Critical error on sites since updates on 13 August

If you have a file manager or FTP access, navigate to /public_html/wp-content/plugins/ and rename prevent-direct-access-gold directory to something else it will disable it. Yes this is a known problem, and no they haven’t fixed it.

Hi @artrandom , and thank you for your help @snapbackcap

Our dev team has fixed the issue and is currently conducting some final tests before the release.

Could you please contact us via our Contact Form please? This form is shorter than the Premium Form, and we can’t support paid members here.

Awaiting your reply.

@snapbackcap Thank you for sharing this information with me. I appreciate it.

@buildwps Thank you for your reply. I will try to contact you later today through the Contact Form you linked to.
I hope there is a resolution to this problem soon. And I wish when problems are identified that developers would let users know early, especially paying customers. Many of us are not high level IT experts so it is extremely painful and time consuming to diagnose which plugin causes problems in a site.
And I I hope going forward that BWPS will make it easier for paying customers to start a support ticket “premium” support using at least their name, email, licence number and description of their problem. Many other companies’ premium support forms allow initial contact on an incident this way. The fields and drop down boxes in the BWPS Premium Support contact form are likely designed to get as much information as quickly as possible to understand the causes of the problem and offer efficient support. However when customers have to go through over a dozen input fields, many of them required and they might not have access to all of the information immediately, it can feel somewhat like an unfriendly slap in the face and not ‘supportive’ at all. It becomes just another roadblock in an already frustrating and time intensive process.
I will be in touch about the problems on my site with a list of all my plugins that I can find out later today. Thank you again.

I deactivated the Prevent Direct Access Gold latest version on 2 of the 3 problem sites directly through the Word Press Admin dashboard. Immediately all of the page formatting issues, freezing and critical errors went away. The site returned to normal so there seems to be some problem with Tuesday’s update. (13/08/2024)
On one of my staging sites I was unable to access the Word Press dashboard to deactivate Prevent Direct Access Gold. The only way I could switch it off was to go into the CPanel File Manager and rename the prevent-direct-access-gold folder to old-prevent-direct-access-gold. Now the staging site opens quickly with all page formatting, spacing and font issues solved. But it is impossibly to access the Word Press admin for that staging site, either through navigating to the Word Press Admin login page or by using the WP Staging Pro plugin section of the main production site. Prior to Tuesday’s update on the Prevent Direct Access Gold plugin the login had worked fine.

Most of the plugins I am using are paid plugins and fairly mainstream. Until now I have been fortunate not to have experienced critical errors like this week. I am still using the Classic Editor and the Make Plus paid theme which although older still seems fit for purpose with other plugins on the site.

I hope this information helps anyone else with similar difficulties.

The issue has been fixed and was handled through the contact form.