We’re going to make it a habit to summarise of all the changes great and small we’ve added to the iControlWP service since the last update.
In this way you get to know what’s new that you might have missed, and it lets you see that your requests for features are being heard and we’re putting them all into place.
Some of these have been live for a week or so already, but they’re here for completeness.
Security: Restrict Account Login by IP Address
IP Login Restriction
A little while back we added two-factor account authentication to iControlWP, improving account security and integrity for all users. If you don’t have this enabled, you really should.
Today, we’ve released another security feature designed to further restrict the access of your account – it’s IP-Restricted Login.
Restricting logins by IP address works by allowing you list a series of specific IP addresses from which you can log into your iControlWP account.
If you’re on a computer/phone/device who’s IP address is not on your personal restricted list, you will not be permitted to login.
If you do however attempt to login from an IP address not on your list, an email will be sent to your registered email address that contains a link that, when clicked, will add your IP address to the list of acceptable IP addresses. From then, you can login as normal.
Site Selector Jump-Menu
Jump to manage any site
Before we released our v2.0 of the system, we had a drop-down menu that let you quickly jump to the site you wanted to manage.
With the new release, that nifty little feature got left behind.. that was until someone reminded us on our support chat last week.
So, we pulled back the old code, improved it to let you search within the box too, and it’s been live on iControlWP for the past week.
Improved WordPress Clone Tool
A couple of weeks ago we released our WordPress Clone tool v1.0.
We’ve since added several new options to it, and also fixed some little interface UI bugs that users were reporting.
The feedback so far has been be great and we have much more planned to make your WordPress Cloning easy!
And of course, it’s all Wizard based so anyone can use it – it’s easy! 🙂
Improved FTP and Environment Tab
Better Environment Tab
Your iControlWP interface should be as lean as possible. But that’s hard when there’s so much functionality in there 😉
We’ve made some serious underlying developments in our FTP handling system and in turn tweaked the interface to reflect part of this change.
Here are the new changes:
- WorpDrive FTP credentials are now completely separate to your WordPress site credentials. This protects your WorpDrive backups from accidentally putting the wrong FTP credentials in and your backups failing.
- FTP now support Active mode.
- The FTP form that allows you to perform WordPress updates if you have filesystem restrictions is now integrated into your site’s environment tab.
- Saving FTP details will automatically check that the credentials are valid and working.
Install Plugins and Themes by URL
Install Plugin/Theme by URL
This little feature is hot!
Until now, you could only really install WordPress plugins and themes from WordPress.org using our repository search feature.
Several people asked if installing custom/premium plugins was possible, so we took the first step towards that by adding the ability to install any WordPress plugin/theme by URL.
What does that mean exactly?
It means if you have a package of a plugin/theme sitting in your Dropbox or Amazon S3 storage that has a publicly accessible URL attached to it, you can fire that into iControlWP, select the sites you want to install it to, and install.
It’s really that easy, and there’s no limit. Just provide the link and iControlWP does the heavy lifting.
Email History, and finer control of your email preferences
Going forward, you’ll be able to see a list of all emails we’ve sent you. We wont have historical records however, so this is only going forward.
Also, we’re going to be expanding our email functionality over the coming weeks, the first of which is a free email digest of all your available WordPress.org updates – plugins, themes and WordPress Core.
To assist with this, we’ve broken out the preferences page a little so you can more easily see your preferences.
What do you want to see next?
We’re constantly developing new features and improving our service to you. Feel free at any time to jump into our helpdesk and let us know what you would like to see. The more tools we can create to help you manage your sites better, the less time you need to spend managing your sites!
And we all want that! 🙂
If you haven’t signed up yet, discover why we’re different and sign-up for the free trial below. It’s easy to get started.
