How do I prevent a plugin from being visible?

#55401
  • Resolved Charlie Cooper

    4 years, 9 months ago

    Rank Math free

    Hi!

    RankMath is reporting that one of my plugins is publicly visible.

    Please advise me in principle as to how I can fix this. I have no idea why most plugins can’t be seen publicly, so I do not know where to start.

    I have looked through the site’s you recommend in your article “Analyzing Your Site’s SEO with Rank Math“. You should note that I had to use web inspector to find the URL for one of them as the link is broken – in fact several are in Safari and Chrome.

    Having searched Google, the RankMath Forum, the Plugin site and WordPress Forums, I have not been able to find a satisfactory explanation as to how plugins become visible nor a solution to how to hide them.

    For example, how does RankMath work out which plugins are publicly visible? I couldn’t find out about that either.

    I need to up-skill my google search scripts!

    I have asked the plugin author who has not been able to help.

    I’m not a php or apache or WordPress security expert and am unable to take this further myself.

    Perhaps I need a security plugin or perhaps I need to approach my host?

    Looking forward to your advice, thank you and please the safe!

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • Alberto

    4 years, 9 months ago

    Rank Math business

    Hello,

    Thank you for contacting Rank Math today.

    About the issue clicking on links in our Knowledge Base, I am sorry about that, I have just talked about it to the dev team.

    Usually you can determine plugins in a website by checking for directories or even for Javascript and CSS files added by them.

    You could use a plugin like https://wordpress.org/plugins/hide-my-wp-lite/ to hide it from anyone.

    Looking forward to helping you. Thank you.

    ​​​​​​

    Charlie Cooper

    4 years, 9 months ago

    Rank Math free

    Thanks.

    I already have a security plugin installed, but it doesn’t specifically address this issue.

    The plugin you suggest, Hide My Wp Lite, takes a brute force approach to this. It hides all the plugins by changing their directory and hash-tagging the file names.

    What I want to do is hide this specific plugin using the same technique as has been used by all my other plugins.

    How that’s achieved will be well known by you – you detect which plugins have used the method and which haven’t and report that in your SEO report under ‘Security’ – and by all the other plugin authors I use, such RankMath (you), who have managed to pass your ‘test’.

    So, can you guide me to a resource that will help me hide this plugin – just this one – from Public Visibility.

    Sadly, the author has still not been helpful….

    Thanks!

    Michael Davis

    4 years, 9 months ago

    Rank Math free

    Hello,

    Thank you for contacting Rank Math today.

    From our end, we simply assess and check for the publicly available plugins and notify you as this can easily expose a security vulnerability on your site. Unfortunately, resolving the vulnerability is not something RankMath is able to assist with as you can imagine.

    One approach would be to reach out to the plugin author for further assistance on the same. However, if you are not able to reach out to the developer, you could check out some of the available solutions from the WP directory such as this plugin

    WP Hide and Security Enhancer in addition to other plugins from the WP directory.

    You could test it out to see which one assist in resolving the issue.

    Looking forward to helping you. Thank you.

    ​​​​​​

    Charlie Cooper

    4 years, 9 months ago

    Rank Math free

    Michael,

    OK, thanks.

    I’ll close the ticket.

    I do feel you guys have skirted round my enquiry a little bit.

    Of course I understand you can’t solve vulnerabilities. And that’s why I haven’t asked you to do that.

    I also understand you are not going to explain any special little tricks you guys use to detect that a plugin is visible or perhaps how RankMath manages to ‘hide’ its plugin.

    I’d simply wanted to understand a little bit about how plug-ins are hidden from public view by authors. And also how I might be able to check myself – perhaps in the code?

    And, most importantly, I hoped I might get some clues to help me do a better google search. There’s really very little on this important topic using the obvious search terms. And that simply means I’m not asking the correct question. Sadly, I still can’t.

    RankMath is amazing and it has allowed me to transform my site. I could not possibly recommend it enough – and it’s free!

    Please take care and I hope those who matter to you are able to do so as well.

    Best wishes, Charlie

    Michael Davis

    4 years, 9 months ago

    Rank Math free

    Hello,

    We are sorry we couldn’t help you further. If you have any other questions in the future, know that we are here to help you.

    If you don’t mind me asking, could you please leave us a review (if you haven’t already) on https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/seo-by-rank-math/reviews/#new-post about your overall experience with Rank Math? We appreciate your time and patience.

    If you do have another question in the future, please feel free to create a new forum topic, and it will be our pleasure to assist you again.

    Thank you.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

The ticket ‘How do I prevent a plugin from being visible?’ is closed to new replies.