Really Simple Security – Simple and Performant Security (formerly Really Simple SSL) vs WP Consent API

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!

WP Consent API is a plugin that standardizes the communication of accepted consent categories between plugins. It requires a cookie banner plugin and, at least, one other plugin that supports the WP Consent API. With this plugin, all supporting plugins can use the same set of methods to read and register the current consent category, allowing consent management plugins and other plugins to work together, improving compliance with privacy laws. WARNING: the plugin itself will not handle consent. It will show you how many plugins you have without Consent API support and will improve compliance on your site by ensuring smooth communication between cookie banner plugins and plugins that set cookies or track user data. What problem does this plugin solve? Currently, it is possible for a consent management plugin to block third-party services like Facebook, Google Maps, Twitter, etc. But if a WordPress plugin places a PHP cookie, a consent management plugin cannot prevent this. Secondly, some plugins integrate the tracking code on the clientside in javascript files that, when blocked, break the site. Or, if such a plugin’s javascript is minified, causing the URL to be unrecognizable and won’t get detected by an automatic blocking script. Lastly, the blocking approach requires a list of all types of URL’s that tracks data. A generic API where plugins adhere to can greatly facilitate a webmaster in getting a site compliant. Does usage of this API prevent third-party services from tracking user data? Primary this API is aimed at compliant first-party cookies or tracking by WordPress plugins. If such a plugin triggers, for example, Facebook, usage of this API will be of help. If a user embeds a Facebook iframe, a blocking tool is needed that initially disables the iframe and or scripts. Third-party scripts have to blocked by blocking functionality in a consent management plugin. To do this in core would be to intrusive, and is also not applicable to all users: only users with visitors from opt-in regions such as the European Union require such a feature. Such a feature also has a risk of breaking things. Additionally, blocking these and showing a nice placeholder requires even more sophisticated code, all of which should in my opinion not be part of WordPress core, for the same reasons. How does it work? There are two indicators that together tell if consent is given for a specific consent category, e.g., “marketing”: 1) the region based consent_type, which can be opt-in, opt-out, or other possible consent_types; 2) and the visitor’s choice: not set, allow, or deny. The consent_type is a function that wraps a filter, “wp_get_consent_type”. If there’s no consent management plugin to set it, it will return false. This will cause all consent categories to return true, allowing cookies to be set on all categories. If opt-in is set using this filter, a category will only return true if the value of the visitor’s choice is “allow”. If the region based consent_type is opt-out, it will return true if the visitor’s choice is not set or is “allow”. Clientside, a consent management plugin can dynamically manipulate the consent type and set several cookie categories. A plugin can use a hook to listen for changes or check the value of a given category. Categories and most other stuff can be extended with a filter. Existing integrations Categorized, and sorted alphabetically Example plugin Example plugin. The plugin basically consists of a shortcode, with a div that shows a tracking or not tracking message. No actual tracking is done 🙂 Consent Management Providers Abconsent Sirdata CMP. Beautiful Cookie Consent Banner. Clickio Consent Cookie Consent CMP. Complianz GDPR/CCPA. Consent Studio. consentmanager. Conzent. Cookiebot. CookieFirst. CookieHub. CookieTractor. CookieYes – Cookie Banner for Cookie Consent. GDPR Cookie Compliance. GDPR Cookie Consent Plugin – CCPA Ready. GetTerms. iubenda | All-in-one Compliance. Lawwwing. Pressidium Cookie Consent. TrustArc Cookie Consent Manager Consent Requiring Plugins AddToAny. AFL UTM Tracker Plugin. Burst Statistics. Google Site Kit. Pixel Manager for WooCommerce. Woo. WP Statistics. Demo site wpconsentapi.org Below are the plugins used to set up the demo site: Complianz The example plugin javascript, consent management plugin //set consent type window.wp_consent_type = 'optin' //dispatch event when consent type is defined. This is useful if the region is detected server side, so the consent type is defined later during the pageload let event = new CustomEvent('wp_consent_type_defined'); document.dispatchEvent( event ); //consent management plugin sets cookie when consent category value changes wp_set_consent('marketing', 'allow'); javascript, tracking plugin //listen to consent change event document.addEventListener("wp_listen_for_consent_change", function (e) { var changedConsentCategory = e.detail; for (var key in changedConsentCategory) { if (changedConsentCategory.hasOwnProperty(key)) { if (key === 'marketing' && changedConsentCategory[key] === 'allow') { console.log("just given consent, track user") } } } }); //basic implementation of consent check: if (wp_has_consent('marketing')){ activateMarketing(); console.log("set marketing stuff now!"); } else { console.log("No marketing stuff please!"); } PHP //declare compliance with consent level API $plugin = plugin_basename( __FILE__ ); add_filter( "wp_consent_api_registered_{$plugin}", '__return_true' ); /** * Example how a plugin can register cookies with the consent API * These cookies can then be shown on the front-end, to the user, with wp_get_cookie_info() */ function my_wordpress_register_cookies(){ if ( function_exists( 'wp_add_cookie_info' ) ) { wp_add_cookie_info( 'AMP_token', 'AMP', 'marketing', __( 'Session' ), __( 'Store a unique User ID.' ) ); } } add_action('plugins_loaded', 'my_wordpress_register_cookies'); if (wp_has_consent('marketing')){ //do marketing stuff } Service-level consent In addition to category-based consent, the API supports service-level consent control. This allows consent management plugins to grant or deny consent for specific services (like ‘google-analytics’ or ‘facebook-pixel’) independently from their category. When checking service consent with wp_has_service_consent(), the API first checks if explicit consent exists for that service. If no explicit consent is set, it falls back to the consent status of the service’s category. This enables fine-grained control: a user might accept statistics cookies in general, but explicitly deny a specific analytics service. Service consent can be checked and set both server-side (PHP) and client-side (JavaScript): PHP: //check if a specific service has consent if ( wp_has_service_consent( 'google-analytics' ) ) { //activate google analytics } //check if a service is explicitly denied if ( wp_is_service_denied( 'facebook-pixel' ) ) { //service was explicitly denied by user } //set service consent wp_set_service_consent( 'google-analytics', true ); //grant consent wp_set_service_consent( 'facebook-pixel', false ); //deny consent //listen for service consent changes add_action( 'wp_consent_service_changed', function( $service, $consented ) { error_log( "Service {$service} consent changed to: " . ( $consented ? 'granted' : 'denied' ) ); }, 10, 2 ); JavaScript: //check service consent if ( wp_has_service_consent( 'youtube' ) ) { //activate tracking } //check if explicitly denied if ( wp_is_service_denied( 'facebook-pixel' ) ) { //service denied } //set service consent wp_set_service_consent( 'youtube', true ); //listen for service consent changes document.addEventListener( 'wp_consent_api_status_change_service', function( e ) { console.log( 'Service: ' + e.detail.service + ', consented: ' + e.detail.value ); }); Any code suggestions? We’re on GitHub as well!