Destroyed Web Site

@russ

Thank you for this valuable contribution to the community.

It think you should know that the premium iTSec Pro plugin is the free iTSec plugin + 10 extra features.
So if the free plugin is ‘a way to crash your site’, the paid for iTSec Pro plugin will crash it as well … but I think you get my point, it’s nonsens.
Sure it’s always possible to crash a site using this plugin. Every env is unique and a bug may roar its ugly head at any time. Note the plugin even warns you:

Warning

Please read the installation instructions and FAQ before installing this plugin. iThemes Security makes significant changes to your database and other site files which can be problematic, so a backup is strongly recommended before making any changes to your site with this plugin. While problems are rare, most support requests involve the failure to make a proper backup before installation.

I understand your frustration but would a plugin that has been worked on non stop for 5 years really be that bad ?
Is this forum swamped with similar topics from other users experiencing the same issue ?

Should we even attempt to help you or should we consider this topic as an attempt to let off some steam ?

Anyway a minor issue was introduced with the 5.3.1 release, but there are no similar symptoms reported as observed in your topic.
Which doesn’t mean that there are no ugly bugs out there yet to be discovered …

iThemes has acknowledged the minor issue and is working hard to release an update asap.

dwinden

So, in other words “we don’t see anyone else having this problem, so we don’t believe it’s happening, and we warned you, so its your fault.” Yet more reasons not to use this plugin. After diagnosing the problem, what the plugin did was to zero out the htaccess, wp-config, and some other files. We had to restore those files to bring the site back up.

As for other users flooding the forum — no, they’re just silently shutting down the plugin. I know I’ve moved off it for four or five sites, and several other folks have said they have similar problems, and have moved off the plugin.

But don’t bother trying to troubleshoot it, just claim the problem doesn’t exist, and say, “we warned you.” That’s so very productive.

@riw

I’m not even going to respond to your interpretation of certain parts in my previous post. It’s that ridiculous … By the way I think you should realize I’m not iThemes …
So don’t confuse my opinion as being the opinion from the plugin authors … Or to put it otherwise, using my opinion as an extra argument to stop using this plugin is not a very intelligent thing to do …
I’m just a fellow trying to help out others who have troubles using this plugin.
I do believe your opinion as expressed in your initial post is mainly the result of your emotion. And I fully understand that. However by now I expected less emotional content in your second post. But it seems you’re still so upset that using common sense is too much asked for.

I think I confirmed in my previous post there may be problems happening when running this plugin. I don’t recall denying your issue …
What do you want me to say ? Yeah this plugin is a piece of junk ! Don’t use it. That would not be very constructive …

Anyway this plugin only writes to the wp-config.php and\or .htaccess (or nginx.conf) files because YOU configured it that way. Also as far as I know it doesn’t write to any other config files … So what “and some other files” did the iTSec plugin overwrite ?
Try and provide the info we need to get to the bottom of this. Just stating it zerod out “some other files” is not very constructive.
I think there are probably very specific circumstances that caused the issue. Let’s take emotion out of the equation and get to the bottom of it.
If a proper investigation reveals the plugin did something stupid I’ll be the first to shout: What a piece of junk ! ??
And after all the emotion is over we’ll report what’s wrong to the plugin authors so that they can fix it.

Does that sound like a solid plan to you ?

dwinden