When To Use The Preferred Temporary Directory Option

Shield needs a directory on your webhost disk in order to store some temporary, working data, that shouldn't be stored in the database.

Normally, like most plugins, Shield will try to create a directory within /wp-content/  or /wp-content/uploads/  and it's successful 99.9% of the time.

However, some webhosts can restrict the ability to read and write to disk in these locations. They may also use the open_basedir  directive, which entirely prevents Shield from finding a location it can use,

To assist Shield in these scenarios, the option to specify a temporary directory lets you tell Shield where it should start in its search for a writable directory. If your hosting is using open_basedir  directive, you may need to contact your host to ask them for a location that Shield can use.

The path you provide must be a fully resolvable path (not a relative path) to a directory that exists, and is writable by WordPress.

Within the Dashboard section > click to edit general plugin settings (gear icon) > select Plugin Defaults tab. Here, we've provided your ABSPATH  as a reference - in all likelihood, your temporary directory will be beneath your ABSPATH  .

Access to Temp Dir option

Only use this option if you are experiencing PHP warnings that indicate Shield cannot write to certain directory. One such warning might look like:

Warning: is_dir(): open_basedir restriction in effect. File(/tmp) is not within the allowed path(s): (/usr/share/php:/usr/share/pear) in //httpdocs/wp-content/plugins/wp-simple-firewall/src/lib/vendor/fernleafsystems/wordpress-services/src/Core/Fs.php on line 466