NIVA Guard

See and control every outgoing connection of your WordPress plugins and themes. Log each connection with its timing, block ads and promotional notices, cache license checks instead of cutting them off, skip unreachable hosts automatically, turn WP-Cron into a real server cron, and answer scanner probes with a fast static 404.

Many plugins and themes call home on every page load or in the dashboard: advertising feeds, news widgets, license checks, update checks, usage tracking. On a slow or filtered network (some hosting regions cannot reach many foreign servers at all) each of those calls can wait 5 to 15 seconds and slow down the whole site.

NIVA Guard shows which plugin connects to which address and how much time it costs, then lets you decide for each connection: leave it, block it, or (for licenses) cache the answer. Nothing is blocked by default: every switch is off until you turn it on.

Connections

• Logs every outgoing HTTP connection made through the WordPress HTTP API, with the caller (plugin or theme), the address, the context (site, admin, cron, AJAX, REST) and the time it took. Slow connections are highlighted.

• A built-in list of more than 50 known connections (advertising, news feeds, update checks, license checks, tracking), each with an explanation, a type and a separate switch. A “relevant to this site” tab lists only the ones that match the plugins and themes that are active on the site.

• Block a connection completely, or cache a license response for a few hours instead of cutting it off. Blocking a license or plugin-function connection shows a warning first.

• “Seen on your site” lists connections that are not in the built-in list, grouped by plugin or theme, so you can block or cache them too.

• Take a whole plugin offline: everything it sends out is closed except wordpress.org.

• Automatic circuit breaker: a host that fails or answers slowly several times in a row is skipped for a while, so an unreachable server no longer adds seconds to every page. License addresses and hosts you choose are exempt.

• Optional deep tracking of direct PHP connections ( file_get_contents( 'http…' ), fopen ) and a static scan of plugin code for curl and fsockopen.

• Reports: counters (connections, total wait, blocked, served from cache), a downloadable text log and summary, and a list of the slowest connections.

Dashboard and admin clean-up

• Remove the dashboard widgets you choose; the widget code does not run and its feed is not fetched.

• Hide admin menu items (only hidden, not removed; Dashboard, Settings and Plugins are protected so you cannot lock yourself out).

• Hide promotional admin notices by keyword. Error notices and “new version” notices always stay visible.

Server tools (each one is optional and off until you enable it)

• Heartbeat control: slow down or turn off the WordPress Heartbeat separately for the dashboard, the post editor, other admin pages and the front-end.

• Fast 404: answers scanner probes (.env, backups, fake PHP files) with a light static 404 page instead of loading WordPress. Your real files, redirects and short links are not affected. A backup of.htaccess is kept and restored automatically if the site returns a server error.

• WordPress cron: turn off the built-in wp-cron (adds DISABLE_WP_CRON to wp-config.php ) and get a ready cron command for cPanel, CloudLinux, DirectAdmin, Plesk, WP-CLI, wget and curl, matched to your PHP version and your real path, with a sensible interval from 1 minute to 6 hours. The settings page also shows the last successful run, the last failed run and the next scheduled task.

Privacy and safety

• The plugin makes no external connections of its own and sends no data anywhere. The log stays on your site.

• Files outside the plugin folder are created only after you enable the related option and save; they are removed when you turn the option off or deactivate the plugin.

• The settings page is written in English, is fully translatable (translations are managed on translate.wordpress.org) and adapts to left-to-right and right-to-left languages.

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