AudiScale Connector

Description

AudiScale Connector is the companion component for the hosted AudiScale service (https://audiscale.com). It unlocks the SEO actions that WordPress core and the standard REST API do not allow — most notably printing a <meta name="description"> tag in the <head> without forcing you to install another SEO plugin.

Service disclosure (SaaS)

This plugin communicates with the third-party AudiScale service. No data is
sent until you have explicitly paired
your site from your AudiScale dashboard.
Once paired, AudiScale can remotely apply a fixed catalog of operations
(listed below), each of which is:

  • signed with HMAC-SHA256 using a per-site secret (rotatable and revocable);
  • subject to a WordPress capability check (manage_options);
  • logged (who, what, when, before/after value);
  • reversible where possible (draft/revision, dry-run).

The plugin never executes arbitrary code: there is no code-evaluation
endpoint and no remote code download. “Almost everything” means an enumerated,
hand-coded, audited catalog.

  • Terms of service: https://audiscale.com/en/terms
  • Privacy policy: https://audiscale.com/en/privacy

Operation catalog

  • SEO / <head>: meta description, SEO title, canonical, robots, Open Graph, Twitter cards, native sitemap exclusion
  • Redirects: create / update / delete (301, 302, 410)
  • Structured data: per-content JSON-LD
  • Content & media: field updates (via revision), draft creation, alternative text, status change (publish/draft only), move to trash and restore from it, listing of trashed contents
  • Taxonomies: read the taxonomies and terms a post type declares, assign existing terms to a content (never creates a term)
  • Site (read-only): robots.txt, public settings, content inventory
  • Site (footer): marked HTML block printed on wp_footer (badge install / removal)
  • Plugins: inventory with update availability, forced update check, update of an installed plugin (the installed version is archived first), rollback to the archived version
  • Performance: preconnect / font preload hints, Google Fonts display=swap and self-hosting, removal of emojis / oEmbed / jQuery Migrate / Dashicons for visitors, script defer / async / delay until interaction, per-page removal of unused scripts and styles, scripts and styles inventory, server environment report — each one reversible, previewable before it goes live, and switched off at once from the Connection tab
  • Page builders: read and update a page in the builder it is edited with (Elementor, Divi, WPBakery, Beaver Builder), and create a new page directly in that builder
  • Connector: status, pairing, audit log

The plugin detects Yoast, Rank Math and SEOPress and stands down
automatically if one of them already manages the <head>, to avoid duplicate
tags.

Files downloaded to your site (performance features)

Only when AudiScale asks for it through a signed operation, never while a visitor
loads a page:

  • Google Fonts self-hosting (perf.fonts.set with selfHost): the plugin
    downloads the Google Fonts stylesheets the site already uses from
    fonts.googleapis.com and the font files they reference from
    fonts.gstatic.com, into wp-content/uploads/audiscale-fonts/. Visitors then
    load the fonts from your own domain, so their IP address is no longer sent to
    Google on each page view. No other host is contacted, and no request carries
    visitor data.
  • Plugin archives: once the site is paired, before any plugin update (from
    AudiScale, from wp-admin or a WordPress auto-update), the installed version is
    zipped into a private folder under wp-content/uploads/ (random folder and file
    names, an index.php in every folder, closed to web access on Apache) so it can
    be restored. One archive per plugin, deleted after 90 days; its SHA-256 checksum
    is verified before any restore. Nothing is archived on a site that is not paired.

The plugin never downloads or executes code: archives are only ever reinstalled
through the WordPress upgrader, from files the site itself produced.

External services

This plugin connects to two external services.

AudiScale

The hosted AudiScale service (https://audiscale.com), which this plugin is the
companion of. Nothing is sent until an administrator pairs the site. Once paired,
AudiScale sends signed operation requests to the site, and after an update the
plugin sends the installed plugin version and the site URL back to AudiScale
(one request per version).

  • Terms of service: https://audiscale.com/en/terms
  • Privacy policy: https://audiscale.com/en/privacy

Google Fonts

Used only when AudiScale turns on Google Fonts self-hosting (perf.fonts.set with
selfHost), and only during that operation — never while a visitor loads a page.
The site’s server requests, from fonts.googleapis.com, the Google Fonts
stylesheets the site already loads, then, from fonts.gstatic.com, the font files
those stylesheets reference. The requests carry the server’s IP address and a
browser User-Agent string (Google only serves WOFF2 files to a browser it
recognizes); they carry no visitor data and no site data beyond the stylesheet URLs.
Afterwards visitors load the fonts from the site itself, so their IP address is no
longer sent to Google.

  • Google Terms of Service: https://policies.google.com/terms
  • Google Privacy Policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy
  • Google Fonts FAQ (privacy): https://developers.google.com/fonts/faq/privacy

Installation

  1. Install and activate the plugin (from wordpress.org or by uploading the ZIP).
  2. From your AudiScale dashboard, start pairing: AudiScale calls POST /wp-json/audiscale/v1/pair with a secret generated on the AudiScale side.
  3. That’s it — subsequent operations are signed with that secret.

To revoke access at any time: “Settings AudiScale Disconnect”, or disconnect
the site from AudiScale.

FAQ

Does the plugin send data without my consent?

No. No communication happens until the site is paired, and pairing requires an
administrator (manage_options).

What happens if I already have an SEO plugin?

AudiScale Connector detects Yoast / Rank Math / SEOPress and prints nothing in
the <head> to avoid duplicates.

How do I revoke access?

Unpairing erases the pairing secret: the command channel becomes inert
immediately. It also switches off every performance setting AudiScale applied.

How do I switch off the performance optimizations?

“AudiScale Connection Switch off AudiScale optimizations” removes them at
once, without AudiScale. Deactivating the plugin removes them too: they are
applied while pages load, nothing is written into your theme or plugin files.

My server runs nginx: are the plugin archives protected?

The archives live in a folder with a random name and random file names, with an
index.php in every folder, and an .htaccess that Apache honors. nginx ignores
.htaccess, so add this rule to the site’s server block:

location ~* /wp-content/uploads/audiscale-backup- { deny all; }

What does uninstalling remove?

The plugin’s options, its pending proposals, its audit table, the self-hosted
Google Fonts and the plugin archives. Your content, media and plugins are left
as they are.

Reviews

There are no reviews for this plugin.

Contributors & Developers

“AudiScale Connector” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

Contributors

Translate “AudiScale Connector” into your language.

Interested in development?

Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.

Changelog

6.0.0

  • Performance settings (perf.* operations, performance capability token):
    preconnect and font preload hints, Google Fonts display=swap and
    self-hosting, removal of emojis / oEmbed / jQuery Migrate / Dashicons for
    visitors, script defer / async (WordPress script strategies when available) and
    delay until the first interaction, per-page removal of unused scripts and
    styles (keepOn keeps them on some pages, onlyOn removes them only there), scripts and styles inventory, server environment report. All of them
    are applied while pages load and stored in the plugin’s own options — nothing is
    written into WordPress content or files, and the stock state hooks nothing.
  • Every setting supports publishMode (draft by default), dryRun, returns the
    exact call that undoes it, and is logged. A draft is only rendered for a
    request carrying a signed, 30-minute preview token (never cached, never
    indexed, identified by an X-AudiScale-Preview header); a visitor never sees
    it. perf.promote / perf.discard / perf.reset manage the lifecycle.
  • A preview token opens one page only (the URL it was issued for), lasts five
    minutes by default (30 at most), and never applies to the REST API, feeds or
    admin-ajax. Optimizations are never applied inside page-builder editors and
    previews, the customizer, or for logged-in users who can edit content.
  • The preview also renders pending page-builder documents and pending content
    drafts, so a change can be checked for breakage before it goes live. A pending
    Elementor or Beaver Builder document is rendered with the CSS/JS generated from
    it — under preview-only file names and an in-memory copy of the builder caches,
    so the files and cache rows visitors get are never touched — and the response
    says in X-AudiScale-Preview-Assets whether that generation worked.
  • New “Switch off AudiScale optimizations” button in the Connection tab.
    Unpairing switches them off too.
  • Elementor and Beaver Builder documents are stored in post meta, which WordPress
    never filters: they are written only for a user allowed to post unfiltered HTML
    (unfiltered_html), as Elementor itself requires — including when a pending
    change is approved from the “Pending” screen.
  • Page builders (builder.data.get, builder.data.update,
    builder.data.discard): read and update a page in the builder it is edited
    with — Elementor, Divi, WPBakery, Beaver Builder — with each builder’s own
    storage, a draft/approval cycle, and a refusal when the page changed since it
    was read. Oxygen and Bricks are detected and refused. Beaver layouts are read
    without instantiating any class other than stdClass.
  • WPBakery: writing a page rebuilds _wpb_shortcodes_custom_css exactly as
    WPBakery does when a page is saved in its editor, so design options apply
    without re-saving the page.
  • Elementor: builder.data.get and perf.environment.get report whether the
    Flexbox Container feature is active; a document built with containers is
    refused while it is not (Elementor would render nothing).
  • content.create_draft accepts builder + builderData to create a new page
    directly in the site’s builder (content.create_draft.builder token).
    Unchanged without them.
  • plugins.update archives the installed version first, and so does every
    plugin update WordPress runs (wp-admin, auto-updates). New plugins.rollback
    operation reinstalls that archive and reactivates the plugin; a rollback can
    itself be rolled back. Archives live in a private folder, one per plugin,
    purged after 90 days, 1 GB cap.
  • content.update_fields in draft mode returns pendingHash, the fingerprint
    the preview echoes.

5.9.0

  • New content.untrash operation (edit_posts capability): restores a page or a
    post from the WordPress trash. Until now AudiScale could move a content to the
    trash but never take it back out, so a content it had trashed had to be restored
    by hand in wp-admin. It calls wp_untrash_post() and nothing else, and replaying
    it on a content that is not in the trash reports “nothing to do” instead of an
    error, exactly as content.trash does on a content already trashed.
  • The response says which status the content actually came back with. Since
    WordPress 5.6 a restored content is set to draft — not to the status it had
    before it was trashed — unless the site filters wp_untrash_post_status. So the
    outcome cannot be deduced from the WordPress version, and the plugin reads it
    back after the write: after is the observed status, previousStatus the one
    the content had when it was trashed, and restoredToPreviousStatus says whether
    a page that was published is readable again or is now a draft.
  • New content.trashed.list operation (edit_posts capability, read-only): lists
    the trashed contents with their id, title, type, trash date and previous status.
    A trashed content answers no URL any more, so this is the only way to name the
    content to restore. Media are out of scope, like everywhere else: WordPress does
    not trash an attachment, it deletes it and its files for good.

5.8.0

  • New taxonomy.list operation (edit_posts capability, read-only): lists the
    taxonomies that apply to a post type — categories, tags, and any custom one the
    site declares — and, on request, one bounded page of their terms. AudiScale
    reads it so it can only ever propose a term that exists.
  • New content.terms.assign operation (manage_options capability): files a page
    or a post under existing terms. It adds by default: assigning one category
    no longer removes the others, and clearing the existing terms requires spelling
    out mode: "replace". It never creates a term: an unknown one is refused and
    reported, so a near-duplicate (“Actualités” on a site holding “Actualité”) is
    never silently created. The complete previous set of terms is written to the
    audit log, and the recorded result is re-read after the write, so it shows the
    default category WordPress reassigns to a post left without one.
  • New content.trash operation (delete_posts capability): moves a page or a post
    to the WordPress trash, from where you can restore it. Until now a draft created
    from AudiScale could not be removed from AudiScale. Nothing is ever deleted
    permanently: if the trash is disabled on your site the operation is refused
    instead of destroying the content, and media are out of scope — WordPress does
    not trash an attachment, it deletes it and its files for good.
  • The promote operation now also approves a page body prepared in draft mode
    (field: "content"). It previously handled SEO fields only, so a body drafted by
    AudiScale could be approved from WordPress and nowhere else.
  • content.set_page_template now honours publishMode like every other content
    operation: by default the new template waits on the “Pending” screen instead of
    being applied to the live site immediately.
  • content.status.set and content.trash now refuse to unpublish or trash the
    page used as the front page or as the posts page, which would leave the site
    without an entry point.
  • Every content operation now checks that its target is an editable content — not a
    revision, a menu item or a theme template — and that the current user may edit it.
    Custom content types declaring their own capabilities without asking WordPress to map
    them keep working: for those, the check falls back to the generic content capability
    rather than a primitive capability no role holds.
  • Behaviour change — a URL is now resolved to a content deterministically, and
    never guessed. The plugin reads, in order: the id declared in the URL (?p=,
    ?page_id=, ?attachment_id= — the three WordPress itself honours), then the
    site’s own rewrite rules, then the site root, and refuses otherwise with
    audiscale_url_needs_post_id (404). The slug fallback that used to search the
    path against every content type is removed: a slug read off a crawled URL
    names the right content only by luck, and every way it named a wrong one ended in
    a success on content nobody aimed at — on a shop holding both a page and a product
    named “contact”, the write landed on whichever the database returned last. A URL
    whose path WordPress does not resolve now needs an explicit content id; AudiScale
    resolves the target on its side and sends it.
  • A URL pointing at another domain is refused on the whole resolution, not on one
    branch of it: an id declared in the URL does not depend on the domain, so
    “https://autre.com/x/?p=12” used to trash the post 12 of YOUR site, and the root
    of any other domain used to serve your home page. Sites whose public domain is not
    the one WordPress stores (an origin behind a CDN, a migrated domain, one domain
    per language) keep working: the host the request came in on is trusted alongside
    home_url(), site_url() and the audiscale_trusted_hosts filter, and
    internationalized domains, punycode and a trailing dot compare equal.
  • An id declared in a URL now has to name editorial content in an editable state:
    a revision, an auto-draft, a trashed content or a media is refused instead of
    written to. post and post_id are no longer read as content ids — WordPress
    honours neither, while plugins use both as ordinary parameters, so a crawled
    “/recherche/?post_id=2” resolved to the post 2 instead of the search page.
  • Fix: on a site installed in a subdirectory (“https://site.fr/blog”), the address
    “https://site.fr/” was treated as the site root and served the WordPress home
    page, although this WordPress does not answer that address at all.
  • AudiScale is told, through a dedicated capability token, that this build honours
    publishMode on content.set_page_template — the operation id alone is the same as
    in 5.7.1, where the template was always applied immediately.
  • Fix: assigning a term whose slug is a number (“2024” on a taxonomy of years) was
    refused as an unknown term, because a digits-only value was only ever read as a
    term id.
  • Fix: a draft write no longer files a WordPress revision of a body it did not touch.
  • Refusals now carry a stable machine-readable code (and the details behind it,
    such as the templates the theme really declares) next to the message, so AudiScale
    can tell one refusal from another and suggest the right fix. The error field is
    unchanged.

5.7.1

  • Fix: a URL carrying a content id (?page_id=, ?p=, ?post=, ?post_id=) was
    read as the site root, because its path is /. Depending on the site it either
    failed with audiscale_no_front_page or — with a static front page — applied the
    operation to the home page instead of the content actually targeted. The declared
    id is now read first, and an id matching no content fails instead of falling back
    to the home page. Affects every operation resolving a URL, SEO ones included.

5.7.0

  • New media.upload operation (upload_files capability): sideloads a remote
    image or video into the media library and returns its attachment id, so a page
    AudiScale drafts can reference a real attachment instead of an external URL.
    The downloaded bytes are type-checked (no SVG), the source URL is validated
    against WordPress’ own SSRF guard, the transfer is capped at 25 MB (declared
    size checked before the download, response size capped during it), and nothing
    existing is overwritten. This operation is why the plugin requires WordPress
    6.0 or later: download_url() fetches through wp_safe_remote_get(), which
    re-validates every redirect target against the same SSRF guard rather than
    following it blindly.
  • New blocks.validate operation (edit_posts capability, read-only): parses
    block markup the way the editor does and reports content sitting outside any
    block, unknown block types, or markup that does not survive a parse/serialize
    round-trip. AudiScale calls it before proposing a draft, so a page never lands
    in the editor showing “This block contains unexpected or invalid content”.
  • New site.layout_options operation (edit_posts capability, read-only):
    lists the page templates the active theme actually declares, and whether the
    theme renders wide/full alignments. AudiScale reads it before offering any
    layout change, so it can only ever propose a layout the theme can render.
  • New content.set_page_template operation (manage_options capability):
    changes the template of an existing page or post, targeted by post_id or
    url. The value must be a template the active theme declares (or default);
    anything else is refused rather than written, and the before/after is recorded
    in the audit log.
  • content.create_draft and content.update_fields accept an optional
    page_template, validated the same way. On creation the template is checked
    before the post is inserted, so a refused template never leaves an orphan
    draft behind.

5.6.0

  • New plugins.check_updates operation (update_plugins capability): purges the
    update_plugins transient and re-runs WordPress’ update check immediately, with
    no staleness guard, then reports how many updates are now visible. WordPress only
    refreshes that cache about twice a day and its upgrader refuses any plugin the
    cache does not list, so updating a freshly released version from AudiScale failed
    for hours for no real reason. AudiScale now calls this before retrying, and the
    update goes through. plugins.list is unchanged.

5.5.0

  • After a plugin update or activation, the connector announces its own version to
    AudiScale over the existing HMAC-signed channel, so the version AudiScale shows
    and gates features on is right immediately instead of at the next manual check.
    One non-blocking request, only when the site is paired, and nothing is sent
    beyond the version number and the site URL.

5.4.0

  • New site.footer_snippet.set / .clear / .get operations: store a marked
    HTML block (a link and an image, no script) and print it on wp_footer. Used
    by AudiScale for the one-click “Verified” badge install. The block lives in an
    option, not in the theme’s footer.php, so a theme update cannot wipe it, and
    re-posing the same marker replaces the block instead of stacking a second one.

5.3.1

  • plugins.update no longer leaves a plugin deactivated after a successful
    update: a failed reactivation is now reported (reactivationFailed) instead
    of being swallowed, and a main file renamed by the update is re-resolved
    before reactivating.

5.3.0

  • New seo.sitemap.exclude operation: flags a content so the native
    wp-sitemap.xml skips it (reversible with excluded: false; draft/approve flow
    supported). No effect while a third-party SEO plugin provides the sitemap.
  • New content.status.set operation: switches a content between “publish” and
    “draft” only (strict whitelist — no trash, no private, no scheduling),
    publish_pages capability, audited before/after.
  • Declared compatibility with WordPress 7.1.

5.2.0

  • SEO title and meta description now write into the meta key of the SEO plugin
    that actually renders the page (Yoast, Rank Math, SEOPress) instead of the
    plugin’s own key. While one of those is active this plugin does not print its
    own tags — so a value you approved was stored but never appeared on the site.
    Approved changes now take effect. Sites with no third-party SEO plugin are
    unaffected.
  • The approval screen reads the current value from that same key, so the
    “current” column no longer shows empty against a field that is set.
  • The audit log records the key really written.

5.1.1

  • First public WordPress.org release: English readme and service disclosure,
    packaging hygiene, and internationalization (text domain loading).
  • plugins.update now keeps the target plugin active after upgrading it (the
    WordPress upgrader deactivates during the file swap and does not restore it on a
    programmatic call).

5.0.0

  • Actionable security.* operation family: hardenings applied at the PHP
    runtime, without touching wp-config and always reversible in a single call
    (file editor, REST user enumeration, XML-RPC + pingbacks, HTTP headers
    HSTS/nosniff/X-Frame-Options/Referrer-Policy, minor core auto-updates,
    version masking, ?author=N scan blocking).
  • Each op accepts dryRun (simulation without writing) and logs the before/after
    value for an undo via the inverse op. security.state.get exposes the current
    state. Disconnecting (unpair) resets all hardenings.
  • hsts is set only if HTTPS is actually enforced (anti-lockout guard).

4.0.0

  • New security.audit operation (read-only, manage_options capability):
    free hardening snapshot (versions, configuration flags, admin accounts, core
    integrity via wordpress.org checksums). No secret is returned.

3.0.0

  • New plugin-management operations: plugins.list (read, activate_plugins
    capability) and plugins.update (live, irreversible update, update_plugins
    capability).

2.0.0

  • content.update_fields op: URL targeting + fields object
    (title/excerpt/content), respecting publishMode.
  • The body is written faithfully (no destructive filtering on our side,
    Gutenberg block delimiters preserved); filtered flag if the user lacks the
    unfiltered_html capability.
  • draft mode for content: the proposal is queued and approved from the
    “AudiScale pending” screen.

1.1.0

  • draft mode: proposed values are stored “pending” without changing the live
    render.
  • Approval surface: “Pending AudiScale change” metabox on the edit screen + a
    central screen (Settings AudiScale pending) to approve/reject (nonce +
    capability).
  • promote operation to approve a field from AudiScale (consent equivalent to
    direct).

1.0.0

  • Initial version: SEO <head> output, redirects, structured data, HMAC-signed
    operation catalog, audit log.