Plugin interactions – Bulletproof Security & Better WordPress Security

There is only one area where BPS and Better WP Security slightly overlap. Server Tweaks in Better WP Security uses a very simple bit of .htaccess code where BPS actually uses much more advanced and sophisticated .htaccess code.

And that is actually where these 2 plugins primarily differ. BPS is primarily an .htaccess security based plugin that focuses on advanced .htaccess security protection whereas Better WP Security is doing other things and does use a little bit of .htaccess code here and there. Mostly it appears that Better WP Security is disabling WordPress features that some would consider risky to have enabled and of course Better WP Security has some additional features that the free version of BPS does not have.

Bullet Proof Security scatters .htaccess files all over the WordPress core files

This statement you made above is incorrect. BPS ONLY creates 2 .htaccess files – 1 in the website Root folder and 1 in the wp-admin folder.

You can use these 2 plugins together without any problems as long as you do not use the Server Tweaks settings in Better WP Security. BPS already does this and in a much more comprehensive and advanced way since BPS is primarily an .htaccess based security plugin. BPS does things that Better WP Security does not do and visa versa so probably having both plugins is the best solution to cover all bases.

@kmexpert – nope did not offend me, but I wanted to get the facts on the page. I try to catch these ASAP and get facts on the page otherwise these things snowball. 😉

A perfect example is what leejosepho is saying. LOL

I cannot now remember where I had read something somewhere about BulletProof and WordPress 3.5 not being well-suited for each other.

@leejosepho – Just want to get facts on the page so that anyone who sees this thread will not think there is a conflict/issue/problem with BPS and WP 3.5. What happened was WP 3.5 made a significant change to jQuery and we got caught off guard and had to scramble to get a new version of BPS out ASAP. BPS .47.7 was released in 4 hours after the WP 3.5 release and the one jQuery issue was fixed. No issues/problems exist between WP 3.5 and BPS .47.7.

Cool! 🙂

Here is the simple answer – BPS is an .htaccess plugin that primarily focuses on .htaccess security. BPS already does what the BWPS Server Tweaks option does, but just a whole lot more of it and in a much more sophisticated and comprehensive way since BPS is primarily an .htaccess security plugin. So using the BWPS Server Tweaks option would not add any more security than BPS is already doing in that particular area and would only add less comprehensive redundant .htaccess code. Hope that clears it up for you.

Actually I believe the info I posted is no longer correct and pertained only to older versions of BWPS. From what folks are telling me BWPS has 2 different pages/areas now. A Server Tweaks page/area and a htaccess page/area. And it sounds like things have been moved around/split up/reorganized so I have no idea what is what now with BWPS these days. I have scheduled retesting of BWPS for May or June of this year.

So to answer all of your questions in one shot – I no longer have the time to look at or test other plugins. First priority is to fix any direct conflicts with BPS ASAP so I only look at the error/conflict itself and not the actual plugins anymore. Never even heard of OSE Firewall so can’t offer anything there. 😉

I guess what you could do is install the P3 Profiler plugin to check resource usage?

I have no idea what the current version of Better WP Security is doing anymore. I have scheduled retesting in May or June. Thanks.

Hello everyonye,

I have been using Bulletproof since november 2012 and was rally happy with it, even thinking to upgrade to pro version.

But I have had this issue since yesterday and I am going to tell the full story, just in case there can be some useful information:

Yesterday a section of our site, was blacklisted by google. http://www.inforc.net/foro/forum was our forum and it suddenly got blacklisted, so visitors received a big red screen. After contacting the server company, they told us their “sub domain” http://www.xxxxxxx.mialojamiento.es, was getting blacklist red screen and maybe our forum had some redirection to that subdomain.

They were right, there were some redirections from our SMF forum to that sub-domain, so we just changed http://www.xxxxxxxxx.mialojamiento.es and placed instead http://www.inforc.net/….. and then everything worked fine again in the forum.

And now a different story, but I tell both of them because are maybe related.

Meanwhile, our main page (wordpress) http://www.inforc.net was working without issues but then since yesterday at 4am it started sending a server error when trying to access it:

Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

This was affecting the two websites hosted in that server, being different domains. Then I contacted back the server administrator and told me:

inforc.net is having problems because of the .httacess, the other website in the server we don’t know why is it having problems.

So I changed the name to BPS’s htaccess and everything worked fine again in inforc.net AND IN THE OTHER SITE!! BPS’s httaccess was affecting both sites. Tried creating with BPS different httaccess files, normal, security…but them all made the server crash and only worked every 3 o 10 attempts.

As we have many daily visits, I decided to uninstall BPS and install BWPS and it works quite nice, and its easy to use…but I would love to have BPS installed and working again, httaccess makes me feel more secure.

Could you give me a hand?

Thanks and regards, sorry for such a long text.