Shield Security v6.3 for WordPress released 12th February, 2018.
This release has been primarily focused on Shield’s User Interface (UI).
It’s been years since the plugin’s user interface has received any serious focus, so it was time to bring it up-to-date.
New UI For Shield
The learn a bit more about the new Shield UI, please see here.
Improvements include:
- Responsive – options pages now look and operate well on all screen resolutions
- Consistent layout and access to features across all modules
- Support for all browsers using the latest Bootstrap v4.0
New: Automatic Updates Delay Period
Last week there was a big slip-up by the WordPress developers. They released a patch to WordPress (v4.9.3) which entirely broke automatic updates for the site.
It meant that for all sites which upgraded to the new version automatically, they would never automatically update again until a manual update was performed to v4.9.4 – which was released less than 24hrs later.
Not only that, and this hasn’t got a mention anywhere, is that it broke automatic updates for everything else too, including plugins and themes.
We created a bug ticket for this, and it was accepted and fixed in the 4.9.4 release. But this problem got us to thinking…
We’re proponents of automatic updates in-principle, but everyone makes mistakes and bugs happen. We don’t turn-on automatic updates for everything as there are some plugins we just don’t trust to get it right on the first release.
Screenshot: Shield Automatic Updates Delay
Most “killer” bugs are found and fixed within 24-48hrs of a release, so what if we could delay automatic updates during this “danger” period?
Sure, we’ll apply automatic updates, but just not until that release has been available for a few days and any major bugs have been squashed.
If this setting was in-place for the WordPress 4.9.3 release, we wouldn’t have had a problem 🙂
To address this problem, we’ve built this feature into Shield v6.3.0 (pro-only).
Coming Soon in Shield v6.4.0 – Plugin & Theme scanners
We’ve got a big feature coming in Shield v6.4. We’re building upon our File Scanners and creating one for plugins and themes too.
Many WordPress hacks result in some sort of modifications to theme files, or plugins files. Changes that are very hard to catch.
Not any more! We will be the first and only security plugin to lock down your plugins and themes so that you’ll be notified of any changes to your files.
Comments and Suggestions?
As always, we value your comments and feedback.
Please do let us know what you think of the new UI, our new features and anything else you’d like! 🙂
Thanks for the great work Paul!
Always a pleasure, Robert! 🙂
Thanks for your support, as ever.
Thanks Paul 😉
No problem at all Salvatore, glad you’re finding the value in these posts 🙂
Any plan to use “honeypot” for anti spam?
We’ve had a honey pot in there almost since the day the plugin was released. We rarely ever see it triggered though because the other mechanisms are processed first.