Description
One plugin to replace twenty. Free forever.
I was tired of my WordPress installs looking like a graveyard of single-purpose plugins — one for SEO, one for cache, one for SMTP, one for redirects, one for backups. Each one with its own dashboard, its own freemium dance. So I built Blaminhor Essentials — and I never sell your data.
Why this plugin exists:
- Every WordPress essential under one roof. SEO, cache, SMTP, backup, cookie banner, contact forms, calendar, anti-spam, login security, downloads, redirections, broken links, duplicator, database optimizer, domain changer, fatal error recovery, favicon, HTTPS redirect, hide login, image sizes, maintenance mode, mute core emails, post types order, user role editor, classic editor, disable comments. Switch on what you use today; the rest stays out of your way until the day you need it.
- Your existing data comes with you. Switching does not mean starting over: built-in importers for Yoast, Rank Math, All in One SEO, WP Mail SMTP, Post SMTP, Easy WP SMTP, Redirection, Safe Redirect Manager, Custom Taxonomy Order, Favicon by RealFaviconGenerator, and the standalone User Role Editor. The dedicated plugins you’ve stacked one by one over the years, now in a single coherent toolkit.
- No tax for what you don’t use. Each module is independent: an inactive one loads no PHP, registers no hooks, enqueues no assets, runs no queries. You’re only paying — in memory and milliseconds — for the features you actually turned on.
- Rebuilt on modern PHP. Since version 2, every module has been re-engineered from the ground up to take full advantage of PHP 8 — strict types, enums and value objects — for tighter security and faster, leaner execution.
- Free. All features above are free. No tracking, no telemetry.
- Translated in 11 languages. English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Japanese, Russian, Turkish, Dutch, Indonesian.
- You can email me anytime.
hi+wp@blaminhor.com
Available Features — 26 modules:
Performance
- Cache & Performance — Page cache, asset optimization and lazy load, plus a Web Vitals dashboard and an auto-pilot that benchmarks each speed option on your own pages.
SEO & Links
- SEO/GEO — Meta titles and descriptions with SERP preview, XML sitemaps, per-type indexing control, and one-click import from Yoast, Rank Math or All in One SEO.
- Redirections — Simple or regex redirects (301, 302, 307, 410, 451) with hit counters, slug-change detection, and CSV / plugin import (Redirection, Safe Redirect Manager).
- Broken Links — Scan posts, pages and custom post types for dead internal and external links, with live results and one-click fixes.
Emails
- SMTP Mailer — Reliable delivery through 12+ providers (Brevo, SendGrid, Mailgun, AWS SES…) with automatic relay fallback, logging, and import from WP Mail SMTP, Post SMTP or Easy WP SMTP.
- Mute Core Emails — Silence WordPress automatic notifications (updates, new users, password changes, comments) individually.
Security & Maintenance
- Cookie Banner — Self-hosted consent banner that blocks tracking scripts and embeds until visitors agree, with GDPR/CCPA/LGPD presets, Consent Mode v2, and a 13-month consent log.
- Anti-Spam — Block spam bots on the comment, login, registration and password forms with a hidden honeypot trap, and encode the email addresses shown on your site so harvesters cannot read them — no CAPTCHA, no external service.
- Login Security — Lock out brute-force attempts on every sign-in route (login form, XML-RPC, REST API, application passwords) before the password is checked, add two-factor authentication (authenticator app, security key or passkey, emailed code, single-use backup codes) with trusted browsers, alert on sign-ins from unfamiliar devices, enforce a password policy per role, and keep a journal of every attempt with addresses stored hashed. Entirely local, no external service.
- Hide Login Page — Replace wp-login.php with a custom URL and block bots probing the default login.
- HTTPS Redirect — Force HTTPS site-wide with optional mixed-content fixing and an HSTS header.
- Fatal Error Recovery — Recover a crashed site from a secret URL by disabling the culprit plugin, with no FTP access.
- Maintenance — Show a Coming Soon (200) or Maintenance (503) page, with role and IP whitelisting.
- User Role Editor — Create, clone and edit roles and capabilities, with per-user overrides, JSON import/export and one-click import from the standalone User Role Editor plugin.
Database & Migration
- Backup & Restore — Scheduled backups of files and database as separate archives, with a safety backup and one-click undo before every restore.
- Database Optimizer — Clean revisions, transients, spam and orphaned data on a schedule, with an at-a-glance size and overhead overview.
- Domain Changer — Change your site domain and update every database reference, including serialized data, in one click.
Content & Media
- Calendar — Publish events with recurrence, venues, organizers, calendar views, iCal import and RSVP, and run a full booking system for appointments and resource rentals with reminders and Stripe payments.
- Forms — Accessible drag-and-drop contact forms with entries stored in the database, no-CAPTCHA spam protection, and GDPR controls.
- Downloads — Count how many times each media library file is downloaded, and how many distinct people downloaded it, without recreating your files as anything else. Make documents save instead of opening in a tab, restrict a file to signed-in visitors, chosen roles or a password, and optionally route direct file requests through the counted link so links already shared are covered too. Robots, link previews and repeat clicks are filtered out, and no visitor address is ever stored.
- Content Duplicator — Clone any post, page or custom post type with all fields, taxonomies and child posts; supports every major page builder.
- Classic Editor & Widgets — Restore the classic editor and/or the classic widgets screen, independently.
- Image Sizes — Disable unused thumbnail sizes, register custom ones, and regenerate existing images.
- Favicon Generator — Generate every favicon format (PNG, Apple Touch, Android, Windows tiles) from a single square image, or import an existing set from Favicon by RealFaviconGenerator or the WordPress Site Icon.
- Post Types Order — Reorder posts, pages, custom post types and taxonomies with drag and drop, and import an existing term order from Custom Taxonomy Order.
- Disable Comments — Remove the comment system site-wide and hide it from the admin, reversibly.
WP-CLI Commands
Every module is fully configurable from the command line through the wp blaminhor ... namespace — useful for scripts, CI/CD, fixtures, and AI assistants like Claude Code or Cursor. The CLI delegates to the same validation pipeline as the admin UI, so settings stay consistent.
Discover the full command tree:
wp help blaminhor
wp help blaminhor <subcommand>
Lifecycle:
wp blaminhor info
wp blaminhor modules list [--active-only|--inactive-only] [--category=<slug>]
wp blaminhor modules activate <module-id>
wp blaminhor modules deactivate <module-id> [--yes]
A few examples per module (full reference: see the bundled llms.txt):
- SMTP:
wp blaminhor smtp add-relay --name=Gmail --host=smtp.gmail.com --port=587 --encryption=tls --from-email=hello@example.com,wp blaminhor smtp test --to=admin@example.com - Redirections:
wp blaminhor redirections add --source=/old --target=/new,wp blaminhor redirections list --search=/blog - SEO/GEO:
wp blaminhor seo set --sitemap-enabled=true --ai-block-chatgpt=true,wp blaminhor seo list-urls - Maintenance:
wp blaminhor maintenance enable --headline="Be right back",wp blaminhor maintenance disable - HTTPS Redirect:
wp blaminhor https-redirect enable --hsts=true - Database Optimizer:
wp blaminhor db-optimizer scan,wp blaminhor db-optimizer clean --tasks=revisions,spam_comments - Login Security:
wp blaminhor login-security unlock 203.0.113.7,wp blaminhor login-security reset-2fa admin - Cache:
wp blaminhor cache purge,wp blaminhor cache status - Backup:
wp blaminhor backup list,wp blaminhor backup delete <prefix> --yes
All listing commands accept --format=table|json|csv|yaml|count|ids for scripting. Mutating commands require --user=<admin-login> for the capability check. Sensitive values (SMTP passwords, recovery keys) are never printed in cleartext.
The Backup module exposes list and delete only — creating and restoring a backup remain admin-only, where the stepped AJAX flow avoids PHP timeouts and the pre-restore safety net runs.
Screenshots
Installation
- Upload the
blaminhor-essentialsfolder to the/wp-content/plugins/directory. - Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress.
- Go to “Blaminhor Essentials” in the admin menu.
- Turn on the features you need.
FAQ
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Will activating all features slow down my site?
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No. Each module only loads its code when activated. Disabled modules have zero impact on performance — no PHP loaded, no hooks registered, no queries run.
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Is it really free?
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Yes, genuinely free. Every module and every feature ships in the single free download — no expiring trial, no ads in your dashboard, nothing held back for a paywall. I don’t track you and I don’t sell your data. If it saves you time, a kind review is all I ask.
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What are the requirements?
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WordPress 6.2 or newer and PHP 8.1 or newer. It runs fine on standard shared hosting: heavy jobs like backups and link scans are processed in small batches to avoid timeouts, and no background service or special server access is required.
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Can I replace multiple plugins with this one?
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Yes, that’s the main goal. Blaminhor Essentials can replace Redirection, Yoast/Rank Math, WP Mail SMTP, UpdraftPlus, Duplicate Post, User Role Editor, Limit Login Attempts, WP 2FA, and many others.
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Will it conflict with my existing SEO, cache or SMTP plugin?
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Every module is off by default and independent, so installing the plugin changes nothing until you switch something on. The one thing to avoid is running two plugins that do the same job — two SEO plugins, or two page caches — since they can clash. The clean path is to import your data into the matching module, then deactivate the old plugin.
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How do I migrate my data from other plugins?
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Several modules include import features, so you don’t lose your existing setup:
– SEO: Import titles, descriptions and keywords from Yoast SEO, Rank Math or All in One SEO.
– SMTP: Import from WP Mail SMTP, Post SMTP or Easy WP SMTP.
– Redirections: Import from the Redirection plugin, Safe Redirect Manager or a CSV file.
– Post Types Order: Import your saved term order from Custom Taxonomy Order.
– Favicon: Import an existing favicon set from Favicon by RealFaviconGenerator, or from the WordPress Site Icon.
– User Role Editor: Import roles and custom capabilities from the standalone User Role Editor plugin, or from a JSON export. -
Does the plugin send my data to external servers?
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No. Everything runs on your own server by default — no telemetry, no usage tracking. The only data that ever leaves your site is what you set up yourself: the SMTP module sends your emails through the relay you choose, the Cache module can run a Google PageSpeed audit when you click the button, and Fatal Error Recovery can email me the errors this plugin causes if you switch that option on. Nothing else.
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What exactly is sent if I turn on error reports?
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That option lives in Fatal Error Recovery Settings and is off until you tick it. Once on, an error raised inside a Blaminhor Essentials file is emailed to me so I can fix it; errors from other plugins or from your theme are never sent. A report contains the error message, the file and line inside the plugin, and the plugin, WordPress and PHP versions. File paths, email addresses, IP addresses and credentials are stripped out first, and your site address is never included — only a one-way identifier that cannot be traced back to your site. The same error is reported once per plugin version, five reports per version at most. Untick the option and everything stops immediately.
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What happens to my settings if I deactivate or uninstall the plugin?
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Your data is safe by default. Deactivating keeps every setting untouched, so you can switch the plugin back on right where you left off. Even deleting the plugin removes nothing unless you first turn on the “Delete all data on uninstall” option — and your posts, pages and media are never touched either way. If you do opt in, uninstalling cleans up the plugin’s own options, tables and files so nothing is left behind.
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If I turn off a module, do I lose its data?
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No. Turning a module off only stops it from running — your redirects, SEO meta, form entries and settings are all kept, so you can switch it back on later exactly as it was. Data is only removed if you delete the whole plugin with the “Delete all data on uninstall” option enabled.
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Can I back up my entire site?
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Yes. The Backup module creates separate archives for database, plugins, themes and uploads. You can schedule automatic backups (daily, weekly, monthly) and set retention limits.
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What happens if a backup restore goes wrong?
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The plugin automatically creates a safety backup before any restore. If something goes wrong, you can undo it with one click.
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Does the SMTP module support multiple providers?
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Yes. You can configure multiple relays with automatic fallback. If the primary one fails, it tries the next in your list.
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Can I duplicate Elementor/Divi pages?
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Yes. The Content Duplicator fully supports all major page builders, including Elementor, Divi, Beaver Builder, Brizy and Oxygen.
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Can I control which user roles can access certain features?
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Yes. For example, the Post Types Order module lets you choose which roles can reorder content (Administrator, Editor or Author), and the User Role Editor gives you fine-grained control over every capability.
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What if my site crashes after a plugin update?
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The Fatal Error Recovery module detects PHP fatal errors and gives you a secret recovery URL to deactivate the problematic plugin — no FTP access needed.
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What languages is the plugin available in?
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Eleven. English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese, Russian and Turkish are fully translated; Dutch and Indonesian are partially translated, with anything untranslated falling back to English.
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Does the plugin work with multisite?
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Yes, on a per-site basis. Each site keeps its own settings, its own database tables and its own backups (Backup, Domain Changer and Database Optimizer store archives in a separate per-site folder), so sites stay fully isolated. Network activation, deactivation and uninstall apply cleanly to every site, and sites created later are set up automatically. Two notes: server-level browser cache and GZIP rules live in the shared root .htaccess and are managed by a network administrator (PHP page caching still applies on every site); and there is no central Network Admin screen yet, so you configure each site from its own dashboard.
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How can I get support?
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Email me at hi+wp@blaminhor.com or visit wp.blaminhor.com. You can also use the feedback form on the plugin dashboard.
Reviews
Contributors & Developers
“Blaminhor Essentials – SEO, Cache, Backup, SMTP, Redirects, Broken Links, Cookie Banner, Hide Login & More” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.
Contributors
“Blaminhor Essentials – SEO, Cache, Backup, SMTP, Redirects, Broken Links, Cookie Banner, Hide Login & More” has been translated into 3 locales. Thank you to the translators for their contributions.
Interested in development?
Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.
Changelog
2.8.1
- Added: Core – WP-CLI now covers every module in full: each setting can be read and changed, and missing actions such as SEO scoring are added.
- Added: Calendar –
wp blaminhor calendarcreates, updates and deletes events, venues and organizers with the admin screen’s checks, and edits promo codes. - Added: Forms –
wp blaminhor formscreates, updates and deletes forms and manages the CAPTCHA, upload and Stripe settings. - Added: Anti-Spam, Image Sizes, Mute Core Emails, Cache & Performance – Their settings and actions, such as Cloudflare and critical CSS, work from the command line.
- Improved: Core – Command-line actions that delete data or notify visitors ask for confirmation unless
--yesis given, and Advanced > WP-CLI lists every command. - Fixed: Core – WP-CLI settings commands no longer switch off options they were not asked to change in Database Optimizer, Domain Changer, Cookie Banner and three other modules.
- Fixed: Cache & Performance – Importing settings keeps the per-page asset rules, Cloudflare originals can be restored, and clearing one critical CSS variant keeps the others.
- Fixed: Calendar – Ticket tier names with accents are saved intact, deleting a venue clears it from draft and trashed events, and the navigation buttons take the hover colour.
- Fixed: Backup & Restore – Importing a bundle never installs another site’s safety archive as the undo point, and concurrent restores and scheduled backups are locked out.
- Fixed: Forms – Deleting a form by any means also deletes its entries and uploaded files.
- Fixed: SMTP Mailer, User Role Editor, HTTPS Redirect – Reset emails are never resent masked, snapshots restore the one chosen, and certificate alerts follow the switch.
2.8.0
- Improved: Calendar, Forms, Login Security, Downloads – The Beta labels, banners and warnings are gone: the four modules are now stable.
- Improved: Core – Module settings pages load about 8 KB less JavaScript, as the dashboard-only code now loads on the dashboard alone.
- Improved: SEO/GEO – Key Takeaways and Table of Contents load a 1 KB stylesheet instead of 170 KB on the public site, and show their intended border and spacing.
- Fixed: Post Types Order – The drag-and-drop sort screens on content lists now load their colours and spacing.
2.7.5
- Fixed: Core – Security: on multisite, backups, roles, plugin recovery and domain changes, including switching those modules on or off, are reserved to network administrators.
- Fixed: Core – Settings pages behave as shown: Cancel really discards changes, errors stay on screen, and turning a module off cleans up after it, scheduled tasks included.
- Fixed: Core – A damaged setting falls back to its defaults instead of taking the site down, and errors reach the server’s PHP log even when the plugin log is off.
- Fixed: Cache & Performance – Security: no readable copy of wp-config.php is left behind, and turning the module off restores the previous drop-in and WP_CACHE line.
- Fixed: Cache & Performance – Forms, bookings and consent keep working on cached pages, and Defer or Delay JS never run a script before the library it needs.
- Fixed: Hide Login Page – The secret login address no longer leaks through redirects, /wp-register.php or protected-post forms, and password resets work on multisite.
- Fixed: Cookie Banner – Trackers stay blocked until consent on cached or very large pages, and the cookie policy lists only the services your site uses.
- Fixed: SEO/GEO – Security: structured data can no longer carry injected code, public types such as events stay indexed, and robots.txt names the right sitemap.
- Fixed: Backup & Restore – Restoring from another address keeps this site’s settings, and existing backups stay visible after a reinstall or a busy first request.
- Fixed: Downloads – Security: protected files can no longer be reached through an altered or direct link, and file locking works on multisite.
- Fixed: Login Security – Two-factor checks and login limits hold under parallel requests and behind proxies, and new-login alerts wait for the second factor.
- Fixed: Calendar – Venue, organizer, category and tag pages open again, paid bookings are recorded once, and sign-ups work without JavaScript.
- Fixed: Forms – Forms are styled with block themes, uploaded files stay private, and zero-decimal currencies are charged correctly.
- Fixed: Redirections – Non-Latin, case-sensitive and plain regex rules match correctly, the visitor’s query string is kept, and the 404 log only records real 404s.
- Fixed: Image Sizes – Regenerating thumbnails starts from the original image and keeps the ones your content still uses.
- Fixed: Post Types Order – Your order no longer overrides sorts chosen by visitors or search, and saving it for the first time keeps the site’s current order.
- Fixed: Core – Many smaller fixes across Anti-Spam, Broken Links, Classic Editor, Content Duplicator, Database Optimizer, Disable Comments, SMTP Mailer and User Role Editor.
- Improved: Core – A CDN or load balancer on public addresses can be declared in Settings, so attempt limits apply to each visitor.
- Removed: SEO/GEO – Sitemap pings to search engines, which no longer accept them.
2.7.4
- Improved: Backup & Restore – A backup too large to arrive in one file can be downloaded volume by volume, and a single volume can be uploaded back to restore it.
- Added: Backup & Restore – A download test reports what your server really sends: the announced size, whether an interrupted transfer can resume, and the measured speed.
- Improved: Core – An interrupted download resumes where it stopped instead of risking a corrupted file, and a long transfer no longer holds up the rest of the admin.
2.7.3
- Added: SMTP Mailer – Checks the sender domain’s SPF, DKIM and DMARC records against your provider, so an unauthorised relay is flagged before your mail quietly disappears.
- Improved: SMTP Mailer – Testing a relay reports what that relay answered, in the server’s own words and with the SMTP conversation on hand, never the next relay’s.
- Fixed: SMTP Mailer – The email log matches what it actually keeps, shows a test message as soon as it is sent, and reloads on demand.
- Fixed: SMTP Mailer – Adding, editing or removing a relay no longer reloads the page or drops settings you have not saved, and a refresh never repeats the action.
- Fixed: SMTP Mailer – Editing a relay you had disabled no longer switches it back on when you save.
- Fixed: SMTP Mailer – An imported relay arrives switched off with its sender address kept, and importing never replaces the default sender of a site that already has one.
2.7.2
- Fixed: Maintenance – Administrators keep access to the front-end while maintenance or coming-soon mode is on, as the Access tab states.
2.7.1
- Fixed: Backup & Restore – Downloading a large backup no longer fails at the very end, and the saved archive opens correctly.
- Improved: Backup & Restore – Backup downloads can be paused and resumed, and one that starts before your session ends finishes on its own.
- Fixed: Content Duplicator – The “Original title” option now works: it was listed in the settings but never applied, so the title was always copied.
- Added: Core – WP-CLI now covers every module, from download counters and link scans to database backups, consent exports and per-file access rules.
- Fixed: Core – WP-CLI no longer clears settings it was not asked to touch, among them the off-site backup destination, certificate expiry monitoring and delivery-failure alerts.
- Fixed: Core – WP-CLI commands that stopped with an error now work, including single-URL checks, item reordering and favicon generation.
2.7.0
- New module: Downloads (Beta) – Know what actually gets downloaded from your media library, and decide who can:
- Total and unique download counts per file, with robots, link previews and repeat clicks filtered out, and no visitor address ever stored.
- Documents save to disk instead of opening in a browser tab.
- Any file restricted to signed-in visitors, to chosen roles, or behind a password.
- Direct file requests routed through the counted link, so links already shared stay covered.
- Added: Login Security – Copies the authenticator key and the backup codes to the clipboard in one click.
- Improved: Login Security – Opens on Statistics so recent sign-in activity comes first, with settings next.
- Improved: Login Security – The two-factor tab now shows whether your own account is protected and links straight to where you set it up.
- Fixed: Core – Saving settings from a tab now returns to that tab instead of the first one, and reloading the page no longer asks to resend the form.
- Fixed: Core – The “Settings saved” confirmation is no longer lost when saving Broken Links, Database Optimizer, User Role Editor or Cookie Banner settings.
- Fixed: Anti-Spam – Saving from the email protection tab no longer sends you back to the first tab.
- Fixed: Login Security – Turning off a two-factor method now hides it from the profile screen as described, and it can no longer be set up once disabled.
- Fixed: Login Security – The sign-in challenge no longer overlaps the trust-this-browser checkbox with the confirmation button.
2.6.0
- New module: Login Security (Beta) – Everything that guards the front door, on your own site with no external service:
- Brute-force throttling across the login form, XML-RPC, the REST API and application passwords.
- Two-factor sign-in: authenticator app, security key or passkey, emailed code and single-use backup codes, with trusted browsers.
- A password policy and sign-in alerts, plus a privacy-friendly journal of every attempt with hashed addresses.
- WP-CLI unlock and second-factor reset, an IP allowlist and a wp-config.php switch so you can never lock yourself out.
- Improved: Core – Confirms compatibility with WordPress 7.1, including the always-iframed post editor, client-side media processing and the persistent editor toolbar.
- Improved: Hide Login Page – Points to the Login Security module for brute-force throttling, two-factor authentication and a sign-in journal.
Older versions (2.5.14 and earlier) are archived in changelog.txt shipped with the plugin.