sweetwatermedia

Steel Security & Hardening – Site Audit Tools focuses on practical security hygiene for WordPress administrators.
The free plugin provides:
<ul>
<li>on-demand security scans</li>
<li>risk summaries grouped by severity and category</li>
<li>checks for common WordPress hardening gaps</li>
<li>checks for exposed root-level artifacts such as <code>.env</code>, SQL dumps, <code>phpinfo</code> files, and backup archives</li>
<li>a quarantine vault for operator-reviewed file isolation</li>
<li>uploads PHP execution blocking on supported server environments</li>
<li>manual guidance when automatic server hardening is not safely supported</li>
</ul>
This plugin is positioned as an auditing and hardening tool. It helps surface risk and apply selected preventive controls, but it does not promise malware removal, incident response, or complete server protection.
<h4>Included checks</h4>
The scan currently looks for items such as:
<ul>
<li>PHP error display exposure</li>
<li><code>WP_DEBUG</code> and <code>debug.log</code> exposure</li>
<li>XML-RPC availability</li>
<li>author and REST user enumeration exposure</li>
<li>theme/plugin file editor availability</li>
<li>WordPress generator meta output</li>
<li>comments enabled by default</li>
<li>uploads PHP execution hardening status</li>
<li>root-level sensitive files and archives</li>
</ul>
<h4>Server-aware behavior</h4>
This plugin only auto-applies server config changes where it can do so in a scoped and reversible way.
<ul>
<li>Apache and LiteSpeed: uploads PHP blocking is managed through a Steel Security-marked <code>.htaccess</code> block</li>
<li>IIS: uploads PHP blocking is managed through a Steel Security-marked <code>web.config</code> section</li>
<li>Nginx and unsupported environments: Steel Security provides manual guidance instead of claiming automatic protection</li>
</ul>
<h4>Pro companion</h4>
This plugin can work with a separate Pro companion plugin that adds features such as scheduled scans, scan history, reports, and managed server-level controls such as directory listing protection and baseline security headers. The free plugin remains usable on its own.

Steel Security & Hardening – Site Audit Tools

High-signal WordPress security auditing and hardening with practical site audit tools for administrators.

Abhishek Sinha

Abhishek Site Cleanup Controls gives developers and site owners fine-grained control over 35+ WordPress features that are often unnecessary. Each feature has a simple on/off toggle, organised into five logical groups inside Settings -> Site Cleanup Controls.
No features are enabled by default — activate only what you need.
<h4>Security</h4>
<ul>
<li>User Enumeration — Block ?author=N redirect attacks that expose usernames.</li>
<li>Author Archives — Return 404 for author archive pages.</li>
<li>XML-RPC + Pingback — Fully disable the XML-RPC endpoint and remove the X-Pingback header.</li>
<li>Plugin and Theme Editor — Set DISALLOW_FILE_EDIT to prevent in-admin file editing.</li>
<li>Application Passwords — Disable the Application Passwords feature.</li>
<li>REST API — Restrict REST API access to authenticated users only.</li>
<li>Right Click — Disable the browser context menu on the frontend.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Performance</h4>
<ul>
<li>Emojis — Remove all emoji scripts, styles, and DNS prefetch hints.</li>
<li>Embed Objects — Disable WordPress oEmbed and embed scripts.</li>
<li>Dashicons — Prevent Dashicons from loading for non-logged-in visitors.</li>
<li>Heartbeat — Deregister the Heartbeat API script.</li>
<li>Block Library CSS — Remove wp-block-library and global-styles stylesheets on the frontend.</li>
<li>Version Var (?ver=) — Strip ?ver= query strings from enqueued asset URLs.</li>
<li>PDF Thumbnails — Skip thumbnail generation for uploaded PDF files.</li>
<li>oEmbed — Remove oEmbed discovery links and disable autoembed.</li>
<li>Remote Block Patterns — Stop WordPress fetching patterns from api.wordpress.org.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Head Cleanup</h4>
<ul>
<li>Generator Meta Tag — Remove the WordPress version meta tag from head.</li>
<li>WLW Manifest — Remove the Windows Live Writer manifest link.</li>
<li>Really Simple Discovery (RSD) — Remove the RSD link tag.</li>
<li>Short Link — Remove the shortlink tag and HTTP header.</li>
<li>Adjacent Posts Links — Remove prev/next link tags from single post heads.</li>
<li>RSS Feeds — Redirect all feed URLs to the homepage.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Admin Cleanup</h4>
<ul>
<li>capital_P_dangit — Remove WordPress forced capitalisation filter.</li>
<li>Screen Options and Help Tabs — Hide Screen Options and Help dropdowns.</li>
<li>Howdy to Welcome — Replace “Howdy,” with “Welcome,” in the admin bar.</li>
<li>Navigation Items in Admin Bar — Remove WP logo, site name, updates, and comments.</li>
<li>Clean Dashboard — Remove all default dashboard widgets.</li>
<li>Privacy Tools — Hide Export/Erase Personal Data from the Tools menu.</li>
<li>Site Health Page — Hide Site Health from the Tools menu.</li>
<li>WP Login Logo and Favicon — Hide the WordPress logo on the login page.</li>
<li>Admin Email Verification Prompt — Disable the admin email confirm interstitial.</li>
<li>Empty Trash (1 week) — Shorten automatic trash-emptying from 30 days to 7 days.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Content</h4>
<ul>
<li>Comments — Disable comments sitewide.</li>
<li>Post Revisions — Disable revision storage.</li>
<li>Search — Redirect all search queries to the homepage.</li>
</ul>
<h4>WordPress Features</h4>
<ul>
<li>Thumbnails / Featured Images — Remove post thumbnail support.</li>
<li>Widgets — Disable all widgets and sidebars.</li>
<li>Navigation Menus — Remove nav menu theme support.</li>
<li>Tags — Unregister tags from posts.</li>
<li>Categories — Unregister categories from posts.</li>
<li>Post Formats — Remove post format theme support.</li>
<li>Custom Fields — Remove custom fields meta box from editor.</li>
<li>Excerpts — Remove excerpt support from posts and pages.</li>
<li>Trackbacks — Remove trackback support from posts.</li>
<li>Attachment Pages — Redirect attachment URLs to the file directly.</li>
<li>Automatic Updates — Disable automatic core, plugin, and theme updates.</li>
<li>Self Pings — Stop WordPress pinging your own site.</li>
<li>jQuery Migrate — Remove jQuery Migrate script on the frontend.</li>
</ul>

Abhishek Site Cleanup Controls

Selectively disable WordPress features to improve performance, security, and cleanliness. Toggle each feature individually from a single settings page …

Steel Security & Hardening – Site Audit Tools vs Abhishek Site Cleanup Controls