Lost category restrictions - check your sites!

#1

Hi - just a quick warning for any S2 Member users. I believe after the last update, we lost all our category restriction settings. People could access our entire site!!!

So - please check that your restrictions are still as you left them by logging out and making sure nobody can get to parts they shouldn’t be able to get to.

Thankfully one of our members spotted this and told us. Phew!

#2

Hi Tim.

Thanks for the heads up to the community!

Could you please tell me what changed in your settings? Was your setting for the Category Restriction just empty?

This is very strange… Nothing in s2Member related to that changed at all…

Was the rest of the configuration also affected or nothing else? Do you have the Deletion Safeguards enabled? WP Admin > s2Member > General Options > Plugin Deletion Safeguards

#3

Hi Cristián,
All the other settings seem to be in place as far as I can tell. It was ALL of the category restrictions which became empty. We restrict our categories except one (a public one) for all levels over 0. They were completely empty.
I’m not saying that this will happen to all users, or even anyone else. But it is one of those things that you don’t notice as generally you are logged in. Well worth checking!
I confirm that my plugin deletion safeguards are “Yes, safeguard all data/options”
Keep up the good work - we appreciate all you’re doing!

1 Like
#4

Thank you for confirming it.

I see. Very weird behavior indeed. I had seen it with the EOT settings going blank, for some reason still to be pinpointed, but seems to be related to cron jobs and other plugins causing it.

I’m not quite sure what could cause that for the categories restriction, though.

I had never seen it reported before, but now I’m aware that it can happen. Please, if you notice it again, and get any insight into what could be causing it, do let me know.

And thank you for the kind words! I’m trying! lol… 2020 was very weird, to say the least, but still made progress behind the scenes. In the coming days I’ll be announcing something new and things to come. :slight_smile:

#5

Hi, I also discovered that all the “membership level/labels” above 4 were wiped back to default. We have 16 membership levels. Only levels 0 - 4 were unaffected.

Thanks.

#6

:dizzy_face:

Hmm… Those are set from wp-config.php. Did you find that missing from your config file? s2 would not have removed that, s2 doesn’t even add it, you add them manually.

Screenshot_2021-02-22%20s2Member%20General%20Options%20%E2%80%B9%20s2Member%20Membership%20Plugin%20for%20WordPress%20%E2%80%94%20WordPress

I’m pretty sure it’s not the s2 update doing it… It seems something else happened. Do you have any idea what else got changed on the site around that same time?

#7

All of the levels were still there. Just that their names had reverted back to the defaults, not the ones I’d put in.

#8

Oh ok. Well, that’s less bad then, I’m glad. But still it’s perplexing.

It’s as if something removed some s2 options from the database…
Obviously you don’t have someone with admin access removing some of your configuration…

s2 would never remove its options on update or deactivation. If you have the Deletion Safeguards enabled, s2 wouldn’t do it on deletion either, which you didn’t do. And that would be for all s2 data and options, not only some settings.

So something else seems to be messing with it, but I really don’t know what that’d be…

You may want to review the rest of your configuration, not just s2’s but also the rest, and see if you notice anything else changed or missing. Just in case.