What is the Shield General Settings section?

Shield General settings section is the most important part of the Shield - it contains options for the basic plugin settings.

The options available are as follows:

  • Plugin Defaults
  • Reporting
  • Import/Export
  • CAPTCHA
  • Disable Shield

Shield General options explanations

Option: Plugin Defaults

This option contains important default settings used through the plugin. Those are the following:

  • IP Source - Is a method of retrieving the user/visitor IP address. There are several methods:
    • Automatically detect visitor IP
    • REMOTE_ADDR - (recommended)
    • HTTP_CF_CONNECTING_IP
    • HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR
    • HTTP_X_FORWARDED
    • HTTP_X_REAL_IP
    • HTTP_X_SUCURI_CLIENTIP
    • HTTP_INCAP_CLIENT_IP
    • HTTP_X_SP_FORWARDED_IP
    • HTTP_FORWARDED
    • HTTP_CLIENT_IP

Note: If you don't know what your particular IP address is, please see here:
https://getshieldsecurity.com/my-ip

For better understanding the Shield plugin and the Visitor IP address detection, read the article here.

Note: If you need XML-RPC functionality to by-pass login protection rules, you can use WP filter.

  • Enable Information Gathering Module - Allows us to gather some information around your use of the plugin.
  • Enable ShieldNET - Enhanced website security through Network Intelligence.
  • In-Plugin Notices - Display non-essential plugin notices and admin bar menu.
    By default Shield displays non-essential notices in the admin area and admin bar.
    This can be hidden by switching off this option.
  • Allow WP-CLI - Allow access and control of the Shield plugin via WP-CLI.
  • Show Plugin Badge - Display plugin badge on your site.
  • Delete Plugin Settings - Removes all plugin options when you deactivate the plugin. If this option is disabled, all plugin settings will remain.
  • Locale Override - Set global locale for the Shield plugin for all users.       

Option: Reporting

Here you can configure Report Email  - where you want Shield to send email reports.

Also, configure Alert and Info email reports. 

Read more about Reporting section here.

Option: Import/Export

This feature helps you to automatically import options and deploy configurations across your entire security network. To find out how this feature works, read the article here.

Note: ShieldPRO is required for this feature. To find out what the extra ShieldPRO features are and how to purchase, please follow this link here.

Option: CAPTCHA

If you want to set up Google reCAPTCHA or hCaptcha for use across Shield, enter your "site" and "secret" keys.

Please see here how to do that.

You can also choose your own CAPTCHA style (including "Invisible CAPTCHA").

Note: ShieldPRO is required for this feature. To find out what the extra ShieldPRO features are and how to purchase, please follow this link here.

Option: Global Plugin Security Disable

Here you can completely enable or disable Shield plugin and all its modules. 

You can also also use Beta Access option to allow shield to upgrade to beta and pre-release versions.