Comment on WordPress Management Best Practices Part 2 – Essential Plugins: WordPress Security by Paul G..
Hi Jeff,
Thanks for the great feedback Jeff – delighted to hear what you think of the plugin and that you find it’s serving you well.
Part of the plan for this series is to, as I’ve done with the security plugin, is list out the core, essential plugins that I recommend. In brief, to answer your questions here, for now at least I recommend:
SEO: WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast
Caching: W3 Total Cache (at least if you install this, activate the Browser caching section to ensure correct headers are used)
WordPress Security: Apart from the WordPress Simple Firewall, I don’t use another WordPress security plugin or service… the only thing I use is CloudFlare:
http://www.icontrolwp.com/2012/08/cloudflare-boost-wordpress-security-performance/
One other notable plugin is “Redirection” and I use that to monitor 404s and also create redirects if I rename something or change anything.
Also, in case this is something you’d be interested in, we’ll be creating a control panel for the Simple Firewall to manage your site directly from within iControlWP dashboard itself. Making bulk, network-wide management easier…
I hope that helps!
Thanks,
Paul.
Recent Comments by Paul G.
Security: Hide The WordPress Login and Admin Pages (wp-login.php)
Hey Rob,
Brilliant news… Glad it’s working so well for you!
Part 5: Ultimate Comment SPAM Killer – Shield WordPress Security Plugin
Why does WordPress need to do that? I’ve no idea… that’s the way the author of this particular code decided to implement this. 🙂
My approach is to take each “spam” word/pattern and I use “stripos()” on each item of the comment that needs to be checked.
The truth is that efficiency isn’t hugely important in this area because it’s only run when a comment is posted. I could probably optimize my approach too, but again, it’s not critical.
Further reading: http://lzone.de/articles/php-string-search.htm
Part 4: Login Protection – Shield WordPress Security Plugin
There’s nothing you can do about that unfortunately if the bots are cracking away at your page. Most bots would get blocked by the automatic blacklist if they’re repeatedly hitting you with this.
As to XML-RPC, we have a couple of options ranging from by-passing the login/user sessions systems to completely disabling it:
https://www.icontrolwp.com/2015/10/automatically-block-brute-force-amplification-attacks-against-wordpress-xmlrpc/
Further WordPress Admin Access Lockdown
Eileen, Lynn,
The automatic updates system is WordPress-controlled and run on a WordPress cron. The Security admin access shouldn’t affect this. If you have enabled automatic updates, but restricted the system using the admin access and you find it’s not working as it should, please let me know in the support forums.
To your first question, if you enable this Security Admin system and lock-down any features, then you must, as an administrator or not, authenticate with the Security Admin system before you can make changes to the zones that have been restricted.
Let me know if it’s still unclear and I’ll elaborate further on areas you need.
Thanks!
Part 5: Ultimate Comment SPAM Killer – Shield WordPress Security Plugin
This is something that you’ll have to test with your particular installation(s) and configuration. Aggressive page caching will probably affect this functionality, but that is the double-edged sword that is “caching”.
I’d be interested to hear what you find with your tests.
Thanks!
