Background

In September I had no intention of creating v5.4 at all; v6.0 was nearly ready for public Beta testing and I was 100% focused on that.

Then in October and seemingly out of nowhere, the WP vs. WPE drama started. For a while it looked like anything with "WP" in the name was at risk, so I paused work on v6.0 and started building v5.4 - just in case.

Although it turned out that an emergency release wasn't needed, the WordPress environment is now fundamentally and permanently different.

The changes in v5.4 directly address the new reality. <Read more>

A summary of steps to take and things you should be aware of before upgrading to v5.

<Read more>

Premium users can now run whatever code they’d like when an event occurs.

<Read more>

Probably the most common reason WP fail2ban doesn't work “properly” is out-of-date fail2ban filters. <Read more>

Moved "Authentication attempt for unknown user" to wordpress-soft.conf
Moved "extra" Comment messages to wordpress-soft.conf

<Read more>

• Improve Site Health filter messages h/t @yardstudio.
• Update Freemius library.

• Fix activation bug when $wp_scripts is uninitialised. Premium only
• Fix world map dashboard widget. Premium only
• Update Freemius library.

• Drop Site Health checks for free add‑ons.

• Fix regression in plugin message registration.

• Add WP_FAIL2BAN_SYSLOG_TAG_HOST to simplify fail2ban configuration with journald.
• Fix database upgrade when jQuery not loaded. Premium only
• Update Freemius library.