by
Hebble & Stone CIC
5 (1 reviews)
Hopelessly Sensible: Simple Security Hardening
Security hardening for people who have better things to do. Seven options, plain English and clear information about what changes.
Hopelessly Sensible ranks #32,509 among WordPress.org plugins with 10+ active installations, is #1,174 of 2,958 in the Discussion & Community category, a 5/5 rating from 1 reviews, and was last updated Oct 21, 2026. Data from WordPress.org, refreshed twice daily — see methodology.
Compatible with WP 7.1.4
v1.2.0
Current Version v1.2.0
Updated 2 weeks ago
Last Update on 21 Oct, 2026
Refreshed 1 week ago
Last Refreshed on
#1,174 of 2,958 in Discussion & Community
Top 50% by installs
Actively maintained
Rank
#32,509
—
No change
Active Installs
10+
-44.4%
KW Avg Position
39
0.5 better
Downloads
266
+1 today
Support Resolved
0%
—
No change
Rating
100%
Review 5 out of 5
5
(1 reviews)
Next Milestone 20
10+
20+
9,336
Ranks to Climb
-
Growth Needed
8,000,000
Active Installs
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Current
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5.0
1 reviews
Overall
100%
5
1
(100%)
4
0
(0%)
3
0
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2
0
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1
0
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- Version
- 1.2.0
- Last Updated
- Oct 21, 2026
- Requires WP
- 6.5+
- Tested Up To
- 7.1.4
- PHP Version
- 7.4 or higher
- Author
- Hebble & Stone CIC
Support & Rating
- Rating
- ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 5
- Reviews
- 1
- Support Threads
- 0
- Resolved
- 0%
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Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about Hopelessly Sensible: Simple Security Hardening
Very unlikely, but each setting changes how something works and carries a warning saying what. If something surprises you, switch it back off and your site is as it was.
Everything goes back to how it was, straight away. The plugin makes no permanent changes to your site, so there is nothing to undo. Uninstalling removes its single row from your options table.
Yes, and carefully. WooCommerce reviews are stored as comments, so closing comments would ordinarily take your product reviews and star ratings with them. This plugin never does that. Reviews have their own option, off by default, and it stays on the screen with an explanation even when WooCommerce is not installed. Order notes, which are also stored as comments, are never touched by anything here. One thing to know if your shop is running an old WooCommerce. Closing comments takes the Comments screen out of your dashboard, and WooCommerce moved review moderation to its own screen under Products in version 6.7. On WooCommerce 6.7 or later this is fine, and you carry on approving reviews as normal. On anything older, reviews are still moderated on the Comments screen, so this plugin leaves that screen reachable on those shops rather than taking review moderation away from you.
Yes, but activate it on each site rather than across the whole network. Activating for the network means it cannot look at your sites one by one, so every option is off by default and it says so on the settings screen. Activated site by site, it looks at each one properly. Either way the settings are per site, so what you choose on one site does not affect another.
No plugin can promise that and you should be wary of any that implies it. This one closes off a set of well-known ways that automated tools and bots gather information and guess passwords. That is worth doing, though it is not the same thing as being safe. Strong passwords, two-factor authentication and keeping WordPress and its plugins updated matter more than anything.
Because those need attention and this plugin is set and forget. Features that generate alerts generate work, work gets ignored and ignored alerts are worse than no alerts.
Every Bitnami WordPress image ends wp-config.php with a short snippet that switches off pingbacks. Lightsail ran those images until early 2026, so older Lightsail sites carry it too. It is a sensible default, but it is a small part of what "Block remote publishing" does: it removes one method from remote publishing and leaves the rest answering, including the login methods that password-guessing tools use. This plugin recognises a snippet in wp-config.php as yours rather than as a plugin's, says so under the switch, and still lets you switch it on. Once it is on, the whole of remote publishing is refused, pingbacks included, and the snippet has nothing left to do.
WordPress does not let you rename a user. The usual route is to create a second administrator account with a different username, log in as that one, delete the "admin" account and hand its posts over to the new account when WordPress asks.
