Title: Sitemap Guardian
Author: Sitemap Co.
Published: <strong>August 22, 2026</strong>
Last modified: August 22, 2026

---

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![](https://ps.w.org/sitemap-guardian/assets/icon-128x128.png?rev=3660179)

# Sitemap Guardian

 By [Sitemap Co.](https://profiles.wordpress.org/sitemapqa/)

[Download](https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/sitemap-guardian.1.0.4.zip)

 * [Details](https://wordpress.org/plugins/sitemap-guardian/#description)
 * [Reviews](https://wordpress.org/plugins/sitemap-guardian/#reviews)
 *  [Installation](https://wordpress.org/plugins/sitemap-guardian/#installation)
 * [Development](https://wordpress.org/plugins/sitemap-guardian/#developers)

 [Support](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/sitemap-guardian/)

## Description

Sitemap Guardian by Sitemap Co. provides a scored local web application firewall
with canonicalized XSS, RFI/LFI, SQL injection, code-execution, traversal, and protocol
rules; login rate limiting; privacy-conscious audit and traffic logging; smart 404
throttling; comment spam heuristics; response headers; WordPress hardening; whole-
site suspicious-code scanning with live file-by-file progress; and WordPress core
checksum verification.

Login lockouts are enforced per IP. Requests rejected during an active lockout do
not increment the password-failure counter or extend the original expiry. Seven-
day dashboard and email totals are capped at the configured failure threshold for
each IP and lockout-duration window.

Identity monitoring includes anonymous author/REST/oEmbed enumeration protection,
programmatic administrator-role guards, administrator login and password-change 
emails, critical file-scan alerts, and weekly security summaries. Email delivery
uses WordPress wp_mail. Administrator-login emails link the direct remote IP to 
an Opentracker lookup page; Sitemap Guardian does not contact Opentracker automatically,
but opening the link sends the IP to that service.

The audit trail defaults to the latest seven local calendar days, supports date 
filtering and pagination with 100 raw events per page, and groups repeated actions
from the same IP into expandable rows. New audit events show the validated IP address
where available.

Audit timestamps are stored in UTC internally and displayed using the timezone, 
date format, and time format configured in WordPress General Settings.

When Smart 404 protection reaches its configured probe threshold, the audit trail
records and displays the attempted URL path without its query string. Grouped events
show every captured path inside the accordion.

Blocked and Learning-mode firewall events likewise display their sanitized request
path without query-string data, both in individual audit rows and grouped accordion
occurrences.

Firewall audit entries explain why the request was blocked or detected, distinguishing
manual IP blocks, attack-tool user agents, and scored rule matches. Applicable firewall
rule IDs are displayed for technical review.

Successful sign-in audit rows display the sanitized WordPress username together 
with the validated IP address where available. Grouped sign-in accordions show the
username for every occurrence.

Administrators can add a validated audit-event IP directly to the firewall block
list. The control preserves existing rules, recognizes IPv4 and IPv6 CIDR ranges,
and refuses to block the current administrator IP or an address covered by the allowlist.

New audit events record a sanitized user-agent string of up to 255 characters and
display it on individual rows and inside grouped occurrences. Older retained events
show that the browser was not recorded.

The WordPress administrator menu uses a dedicated white, transparent Sitemap Co.
logo asset in place of the generic shield icon, optimized for visibility against
the dark expanded and collapsed menu layouts.

Country access rules can block listed countries or allow only listed countries using
Cloudflare’s locally supplied visitor-country header or the `sitemap_guardian_country_code`
WordPress integration filter. Unknown-country behavior and authenticated-administrator
bypass are configurable. No visitor IP is sent to an external geolocation lookup
service.

Country rules use a searchable checkbox picker with locally bundled SVG flags, localized
country names, ISO codes, and a Tor-network option. Existing code-based selections
migrate without changing enforcement. Flag artwork is provided by the MIT-licensed
flag-icons project and does not require a CDN request.

Sitemap Guardian admin dates always include the calendar day and use the WordPress
site timezone. Date-time displays use a localized `day Month year` date together
with the time format configured in WordPress General Settings and the active timezone
abbreviation or offset.

The Sitemap Guardian WordPress admin-menu icon is constrained to the standard menu-
icon dimensions on every admin page, including when another plugin or admin theme
overrides WordPress image styles.

Authenticated WordPress content editors with the `unfiltered_html` capability can
save trusted HTML through admin and REST write requests without triggering payload-
signature false positives. IP, country, bot, and user-agent protections remain enforced,
and public submissions remain fully inspected.

Emergency controls provide an IP-only total-site lockdown and a master pause for
active Sitemap Guardian protections. Independent uninstall preferences control removal
of managed .htaccess marker rules and permanent deletion of plugin tables, settings,
scan data, and user metadata.

Before its first managed .htaccess change, Sitemap Guardian stores a clean copy 
in the WordPress database. Cleanup restores the exact original file when no unrelated
changes have occurred; otherwise it removes only Sitemap Guardian marker blocks 
so newer third-party rules are preserved.

Independent protection-status email settings report plugin deactivation, firewall
enable/disable changes, and master pause/resume changes with the responsible WordPress
user, IP address, site time, and website URL where available.

Settings pages detect unsaved field changes and warn before switching Sitemap Guardian
tabs, refreshing, closing, or navigating away. Submitting Save Changes clears the
warning.

Advanced hardening provides managed Apache/LiteSpeed rules for directory indexes,
web access to `.htaccess` and `wp-config.php`, server signatures, upload request
size, upload-script execution, and image hotlinking. PHP controls add a WordPress
upload cap, safe site-wide HTTPS redirects, XML-RPC/feed restrictions, XSS request
inspection, blank-header POST blocking, and forward-confirmed reverse-DNS validation
for user agents claiming to be Google crawlers. Server rules require compatible 
Apache/LiteSpeed AllowOverride configuration; Nginx rules must be applied at the
hosting layer.

Login security adds an optional custom login path, local arithmetic CAPTCHA with
a honeypot, email one-time login codes, RFC 6238 TOTP enrollment through WordPress
profiles, optional hiding of password-recovery links, and an explicit force-reset
action for all existing users. Email verification depends on reliable `wp_mail` 
delivery. TOTP secrets are stored in user metadata and must be protected by normal
database access controls.

Maintenance operations include a daily file-permission check, an explicit bounded
permission repair, atomic WordPress salt rotation, and guarded single-site database-
prefix migration. Salt rotation logs out every user. Prefix migration refuses Multisite,
validates table names and collisions, uses an atomic SQL table rename, updates role/
capability keys, and rolls table names back if `wp-config.php` cannot be committed.
Always take tested off-site file and database backups before either operation.

The Sitemap Guardian overview displays a cached, sanitized list of recent security
announcements from the official WordPress.org security news feed. A feed outage 
never blocks or delays security controls.

Suspicious-code findings can be marked as false positives. Ignores are fingerprinted
to the file path, rule, indicator, and SHA-256 file hash, so any later file modification
is automatically inspected and alerted again.

Administrators can mark suspicious-code findings as false positives or permanently
delete a confirmed malicious file. Deletion requires a per-file nonce and an unchanged
SHA-256 hash from the latest scan. Sitemap Guardian does not provide a PHP or JavaScript
file editor. Deleting plugin or theme files can break a site; maintain a tested 
backup and rescan immediately afterward.

Administrators are warned when Wordfence or another known overlapping firewall, 
login-security, malware-scanning, or hardening plugin is active. Sitemap Guardian
never deactivates another plugin automatically.

No WordPress plugin can prevent every attack. Use maintained hosting, least privilege,
prompt updates, tested off-site backups, TLS, and an incident-response plan alongside
this plugin.

### Privacy

This version sends no product telemetry. WordPress core checksum scans contact WordPress.
org. Security audit events store a validated IP address where available, plus a 
keyed IP hash, in the site’s own database; older events recorded before version 
0.11.0 contain only the irreversible hash. Records follow the configured retention
period. Audit context is bounded and sanitized. Administrators choose whether deletion
of the plugin also removes its database tables, settings, scan results, and user
metadata.

### External services

WordPress core checksum verification contacts the official WordPress.org checksum
service when a scan is finalized.

The dashboard requests the official WordPress.org security-news RSS feed. The response
is cached locally and a failure does not affect protection.

Administrator-login emails can contain an Opentracker IP lookup link. Sitemap Guardian
does not contact Opentracker automatically; the IP address is sent to Opentracker
only if an email recipient opens that link.

## Installation

 1. Upload the plugin directory to `/wp-content/plugins/`.
 2. Activate Sitemap Guardian.
 3. Review Sitemap Guardian in the WordPress admin menu.
 4. Run the first integrity scan to establish a local baseline.

## Reviews

There are no reviews for this plugin.

## Contributors & Developers

“Sitemap Guardian” is open source software. The following people have contributed
to this plugin.

Contributors

 *   [ Sitemap Co. ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/sitemapqa/)

[Translate “Sitemap Guardian” into your language.](https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-plugins/sitemap-guardian)

### Interested in development?

[Browse the code](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/sitemap-guardian/),
check out the [SVN repository](https://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/sitemap-guardian/),
or subscribe to the [development log](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/log/sitemap-guardian/)
by [RSS](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/log/sitemap-guardian/?limit=100&mode=stop_on_copy&format=rss).

## Changelog

#### 1.0.4

 * Added an overview release panel that reads WordPress.org update data, supports
   a manual refresh, and provides WordPress’s secure one-click update action when
   a newer version is available.
 * Fixed Smart 404 throttling to use only a validated individual visitor IP and 
   never fall back to a shared site-wide counter.

#### 1.0.3

 * Confirmed compatibility with WordPress 7.1.

#### 1.0.2

 * Confirmed compatibility with WordPress 7.0.4.

#### 1.0.1

 * Enqueued login-page styling through the WordPress styles API.
 * Replaced late global hardening constants with targeted WordPress capability handling.
 * Removed the ineffective late administration-SSL constant and audited privileged
   request handlers.

#### 1.0.0

 * First WordPress.org-ready stable release.
 * Removed executable-file editing for WordPress.org directory compatibility.
 * Added explicit external-service and uninstall-data disclosures.

## Meta

 *  Version **1.0.4**
 *  Last updated **13 hours ago**
 *  Active installations **Fewer than 10**
 *  WordPress version ** 6.4 or higher **
 *  Tested up to **7.1**
 *  PHP version ** 7.4 or higher **
 * Tags
 * [audit](https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/audit/)[hardening](https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/hardening/)
   [integrity](https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/integrity/)[login](https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/login/)
   [security](https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/security/)
 *  [Advanced View](https://wordpress.org/plugins/sitemap-guardian/advanced/)

## Ratings

No reviews have been submitted yet.

[Your review](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/sitemap-guardian/reviews/#new-post)

[See all reviews](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/sitemap-guardian/reviews/)

## Contributors

 *   [ Sitemap Co. ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/sitemapqa/)

## Support

Got something to say? Need help?

 [View support forum](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/sitemap-guardian/)