Melapress File Monitor

Description

Get alerted via email of file changes on your WordPress sites to boost reliability & security

There are many benefits you can take advantage of when you install this hassle-free WordPress file integrity monitoring plugin on your website, such as:
* Keep track of the last code changes on your website for easier troubleshooting
* Identify leftover & backup files that can lead to sensitive business & technical data exposure
* Pinpoint malware injections early to avoid irreparable site damage
* Do the neccesary forensic work during a past-hack job

Keeping track of file changes on your WordPress website is a maintanence and security best practise every site owner should follow. This can only be done by installing a plugin. Use Melapress File Monitor to automatically scan your website for file changes.

The plugin alerts you of file changes via email. It helps you easily spot leftover and backup files that could leave your website exposed, and identify injected malware and code changes, so you can remove the files and clean malware infections at the earliest possible.

Maintained & Supported by Melapress

Melapress builds high-quality WordPress security & site management plugins like WP Activity Log, the #1 WordPress activity log plugin. Browse our list of WordPress plugins that help you better manage and improve the security of your WordPress website.

Why Do You Need a website file integrity monitoring plugin?

No single WordPress security solution is bullet proof. Every solution has its shortcomings. A complete security solution is made up of a suite of tools and plugins that work together, allowing you to address all of your website’s security requirements. The more tools and security layers you build, the harder it will be for attackers to succeed. It also makes it easier for you to block malicious attacks, and monitor the site’s security and health.

The Melapress File Monitor plugin provides you with the much needed visibility of modifications that happen on your website’s file system. File changes on your WordPress website can be an early sign of a malicious hack attack or a technical problem. Hence why security professionals recommend a website files monitor plugin.

The Melapress File Monitor plugin helps you:

• Identify a possible hack attack during the early stages, allowing you to limit the damage
• Find where exactly backdoors, trojans and other malware are injected on your site
• Identify the infections and code changes during the post-hack forensics & cleanup
• Catch red-handed the exploitation of 0-day vulnerabilities on your site
• Ease the process of cleaning & recovering an infected hacked website

A Role Beyond WordPress Security

The scope of monitoring your website for file changes goes beyond detecting malicious attacks and malware infections. It is a WordPress website security and management best practice that can also help you:

• Check the integrity of your WordPress core files
• Find leftover files developers leave by mistake that could lead to sensitive information disclosure, such as backup files, database files etc
• Keep track of where developers are doing code changes on your WordPress site
• Troubleshoot and avoid unnecessary technical WordPress site problems

Melapress File Monitor Plugin Features

Melapress File Monitor is a very easy to use and zero admin plugin. Once installed it automatically starts scanning all the files on your WordPress site without requiring any manual intervention.

However don’t let the simplicity and automation fool you. Under the hood the Melapress File Monitor plugin is a fully blown and configurable tool that every WordPress site administrator should install on their WordPress sites and multisite network.

Instant Email Notifications

After a scan, the Melapress File Monitor plugin sends an email with the list of file changes it identifies on your WordPress sites and multisite networks.

The email includes all the details you require to keep tabs of the file changes on your website, such as:
* The filename and the path of the file
* A count of how many files were added, modified or deleted
* A highlight of the site admin changes that caused the file changes, such as the plugins or themes installs, uninstalls and updates.

No False Alarms – Just Genuine Alerts!

The Melapress File Monitor plugin uses an exclusive smart technology that detects WordPress core updates, plugins and themes installs, uninstalls and updates.

When you update the WordPress core, install a new plugin, update a theme, or delete a plugin it won’t flood you with hundreds of alerts prompting a false alarm! You only get alerted of genuine file changes that can have an effect on the functionality and security of your WordPress site!

Scans ALL Your Files, Including Custom Code

The Melapress File Monitor plugin can scan any type of file and it is not limited to WordPress and PHP files. Apart from the WordPress core files, plugins and themes files, it will also scan any other custom code files that you might have on your WordPress site.

It also compares the WordPress core files of your website to the list of files on the official WordPress repository, so it will also alert you if a WordPress core file has been tampered with, or changed.

To learn more on both the file integrity monitoring technologies the plugin uses refer to how the plugin detects file changes on WordPress

WordPress Multisite Networks Support

The Melapress File Monitor plugin can also detect file changes on WordPress multisite networks. When installed on a network, the plugin configuration and alerts are only available to the super administrators, preventing possible disclosure of sensitive information that could jeopardize the security of the sites on the network.

Other Notable Plugin Features

• Optimized scanning technology that does not affect the performance of your site
• Fully configurable file scan frequency (hourly, daily, weekly, time of the day)
• Instant file integrity scans with just a click of a button
• Ability to exclude directories, files and file types from the scan
• Configurable maximum file size to scan
• File changes data only available to administrators for better security

FREE Plugin Support

Support for the WordPress Files Monitor plugin is available for free via:

• forums
• email

For any other queries, feedback, or if you simply want to get in touch with us please use our contact form.

As Featured On:

• Kinsta
• Torque Magazine
• MainWP

Further Reading & Information

The Melapress File Monitor plugin is developed by Melapress, developers of a number of WordPress security and admin plugins, including WP Activity Log, the most comprehensive WordPress activity log plugin, and Melapress Login Security, a login security and password policies plugin.

• We share our thoughts and publish how to’s and guides on how to keep your website secure and manage it better on the Melapress Blog
• Learn more on file integrity monitoring for WordPress sites
• Refer to the definitive WordPress security guide for a practical guide to secure your WordPress website.
• Check out all the Melapress WordPress plugins.

Translate the plugin in your own language

If you want to help us translate this plugin in your own language please contact us. We will credit all translators.

From within WordPress

1. Visit ‘Plugins > Add New’
2. Search for ‘Melapress File Monitor’
3. Install & activate the Melapress File Monitor from your Plugins page.

Manually

1. Download the plugin from the WordPress plugins repository
2. Unzip the zip file and upload the website-file-changes-monitor folder to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory
3. Activate the Melapress File Monitor plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress

Screenshots

FAQ

Does the plugin send any data to Melapress?

No, the plugin does not send any data to us whatsoever. The only data we recieve is license data from the premium edition of the plugin.

Does the plugin receive updates?

We update the plugin fairly regularly to ensure the plugin continues to run in tip-top shape while adding new features from time to time.

Support and Documentation

Please refer to our support pages for all the technical and product documentation.

How can I report security bugs?

You can report security bugs through the Patchstack Vulnerability Disclosure Program. Please use this form. For more details please refer to our Melapress plugins security program.

Reviews

Pretty good

David Rychly August 9, 2024 3 replies

Plugin is great for monitoring, but there are some small issues currently with the settings of the notifications which should be fixed in the next release. it would be great to have option to export and import settings of the plugin (mainly ignored folders), which would be useful if using plugin on multiple websites (you can achieve it in the database, but it’s not very user friendly).

Wrecked my website’s performance

Arp Laszlo April 11, 2024 5 replies

On a custom, self-managed VPS this plug brought my server to its knees, resulting in constant 504 gateway timeouts until I deleted it. Glad I only tested this on one site, I will not use it again and will keep my files locked down instead.

Bad update >= 2.0

ravilr63 March 9, 2024 1 reply

I agree that the new version is very bad. Before version 2.0, everything was fast and simple. Now it ‘s something clumsy . I had to abandon this plugin and use a solution that gives the same result in 3 seconds.

great plugin with matchin great customer service

lewis July 27, 2023

I use this plugin on a daily basis to be notified if any malicious files are added to my server without my knowledge. Had a small issue with another plugin causing some conflicts and this plugin support team gave me a code snippet to resolve the issue and it was not even there plugin causing the conflict. Now that is customer service ??

Must-Have – when it comes to the website security

Unreal_NFS July 13, 2023

This plugin gives you a hawk’s eye over each file of your website helping you identify website hacks (if any) right away as hacks involve adding/modifying/deletion of files. This plugin helps you not anymore panic wondering which files were injected into the website as part of website attacks — Malware, virus, etc., And, this plugin comes with needed functionalities to make things easy — very thoughtful. If this is not enough, this plugin is TOTALLY FREE! Great work. God bless. Note: I use Litespeed Cache – I had to tweak the litespeed Cache’s setting: Cache > Excludes > Do Not Cache Roles – Administrator (had to check the “Administrator” box).

Seems to do exactly what is needed….

forevermaat June 27, 2023

I would like to see randomize function added to the scan start times so that the scan time does not start at exactly the same time each hour/day/week. I also think there should be an increment between hourly and day. and day and week. Why not put each __ hour and let the user input a more precise scanning interval? (e.g. every 4 hours; every 2 days). There is also a cosmetic error where the path displayed in the log for each row can get bunched up in a tiny column. But other than that, it seems to do everything it is supposed to do. very simple plugin that monitors file changes + email you of a summary of any detected changes. I decided to give it 4.5 stars now, so they get the benefit rounding up. For those not using another plugin like WordFence Pro, or want a simpler way to scan for file changes, this is a good candidate.

Contributors & Developers

Changelog

2.1.1 (2024-10-21)

• Plugin improvements

  • Added more checks and user input sanitization in the plugin.

• Security fix

  • Fixed a SQL injection in the Search placeholder.

    • Big fixes
  • Fixed a failed nonce issue when searching for some speicfic strings.
  • Fixed: New added plugin or files via the media module not reported in plugin.