “Heartbeat” to monitor certain conditions and report to the user if something went wrong.

If your login cookie expires while you’re writing a post, for example, Heartbeat will open a modal window and allow you to log in again.

This plugin adds a small menu item to the WordPress toolbar that does the following things:

• Beats every 1 second to remind you about the API
• Throbs every interval of the Heartbeat API to confirm connection is active

Future versions of this plugin could add a drop-down to this menu with more information.