Really Simple Security – Simple and Performant Security (formerly Really Simple SSL) vs Stealth Publish

Easily improve site security with WordPress Hardening, Two-Factor Authentication (2FA), Login Protection, Vulnerability Detection and SSL certificate. Really simple, Effective and Performant WordPress Security Really Simple Security is the most lightweight and easy-to-use security plugin for WordPress. It secures your WordPress website with SSL certificate generation, including proper 301 https redirection and SSL enforcement, scanning for possible vulnerabilities, Login Protection and implementing essential WordPress hardening features. We believe that security should have the absolute minimum effect on website performance, user experience and maintainability. Therefore, Really Simple Security is: Lightweight: Every security feature is developed with a modular approach and with performance in mind. Disabled features won’t load any redundant code. Easy-to-use: 1-minute configuration with short onboarding setup. Security Features Easy SSL Migration Migrates your website to HTTPS and enforces SSL in just one click. 301 redirect via PHP or .htaccess Secure cookies Let’s Encrypt: Install an SSL Certificate if your hosting provider supports manual installation. Server Health Check: Your server configuration is every bit as important for your website security. WordPress Hardening Tweak your configuration and keep WordPress fortified and safe by tackling potential weaknesses. Prevent code execution in the uploads folder Prevent login feedback and disable user enumeration Disable XML-RPC Disable directory browsing Username restrictions (block ‘admin’ and public names) and much more.. Vulnerability Detection Get notified when plugins, themes or WP core contain vulnerabilities and need appropriate action. Login Protection Allow or enforce Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) for specific user roles. Users receive a two-factor code via Email. Improve Security with Really Simple Security Pro Protect your site with all essential security features by upgrading to Really Simple Security Pro. Advanced SSL enforcement Mixed Content Scan & Fixer. Detect files that are requested over HTTP and fix them to HTTPS, both Front- and Back-end. Enable HTTP Strict Transport Security and configure your site for the HSTS Preload list. Firewall Really Simple Security Pro includes a performant and efficient WordPress firewall, to stop bots, crawlers and bad actors with IP and username blocks. 404 blocking – Blocks crawlers as they trigger unusual numbers of 404 errors. Region blocking – Only allow/block access to your site from specific regions. Automated and customisable Firewall rules. IP blocklist and allowlist. Security Headers Security headers protect your site visitors against the risk of clickjacking, cross-site-forgery attacks, stealing login credentials and malware. Independent of your Server Configuration, works on Apache, LiteSpeed, NGINX, etc. Protect your website visitors with X-XSS Protection, X-Content-Type-Options, X-Frame-Options, a Referrer Policy and CORS headers. Automatically generate your WordPress-tailored Content Security Policy. Vulnerability Measures When a vulnerability is detected in a plugin, theme or WordPress core you will get notified accordingly. With Vulnerability Measures, you can configure simple but effective measures to make sure that a critical vulnerability won’t remain unattended. Force update: An update process will be tried multiple times until it can be assumed development of a theme or plugin is abandoned. You will be notified during these steps. Quarantine: When a plugin or theme can’t be updated to solve a vulnerability, Really Simple Security can quarantine the plugin. Advanced Site Hardening Choose a custom login URL Automated File Permissions check and fixer Rename and randomize your database prefix Change the debug.log file location to a non-public folder Disable application passwords Control admin creation Disable HTTP methods, reducing HTTP requests Login Protection Secure your website’s login process and user accounts with powerful security measures. Two-Step verification (Email login) 2FA (two factor authentication) with TOTP Passwordless login with passkey login Enforce strong passwords and frequent password change Limit Login Attempts With Limit Login Attempts you can configure a threshold to temporarily or permanently block IP addresses or (non-existing) usernames. You can also throw a CAPTCHA after a failed login (hCaptcha or Google reCaptcha) Access Control Restrict access to your site for specific regions. Add specific IP addresses or IP ranges to the Blocklist or Allowlist. Useful Links Documentation Security Definitions Translate Really Simple Security Issues & pull requests Feature requests Love Really Simple Security? If you want to support the continuing development of this plugin, please consider buying Really Simple Security Pro, which includes some excellent security features and premium support. About Really Simple Plugins Our mission is to make complex WordPress requirements really easy. Really Simple Security is developed by Really Simple Plugins. For generating SSL certificates, Really Simple Security uses the le acme2 PHP Let’s Encrypt client library, thanks to ‘fbett’ for providing it. Vulnerability Detection uses WP Vulnerability, an open-source initiative by Javier Casares. Want to join as a collaborator? We’re on GitHub as well!

This plugin allows you to prevent specified posts from being featured on the front page or in feeds, and from notifying external services of publication. Beneficial in instances where you want to publish new content without any fanfare and just want the post added to archive and category pages and its own permalink page. A “Stealth publish?” checkbox is added to the “Write Post” admin page. Posts which are saved with that checkbox checked will no longer be featured on the front page of the blog, nor will the post be included in any feeds. A stealth published post will also not notify any external services about the publication. This includes not sending out pingbacks, trackbacks, and pings to update services such as pingomatic.com. This behavior can be overridden via the ‘c2c_stealth_publish_silent’ filter (see Filters section). NOTES: Use of other plugins making their own queries against the database to find posts will possibly allow a post to appear on the front page. But use of the standard WordPress functions for retrieving posts (as done for the main posts query and the recent posts widget) should not allow stealth published posts to appear on the home page. If you use this plugin, you do not need to use my Silent Publish plugin as that functionality is incorporated into this plugin. Alternatively, if you like the silent publishing feature but want your new posts to appear on your blog’s front page and in feeds, then just use the “Silent Publish” plugin. The plugin records when a post is stealth published, so subsequent edits of the post will have the “Stealth publish?” checkbox checked by default. Links: Plugin Homepage | Plugin Directory Page | Author Homepage Filters The plugin is further customizable via three filters. Typically, these customizations would be put into your active theme’s functions.php file, or used by another plugin. c2c_stealth_publish_meta_key (filter) The ‘c2c_stealth_publish_meta_key’ filter allows you to override the name of the custom field key used by the plugin to store a post’s stealth publish status. This isn’t a common need. Arguments: $custom_field_key (string): The custom field key to be used by the plugin. By default this is ‘_stealth-publish’. Example: /** * Defines a custom meta key to be used by Stealth Publish. * * @param string $custom_field_key The default custom field key name. * @return string */ function override_stealth_publish_key( $custom_field_key ) { return '_my_custom_stealth-publish'; } add_filter( 'c2c_stealth_publish_meta_key', 'override_stealth_publish_key' ); c2c_stealth_publish_silent (filter) The ‘c2c_stealth_publish_silent’ filter allows you to override whether the plugin also ensure the post gets published silently (i.e. without sending out pingbacks, tracbacks, and pings to update services). Arguments: $publish_silently (bool): Should stealth published posts also be published silently? By default this is ‘true’. $post_id (int): The ID of the post being published. Example: /** * Disable silent publishing for stealth published posts. * * @param bool $publish_silently True if the post is to be published silently. * @param int $post_id The post ID. * @return Always false. */ function override_stealth_publish_silent( $publish_silently, $post_id ) { return false; } add_filter( 'c2c_stealth_publish_silent', 'override_stealth_publish_silent' ); c2c_stealth_publish_default (filter) The ‘c2c_stealth_publish_default’ filter allows you to override the default state of the ‘Stealth Publish?’ checkbox. Arguments: $state (boolean): The default state of the checkbox. By default this is false. $post (WP_Post): The post currently being created/edited. Example: // Have the Stealth Publish? checkbox checked by default. add_filter( 'c2c_stealth_publish_default', '__return_true' );