Wordfence 7 Update
It has now been a few weeks since we launched Wordfence 7. Overall we are confident that the change was a good one. The product is now cleaner, more modern and is much easier for a new user to navigate.
It was, however, a big change, and with that came plenty of questions, feedback and a few unanticipated issues. Thank you to everyone who has provided us feedback. We have read all of it, and are sincerely humbled by how passionate so many of you are about our product.
At this point we have worked through most of the post-launch issues that were discovered. We have released two updates packed with fixes and changes based on feedback. Our support volumes are now back to normal and Wordfence 7 related questions have died down.
With that we wanted to call your attention to a number of things we have either changed or got a lot of feedback on.
The Options Page is Back
This was far and away the topic we got the most feedback on. And the most passionate feedback. While we are still confident that our new approach of aligning settings with features throughout the plugin is the right one, we definitely overlooked the need for admins to quickly configure Wordfence with a minimum number of clicks.
With the release of Wordfence 7.0.3 we added a new page called All Options which you will find in the main Wordfence menu. This page includes 100% of the options available in the plugin.
Prior to Wordfence 7, we did have an options page with most settings, but this only included about 85% of all available options. Your feedback indicated that you wanted that page back so that you can quickly access and configure Wordfence on a single page. We have brought that page back and improved it by making sure that 100% of all options are now on the new “All Options” page included in Wordfence 7.0.3.
This is what it looks like:
Options are grouped by category in collapsible sections. Sections can be expanded and collapsed both individually and as a group using a toggle at the top of the page. We also added a search feature at the top of the page which has proved to be very popular already.
Everything is Still Available
We took literally zero features away with Wordfence 7, free or otherwise. If you’re having a hard time finding something, we swear it’s still there! If you need help chasing it down please contact us via our awesome new Help page and we’ll get you straightened out.
We Added a Toggle for the Expanded Live Traffic View
We love the new condensed Live Traffic view and so do most of you. However, many of you prefer the expanded view, seen below, which is the closest to what things looked like before Wordfence 7. We learned that many people had a hard time finding the option to change the view, so we have now made it more prominent, in the form of a toggle at the top of the page.
You Can Add Live Traffic and Blocking to the Main Wordfence Menu
One of our goals with Wordfence 7 was to simplify the interface, putting more emphasis on the core features and less on the rest. With that in mind we made the tough decision to remove Live Traffic and Blocking from the main Wordfence menu. We knew that a small group of our users would dislike this change. That’s why Wordfence 7 launched with options to add them back.
If you haven’t found that option yet, you can find it in the ‘View Customization’ menu either at Dashboard > Global Options or the All Options page.
What’s on the Horizon
2018 promises to bring many more positive improvements to the Wordfence plugin. We have a really exciting project we are working on to make it much easier to manage Wordfence across multiple sites. If you have any thoughts on that, we would love to hear more in the comments.
In addition we have a long list of ways we plan to use Gravityscan technology to make Wordfence better. We’ll have more to share on those topics as the year progresses.
Thank you very much for your feedback on the Wordfence 7 release. Our team will continue to listen and learn from our customers. Your input is extremely valuable and helps guide and shape Wordfence as it continues to be the most popular firewall and malware scanner for WordPress.
Comments
9:43 am
Thank you, wizzards, for listening to all our wishes!
About the Gravity Scan: I got an email that said they were closing down and that we had to remove the badge. Later on, i got the message that without the badge they couldn't deliver their service. Was it a kind of bug, that made me remove the Gravity Scan?
Keep up the magnificent work, Wordfencers!
10:07 am
I appreciate the ability to add Live Traffic back to the menu (I did it right away after 7 launched). I'd love to be able to configure that page to default to whatever kind of traffic we want to know the most about when we first hit the page (in my case, human traffic, but I know others may want something else).
Thank you so much for making such a great product.
10:33 am
I would love the ability to be able to synchronize settings and realtime protection across multiple sites. For example, if I change a WF setting in one of our sites, this can be the parent site as an option and these settings are cloned over to the sister site to keep them synchronized and if one site is getting probed by a suspicious threat that WF then protects, then all of connected sites are blocked simultaneously from this same threat.
Love the protection and the constant updates on the blog for average users that wear multiple hats each day.
11:02 am
Thanks for the suggestion Keith!!
10:39 am
Can you add an option not to block Bing in the same way you allow Google bots. I have the blocking option set and it seems that Bing has been bloked which means I have to unblock it each time? The same may apply to other legitimate spiders.
Thanks
11:01 am
Thanks for the suggestion Adrian.
10:47 am
Thank you very much for listening your customers and being so fast to react.
11:25 am
Thanks Gilles!
10:50 am
Thank you for listening and putting the Options all back in one panel. Having to navigate back and forth to find all the options settings was my biggest complaint and had me considering a different security option. I love WordFence and recommend it to all my website students.
11:24 am
Thanks JoAnn!
11:19 am
I am super impressed. Thank you for listening to your users!
ALL OPTIONS is 100% genius addition, THANK YOU!
Good job and keep up the good work.
11:38 am
Thanks for the return of the options consolidation and with the other impovements.
Listening to your users is the only way to grow a product.
11:59 am
You guys are scary good.
12:07 pm
Thanks Jennifer!!
3:02 pm
I was one of those who provided passionate feedback. I can only say this is truly excellent and I am very glad such consideration and a great expeditious effort was applied to the issue of restoring a "One Page" settings.
Thank you!
OC
12:07 am
Thank you for adding the Live traffic option back again.
9:01 am
Brand new user but I’m very pleased so far. My only disappointment is I signed up for Gravity Scan and got the email the very next day that you were discontinuing it. Dang. It looked like a nice service but I’m sure you’ll use the technology in something else soon. Keep up the good work.
11:15 am
Thank you, thank you, thank you. The all options menu was on my prayer list. So glad to see it back. One of the main reasons that Wordfence is so superior is that you listen to users. Thanks especially for that.
david
11:59 am
Looking for the area where you can:
whitelist an IP address
block users names like admin or test
6:19 am
Hi Chiquita,
Those are still in All Options (or Dashboard > Global Options). If you still need more help, we're unable to provide support via blog comments, so please post in our support forums if you're a free customer or submit a Premium ticket if you're a Premium customer - we'll be happy to help you out further.
3:24 pm
Your product is really the best for WordPress! And the version 7 interface looks very professional. I use both the premium and the free version on a number of sites.
But when will you start offering an Affiliate Program? I believe it would greatly enhance the marketing of your service.
6:33 am
Mark
I used to be able to see failed login attempts. Can I still view that information somewhere? Can I add it to the dashboard?
6:53 am
I would like to offer a suggestion for the new version. In 'Live View', for the 'time' column, making it customized, so that you can choose between seeing the actual time stamp, or the previous version of hours & minutes since accessed. I liked the aspect of previously being able to see the last accessed time, expressed in hours and minutes. Among other things, it provided a diagnostic tool, to use for site health/Wordfence issues.
2:31 pm
Blocking a specific country would be great.
Is that on pipeline?
6:16 am
Hi Robin,
Country-blocking is a feature that all of our Premium customers have access to. You can block one country or dozens of them - it's totally up to you. If you're a Premium customer and aren't sure how to do that, please do submit a Premium support ticket, and we'll be happy to help!
11:57 pm
Spot on. Thanks!
11:58 am
I'm so happy you added back options and the other menu entries I use so often! Thank you for being responsive.
5:32 pm
It seems in the most recent update, I cannot block countries anymore, where I used to be able to. Did this feature get removed from the free version?
6:39 am
Hi Nik,
Country-blocking has always been a Premium-only feature; it is not available in the free version of the plugin. You can still create country-blocking rules in the Premium version of the plugin by navigating to Firewall > Blocking. Hope that helps!