ShieldPRO 15.1 Upgrade Guide

ShieldPRO 15.1 for WordPress is primarily a maintenance release.

This guide outlines what have been added/removed, changed, or improved and what fixes we've made.

Firstly, we're going to explain what major changes are made and which options you'd need to review.

New Added Features

For 15.1 release we added

  • Optimised File Scanning

Significant optimisation in file scanning with reduction of full file scan times by up to 66%. For example, if a file scan would have normally lasted for 3 minutes, it'll now take less than 1 minute. This means faster scanning, less waiting, and much lighter load on your servers by using fewer resources. 

The setting can be found under the Hack Guard module > Scan Options and is enabled by default:

  • [Pro Only] HappyForms integration

Full support available for SPAM protection on HappyForms. 

You can now automatically block SPAM submissions for all your HappyForms using Shield’s AntiBot Detection Engine.

The setting can be found under the Integrations module > SPAM Detection:

Change 1: Audit Log option renamed

As we've renamed Audit Trail to Activity Log in the previous 15.0 release, for this 15.1 release we also renamed "Audit Log Only" option to "Activity Log Only", under the Block Bad IPs/Visitors module for the following settings:

  1. Login Bots
  2. Probing Bots
  3. Bot Behaviours

Example, Login Bots

New name

Old name

Improvements

For 15.1 release we've made the following improvements

  • Whitelabelling
    We've refactored our white labelling feature to ensure your custom brand displays more consistently throughout the plugin.

  • Plugin Loading
    Shield is a large and complex plugin so we've done a lot of work to help ensure it's more reliable when loading.

  • Automatic Visitor IP Detection
    The 100% fully automatic detection of visitor IP addresses is a lofty goal and with each release we get a bit closer. You can always help Shield by manually setting your Visitor IP source option: Shield > Config > General IP Source.

    In this release we’ve made further improvements in trying to detect the correct IP. Running a background check for visitor IP source can be found under the Tools section > Debug Info:

  • 15.1.4
    • Another complete rewrite of the Shield Cache Dir builder to work around restrictive web hosts.
    • Restore the event 'Connection Killed' that explicitly states that a request was terminated for a blocked IP.
  • 15.1.5
    • Log the IP address in the Activity Log when IP has been manually unblocked.

Fixes

For 15.1.4 release we've made the following fixes

  • File diff UI display was broken when comparing modified WordPress Core files with the originals.

  • 15.1.5

    Address a potential fatal error in the admin area when the minimum server requirements aren't met.

  • 15.1.6

    A rare error involving Composer versions lookup used by other plugins.

    Remove some PHP 8.1 deprecated notices.

For more information on Shield 15.1 release, read this blog article here.