ShieldPRO 9.0 comes absolutely packed with loads of new WordPress security features, as well as enhancements that improve existing features and makes WordPress security a bit easier.

This release post will outline the new features in ShieldPRO 9.0 along with many of the enhancement it brings your site security.

#1 WordPress WP Config Protection – FileLocker

This is one of our most exciting new features and is the first time a feature like this has been made available for WordPress, anywhere.

In a nutshell, when the FileLocker system is activated, ShieldPRO will monitor the contents of your wp-config.php file and as soon as its modified, you’ll be able to:

  1. View the exact changes that have been made to your file with a file diff (similar to Post Revisions).
  2. Accept these file changes, or
  3. Revert these changes and restore the original file contents.

Click here to learn all about this feature, and how it works.

#2 Selective Import/Export Options Sync

ShieldPRO has let you import and export options for long while, but 1 disadvantage to this feature was that you couldn’t select which options you would import/export.

It was all or nothing.

Not any longer! With ShieldPRO 9.0 you can now exclude individual options, allowing for more flexibility.

Click here to learn how to take full advantage of this feature.

#3 hCaptcha Support For WordPress

hCaptcha is a SPAM-Bot protection service that serves as a direct replacement for Google reCAPTCHA.

Please see our full article to learn more about hCaptcha and how to get started.

#4 Improved and Consolidated Reporting

We’ve completely rewritten Shield’s reporting apparatus so that you can receive alerts and reports from ShieldPRO in a consistent manner.

Until now, ShieldPRO would send alerts as and when an issue arose. Instead, email reports are sent at specific intervals so that any issues that need to be dealt are all alerted together.

This style of reporting results in fewer emails and alerts, making for fewer interruptions and a clean mailbox.

We’ll have more features for reporting coming to ShieldPRO soon.

#5 Many More Enhancements

You can always review the Changelog to discover what’s new in any ShieldPRO release, but we’ll draw your attention to a few of the important ones here.

# Improvements to Bot protection on login, register and lost password forms

Supporting many different 3rd party plugins is big job, but we try to make ShieldPRO compatible with as many as possible – they don’t make it easy for us, that’s for sure.

Not all 3rd party plugins with custom login/registration forms need any custom code from us, but many do.

Click here to see all the 3rd party plugins we support.

For any plugins that aren’t listed, that you’d like to see supported by Shield, you can reach out to us and we’ll see what we can do.

# Simplification of many options

Overtime ShieldPRO gathers options which we’ve added to make admin and configuration easier. But more options isn’t always better. So in ShieldPRO 9.0 we’ve reorganised many options and removed quite a few, so as to simplify admin for everyone.

# Improved File Repair for Scanners

Automatically repairing a file isn’t a simple process and relies on our ability to find the original file content in a reliable way. Most WordPress.org plugins let us do this, but many don’t.

Where possible, we’ve made file repair much more reliable overall for both plugins and themes from WordPress.org, in ShieldPRO 9.0.

# The Final Major Shield Release To Support PHP 5.x

PHP 5.x is old, really very old. Maintaining a plugin the size and scope of ShieldPRO for many different PHP version is an extra load we no longer wish to carry.

Starting from ShieldPRO 10.0, we’ll no longer be support PHP 5.x, and will instead move to a minimum required version of PHP 7.0.

Questions, Comments and Suggestions

ShieldPRO 9.0 is a huge release in many ways, but we trust you’re enjoying the new features and developments.

We really welcome your feedback and suggestions… we read them all.

As always, thank you for your support.