Theme Blvd Piecemaker Addon vs Really Simple Security – Simple and Performant Security (formerly Really Simple SSL)

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 will add the Piecemaker 2 Flash slider to the Slider Manager’s built-in slider types when using a WordPress theme with the Theme Blvd framework version 2.0.4+. Who is this plugin for? If you’re not using a Theme Blvd theme, and you’re looking to incorporate Piecemaker into your WordPress site, the following plugin is what you’re looking for: https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/the-piecemaker-image-rotator/ However, if you are using a Theme Blvd WordPress theme, this plugin will allow you to use Piecemaker 2 within the the features of the framework. This means that you can use your theme’s current Slider Manager to create Piecemaker sliders. You can then use those sliders in all standard places like within the Layout Builder and via the [slider] shortcode in pages and posts. How do I use the plugin? After you install this plugin, a new slider type will be added to the current slider types you already have. So, you’ll need to go to the Sliders page in your WordPress admin panel, and now when you click the “Add New” tab, you’ll notice “Piecemaker” has been added to the list of slider types you can choose from. Proceed in creating your slider as you normally would, however you will notice that you obviously have less options for configuring your slides than with the framework’s standard slider type. Plugin Limitations Since the Theme Blvd framework v2.0+ is 100% responsive, this Piecemaker addon obviously comes with its limitations. If it had no limitations, we would have most likely incorporated it into the core sliders of the framework. Slider Location: First of all, because Piecemaker is a Flash/XML slider, it cannot be setup to automatically re-size with the rest of your site. So, this limits you in where you can actually use this slider within your site. The standard slider type that comes with your Theme Blvd theme can be placed essentially anywhere in your site. However when you’re using the Piecemaker Addon, it can only be used within a “full-width” area. So this means you can either use it up in the “Featured Area” or in the “Primary Area” only when you have a “Full Width” sidebar layout selected. Mobile Devices and Tablets: Second, also because piecemaker is a Flash/XML slider, it obviously will not work at all on iOS devices (i.e. iPads and iPhones), which provide no support for Flash. Also, because the theme will get scaled down on other mobile and tablet devices that do support Flash anyway, the slider would look bad because your images would be cut off. So, for this plugin what I’ve done is provide a responsive fallback. When your site is being viewed on any device with a viewport 800px or smaller, the Piecemaker plugin gets hidden, and in its place, you will see all of your slider’s images listed out. Important Note After installing this plugin, you must give the “xml” directory within the plugin writeable file permissions (755 or 777 depending on your server). Not doing this will make the plugin impossible to use because the XML files required for your Piecemaker sliders will not be generated.