ShieldUp – Bad Bots, Scrapers, Attackers vs WP Activity Log

Tired of bad bots, scrapers, attackers and sluggish website performance? By providing real-time monitoring of accessing IPs, HTTP codes, URLs, and user agents, organized analytics, customizable timeline and visualizations, ShieldUp will help you indentify and combat threats like bad bots, scrapers, malicous attackers. Which will improve website security and performance by reducing the load on your server resources for a snappy website and great user experience. Key Features 🛡️ Advanced Security: ShieldUp protects your site from malicious bots, scrapers, attackers and hackers, shielding your website from potential threats. 🚀 Optimized Performance: Improve website speed and user experience by eliminating unnecessary requests from scrapers, bad bots and brute force attackers 🗃️ Comprehensive Data Collection: ShieldUp logs and archive accessing IPs, HTTP response codes, URLs, user agents, timestamps, etc. 📊 Detailed Data Insights: ShieldUp will analyze, organize and displays IP data based on IP ranges, request counts, details, offering a comprehensive view of your traffic within user-friendly tables. 📅 Custom Time Period: Select specific time ranges through an intuitive calendar feature for in-depth data analysis. 📈 Visualize Data: Easily visualize traffic trends and patterns with our user-friendly graphs. 🛠️ IP Tools: Helps you with actions like retrieving detailed IP information from DB or third-party tools. 🌐 Cloudflare Integration (Pro): Seamlessly connect your website to Cloudflare, enhancing security and performance even further by leverage Cloudflare’s powerful features. ⚙️ Advanced IP Management (Pro): Take control with a click. Manage IPs and IP ranges effortlessly, with actions like blocking, JavaScript challenges, whitelisting, or remove rules using Cloudflare’s firewall through the plugin. 💼 Centralized IP Database (Pro): Keep all IPs controlled by your WP plugin and Cloudflare in a centralized database for efficient management and tracking. 📝 User Activity Logging (Pro): Maintain detailed logs of all IP controls by users, ensuring accountability and providing a historical record of security actions. 🏆 Priority Support (Pro): Pro members get priority support, so you can expect quick help with any questions or issues. Please Note: Yes, the Pro version is undeniably impressive. However, the free version is really what you need and will get the job done. How it works 1. Installation and Activation Start by downloading and installing the ShieldUp plugin. Once activated, it seamlessly integrates with your WordPress, ready to work its magic. 2. Data Collection ShieldUp starts by collecting crucial data about the traffic to your website. It keeps a record of accessing IPs, including HTTP response codes, URLs, user agents, and timestamps. This data is organized into user-friendly tables and presented through interactive graphs, allowing you to gain valuable insights into your website’s traffic patterns. 3. Select, Organize and Display Data You can choose a specific time frame, making it easy to identify which IPs are accessing your site the most. It also groups IPs into /16 and /24 ranges and along with graphical representation helps you visualize trends, spot unusual activity and potential security threats. 4. Cloudflare Integration (Pro) ShieldUp seamlessly integrates with Cloudflare in PRO version, enhancing your website’s security even further. Using the Cloudflare API, you can manage IPs and IP ranges right from your WordPress dashboard. Implement blocks, JavaScript challenges, whitelist entries, or remove rules with just a few clicks. 5. IP Tools & IP Management Each IP listed in the user-friendly interface comes with action buttons, enabling you to ban IPs in your website’s firewall or CloudFlare, retrieve detailed IP information from third-party tools, and perform other custom actions. 6. Enhanced Security ShieldUp employs advanced security measures to protect your website from a wide range of threats. It identifies and blocks malicious bots, scrapers, attackers, and hackers, ensuring that your website remains secure. 7. Optimized Website Performance In addition to security, ShieldUp optimizes your website’s performance. It achieves this by filtering out unnecessary requests from bad bots, scrapers and other unwanted traffic. This optimization reduces the load on your server resources, resulting in a snappy and responsive website and great user experience. Firewalls, What we recommend? One of the best options would be a hardware-type firewall, but we wouldn’t be in this situation if we had one. The next best option for managing HTTP and HTTPS traffic is a cloud-based firewall, such as CloudFlare, especially when it is available for free and offers a wide range of excellent features. In addition to that, we also use CSF for other security solutions and to manage traffic and ports related to services like mail and SSH. So, why do we think CloudFlare is a better solution for HTTP and HTTPS trafic, than “Traditional” Server/Software-Based Firewall (CSF) especially Plugin-Like Firewalls (WordPress Plugins)? Traditional firewalls, while valuable, have limitations when compared to Cloudflare’s robust security and performance capabilities. These firewalls primarily protect your server or website by consuming server resources, leaving them vulnerable to large-scale attacks, among other things. In contrast, Cloudflare operates a global network that defends against threats at the network edge, providing superior DDoS protection and accelerated content delivery. By choosing Cloudflare, you gain a comprehensive, cloud-based solution that strengthens your website’s resilience and speed, effectively surpassing the capabilities of traditional local firewalls when it comes to HTTP and HTTPS trafic. Here are some of the main features of CloudFlare: Global Network Security: Cloudflare operates a vast global network that acts as a protective shield for your website, filtering out malicious traffic and threats before they even reach your server. This distributed approach ensures that attacks are mitigated at the network edge, preserving your server resources. Content Caching: Cloudflare’s caching infrastructure stores copies of your website’s content at data centers around the world. This means visitors experience faster load times as they access cached content from a server nearest to them, reducing server load and improving website responsiveness. Web Application Firewall (WAF): Cloudflare offers a comprehensive Web Application Firewall that can be finely tuned to your specific needs. It provides a robust defense against common web application attacks, such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting (XSS), without the need for additional on-site firewall plugins. IP Control and Access Management: Cloudflare’s firewall allows you to control and manage IP access with precision. You can easily set rules to block or allow specific IPs, IP ranges, or countries, giving you granular control over who can access your website. DDoS Protection: Cloudflare’s network is designed to withstand large-scale DDoS attacks, providing a shield against volumetric threats that would overwhelm on-site firewalls. This ensures uninterrupted website availability. Performance Optimization: Cloudflare’s content delivery network (CDN) optimizes the delivery of your website’s assets, including images, scripts, and stylesheets, resulting in reduced latency and faster load times for your visitors. Scalability and Reliability: Cloudflare’s infrastructure is highly scalable and redundant, ensuring that your website remains available even during traffic spikes or server failures. By integrating Cloudflare with your WordPress site, you not only enhance security but also optimize performance, reduce server load, and simplify IP access control, all while benefiting from Cloudflare’s global network and advanced security features. It’s a comprehensive solution that takes your website’s protection and performance to the next level. This is why we use it on all our websites, including the Pro version of this plugin as well. Therefore, we strongly recommend that you use it for your website if you haven’t already, whether you intend to use this plugin or not. Please note that we still use and recommend that you use a ‘Traditional’ server/software-based firewall like CSF, in conjunction with CloudFlare, to cover various security aspects such as traffic/ports for mail, FTP, SSH, etc.

Monitor activity on your WordPress sites and get clear insights into what’s happening with detailed user and event logging. Keep WordPress logs of everything that happens on your sites and multisite networks with WP Activity Log instantly, without writing a line of code. Easily detect suspicious activity on your WordPress site before it escalates Record failed login attempts to detect potential security breaches and strengthen site protection Track user logins and logouts to ensure SLAs are consistently met Monitor user activity and productivity to boost accountability Know exactly what all your users are doing in real time Know what happened before an outage for faster, easier troubleshooting Ensure compliance with regulations and standards like GDPR and PCI DSS Better manage & organize your site and users for smoother operations Simple setup ensures you start benefiting quickly and easily WP Activity Log is a complete logging solution, helping hundreds of thousands of administrators and security professionals track changes on their websites thanks to real-time user activity monitoring. 💎 Need more extensive features? Unlock advanced reporting, exports/mirroring, session management, and real-time alerts with WP Activity Log premium or enterprise. What WordPress changes WP Activity Log tracks A website activity log is important for improving troubleshooting, compliance, user management, and security. Get WP Activity Log and keep track of events on your site. The log not only tells you that a post, a user profile, or an object was updated, it also lets you know exactly what changed, when, and includes a user log (by whom), so you always have the information you need. Below is a summary of the changes that the plugin can keep a record of: Post, page, and custom post type changes: Status, content changes, title, URL, custom field, and other metadata changes Tags and category changes: Creating, modifying, deleting, and adding/removing them from posts Widget and menu changes: Creating, modifying, or deleting them User changes: User created or registered, deleted, or added to a site on multisite network User profile changes: Password, email, display name, and role changes Access logging: User login, logout, failed logins, and terminating other sessions WordPress core and settings changes: Installed updates, permalinks, default role, URL, and other site-wide changes WordPress multisite network changes: Adding, deleting, or archiving sites, adding or removing users from sites, etc. Plugin and Theme changes: Installing, activating, deactivating, uninstalling, and updating WordPress database changes: When a plugin adds or removes a table Third-party plugin changes: WooCommerce Stores & products, Yoast SEO, RankMath, Termly, WPForms, Gravity Forms, Advanced Custom Fields (ACF), MainWP, ManageWP, WP Umbrella, and other popular WordPress plugins WordPress site file changes: New files added, or existing files modified or deleted. Event details recorded Detailed event logging ensures that for every event that the plugin records, it reports the: Date & time (and milliseconds) of when it happened User & role of the user who did the change Source IP address from where the change happened The object on which the change has taken place Refer to WordPress activity log event IDs for a complete list of all the changes WP Activity Log can keep a record of and a detailed explanation of what change every event ID represents. 💎 Upgrade to WP Activity Log Premium and get even more The premium edition of WP Activity Log takes WordPress user activity tracking to the next level. It comes bundled with even more features, including log mirroring, enterprise-grade support, user session management, and much more! Premium features list See who is logged in and monitor their current activities in real-time Log off any user at the click of a button Generate fully-configurable HTML and CSV reports for easy data analysis Receive email, SMS, and Slack notifications for important changes (fully configurable) Use search filters to fine-tune results and find what you need in seconds Store the activity logs in an external database to enhance security and scalability Mirror the activity log to log management systems such as AWS CloudWatch, Loggly, Papertrail, and others in real-time Mirror the logs to business communication systems like Slack Send a copy of your website’s activity log to a log file on your web server Archive old activity log data to another database for improved storage and log management Add notes to activity log entries for better context and internal documentation Refer to the WP Activity Log plugin features and benefits page to learn more about the benefits of upgrading to WP Activity Log Premium. 🔌 WP Activity Log third-party plugin support All WP Activity Log editions include activity tracking for third-party plugins, including (in alphabetical order): Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) – Log changes to post types, taxonomies, and taxonomy terms bbPress – Track changes to forums, topics, and bbPress settings Gravity Forms – Track changes to Gravity Forms settings, forms, and entries (leads) LearnDash – Track changes to courses, lessons, and other system changes, as well as student activity such as course, lesson, and quiz enrollments and completions. MemberPress – Log changes to plugin settings, memberships, payments, subscriptions, and other actions Multisite & management tools – Track changes across your network for MainWP, ManageWP, Modular DS, Infinite WP, WP Umbrella, WP Remote, and other multisite management plugins Paid Membership Pro – Log changes to membership levels, user assignments, and more. Premium users can also track order and checkout activity, and access a Members Activity panel inside each member’s profile for instant visibility into recent actions. RankMath – Log changes to RankMath settings, SEO configurations, and on-page SEO edits Redirection – Keep a log of changes to redirections and redirection groups Termly – Log changes to Termly settings and configurations WooCommerce – Keep a log of changes to store settings, orders, products, coupons, and more WPForms – Log changes to WPForms settings, forms, form files, and entries (leads) Yoast SEO – Track changes to Yoast SEO settings and on-page SEO in the Yoast SEO meta box Extra Features for Enhanced Monitoring and Management Both free and premium editions of WP Activity Log include a number of non-logging specific features that make the plugin a complete WordPress monitoring solution. Here is what is included: Free Built-in support for reverse proxies and web application firewalls Integration with WhatIsMyIpAddress.com – get all information about an IP address with a single click Limit who can view the WordPress activity log by users or roles Enable or disable individual event IDs from the activity log Configurable dashboard widget highlighting the most recent critical activity Configurable WordPress activity log retention policies Display user avatars in events for better recognizability And much more! Premium Everything that’s included in the Free edition, plus: Full WordPress multisite support Create custom alerts & notifications to monitor additional functionality Import and export plugin settings Real-time activity log visible in the WordPress admin toolbar And much more! 🛠️ Free and premium plugin support If you encounter any issues with the free edition of WP Activity Log, you can post and get help on the WordPress.org support forums. You can also find more technical information and plugin documentation on the Melapress knowledge base. Premium plugins include a full year of free updates and dedicated one-to-one premium email support. This means you get direct access to our support team who will assist you with any questions or issues related to the plugins. As featured on: Kinsta Pagely Shout Me Loud The Dev Couple WPKube Techwibe Tidy Repo KitPloit and many others. MAINTAINED & SUPPORTED BY MELAPRESS Melapress develops high-quality WordPress management and security plugins such as Melapress Login Security, WP 2FA, and Melapress Role Editor. Browse our list of WordPress security and administration plugins to see how our plugins can help you better manage and improve the security and administration of your WordPress websites and users. Installing WP Activity Log Install WP Activity Log from within WordPress Visit ‘Plugins > Add New’ Search for ‘WP Activity Log’ Install and activate the WP Activity Log plugin Allow or skip diagnostic tracking Install WP Activity Log manually Extract the plugin ZIP file and upload it to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory Activate the WP Activity Log plugin from the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress Allow or skip diagnostic tracking