Today, I’m going to take a look at one of the most popular security plugin which is All In One WP Security and Firewall.

The WordPress CMS is secure but in today’s technological world, we can’t be too relaxed especially with website security.

Most users install WordPress firewall plugin to stay safe from hackers and malicious codes, as well as stay as far as possible from WordPress security vulnerabilities.

There are two things you need to know about this review.

• This is NOT a paid review
• I’m doing this because this is extremely important for you to secure your WordPress site

More importantly, you need to learn how to secure WordPress website from hackers right now!

You can checkout the plugin here on WordPress plugin repository.

Understanding The Importance Of Improving WordPress Security

Everyone should take this topic seriously. But why?

Check this video out. I’ll explain why it is important for you to read through this article. 

Oh by the way, do you mind to leave a positive review for this review? I really appreciate it!

I’ve been hacked four years ago and back then, I was having a vacation in Australia. That night, I was checking on my money site and boom! I was greeted with a sinister but very familiar display on my desktop.

I contracted my web host and they sorted it out in 48 hours. Can you imagine the amount of sadness and furious I had then?

I know I didn’t use any nulled WordPress theme or plugins but yet, I was hit badly.

True enough, the web host said that most of my site content were gone and they were able to retrive and repair that much.

Fast forward until today, I have taken serious steps to make my website safe. Sure, I know that there is no bulletproof security but at least, I’m doing whatever it takes to stay safe (and so should you).

By using WordPress firewall plugins such as All In One WP Security and Firewall, it reduces security risk by checking for vulnerabilities, and by implementing and enforcing the latest recommended WordPress security practices and techniques.

All In One WP Security And Firewall Review

Writing this article reminds me of old days where I wrote of the most read blog posts that I have ever published in 2013 — Better WP Security vs Wordfence Security: The Battle For WordPress Best Security Plugin.

Let’s take a look at All In One WP Security And Firewall plugin, shall we?

Not bad, not bad at all I would say!

There are over 600,000 active installation and the last update was around three months ago.

Disclaimer: After using All In One WP Security and Firewall plugin, I personally feel that this plugin is a great WordFence alternative (no offense).

All In One WP Security And Firewall Plugin Features

I love this plugin because the developers understand the basics — not everyone is a WordPress guru when it comes to security. Therefore, they created three different categories in this plugin, namely Basic, Intermediate and Advanced.

Take a look at the video below for a quick introduction to the All In One WP Security and Firewall plugin.

What I love about this security plugin is the you can activate security features and firewall rules without much worry that it will break your site.

The Basic Features

The Basic feature is very straightforward and built ground up for beginners. It is literally safe to use and non-invasive. Therefore, this option will NOT break your site no matter what you do (or how unlucky you are for that matter).

These are the features you need to active them immediately after installing this WordPress security plugin to start securing your site. 

Note: The Basic setting will not make your website tough as Fort Knox but it will certainly build some level of added security to your site.

The Intermediate and Advanced Features

Some intermediate and advanced security features can break your site (making it unaccessible) especially with conflicting with other themes and plugins.

Plus, you should only turn the settings on if you are well aware of your hosting provider’s server configuration. For this, feel free to reach out to your hosting provider and seek some clarification before taking the plunge!

Simple security points score system

What I love about the All In One WP Security plugin is the security strength meter. 

In a glance, I can determine the level of security of my WordPress site and the number of security features I had activated.

Pretty cool, right?

Critical feature status

The dashboard also shares important information of your site and simple security features that can harden your WordPress security to new levels. Or at least, to help you achieve a minimal acceptable level of security.

Here’s how the panel looks like in the backend.

The critical feature status serves as a WordPress security checklist for me. The plugin tells me what I need to know and what I should do in order to have the best WordPress firewall setting and enjoying close to bulletproof security.

Do this before installing All In One WP Security And Firewall plugin

• Make a full website backup before installing the security plugin
• Upon installation, a good strategy is to enabling just the basic security features
• Allow the plugin to operate normally for a few days before considering using the intermediate or advanced features

Help! All In One WP Security And Firewall broke my site!

Hold on there and relax. I’ve got your back on this.

If you are using cPanel, head over to the File Manager and look for the plugins folder. In there, delete or deactivate the plugin and your site will pops back up.

You can also reset your htcaccess file to get your site back to the original state.

And if the above sounds complicated for you, just hit the ‘restore from backup’ option and your website will be back to normal.

Frequently Asked Questions

Question: I’m locked out from my site after activating the firewall features. How do I fix this?

Answer: Restoring the htaccess file of your WordPress site to remove any firewalls and allow you to start from the beginning.

Question: I’m locked out from my site after enabling the maintenance mode. What should I do now?

Answer: Restore your htaccess file and access your WordPress backend using this link http://your-domain-url.com/wp-login.php

Question: I don’t see some of the menus of this plugin on my sub-sites. I have a WordPress Multi-site (WPMS) install. How do I fix this?

Answer: WordPress multi-site uses one single file system for all your sub-sites. So some of the security features only need to be enabled on your MAIN site. The sub-sites won’t show you the menus for these features. You can configure those settings from the main site of your WPMS install.

Question: Is there any recommended hosting that works well with this plugin?

Answer: Generally, I don’t see any issues between All In One WP Security and Firewall plugin with most shared web hosting. However, just avoid using this on premium WordPress hosting as the plugin will conflicts with the inbuilt security feature.

Is All In One WP Security And Firewall plugin the best WordPress security?

I will leave this to you to debate in the comments below. What do you think?

Feel free to check out All In One WP Security and Firewall using this link.