Media Vault

How well this listing is tuned to rank in WordPress.org search, on the factors an owner controls. Not popularity, optimization.

Directory searches this plugin turns up in, and which way each one is moving. WordPress.org publishes no history of search positions, so this starts the day we first tracked a keyword and never backfills.

Not enough tracked days yet to call a direction. Momentum needs at least three keywords measured a week or more apart.

wp.org is where the directory puts the plugin for that search. On merit is where it would sit if results were ranked on rating, support and updates, without the install boost. The last column is how far the wp.org position moved, from our first reading in the last 90 days to the latest.

1 search this plugin appeared in over the last 90 days, 0 listed. 1 left out as unrelated or noise (years, numbers, stray words). 5 of its tags aren't in the top 24 for their own search.

Directory rank vs rivals

wp.org popularity rank over time · higher is better · when a rival's line climbs above yours, they've overtaken you

How often this plugin actually ships. A steady rhythm is the maintenance signal a single "last updated" date can't show.

Share of active installs on each version of this plugin · 100% run the current release. Green is the current release; a big slice on older versions is a user base that has stopped updating.

Crossed into this band 10 months ago; a band this size takes about a year or more to cross, which places it about 50% of the way through.

1. ★★★★★ maxeyle

   6.8y ago

   I spent untold hours trying to solve the seemingly simple task of restricting access to certain media uploads to logged in users. All I needed was a way to check a box that would keep people from using a direct url to view private documents, and this finally gave me that function. However, my celebration was short-lived because I realized it was blocking the media url for everyone – including logged in users. So close… This topic was modified 6 years, 6 months ago by maxeyle.

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2. ★★★★★ fatheroftime

   7.0y ago

   This plugin no longer works, but it WOULD do everything I need it to do. Broken things: Doesn’t protect PDFs Doesn’t protect media files by default Can still access files through a direct link This topic was modified 6 years, 9 months ago by fatheroftime.

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3. ★★★★★ jtvie

   10.2y ago

   Use it to secure some of my contents on a mid sized Page. Did some additional stuff to it: Woocommerce membership (checks if a user already payed for chosen content or is subscriber) Add options to the Divi theme&Builder to restrict access to sections/blocks the same way as the media vault would do rewritten file serve code to handle ranged/streamed video and or other big data packages action added to use an s3 as primary file delivery as private links and the media vault as fallback (fileOnS3?header location s3:serve file) If requested i’ll assist on similar topics. If anybody is interested in the rewritten file serving php thing: the following code is a part of the “mv-file-handler.php” file – there where no actions to overrule so i had to modify the original source: function mgjp_mv_get_file($rel_file, $action = ''){ // $rel_file = path to the file to view/download, // relative to the WP uploads folder // (eg:'/media-vault/2013/10/media-vault-150x150.jpg') $upload_dir = wp_upload_dir(); // only files in the WP uploads directory are allowed to be accessed: $file = rtrim($upload_dir['basedir'], '/').str_replace('..', '', isset($rel_file)?$rel_file:''); //---Basic Checks----------------------------------------------------// if(!$upload_dir['basedir'] || !is_file($file)){ status_header(404); wp_die('404. File not found.'); } $mime = wp_check_filetype($file); // Check filetype against allowed filetypes if(isset($mime['type']) && $mime['type']){ $mimetype = $mime['type']; }else{ status_header(403); wp_die(__('403. Forbidden.<br/>You cannot directly access files of this type in this directory on this server. Please contact the website administrator.')); } //---Permission Checks-----------------------------------------------// $file_info = pathinfo($rel_file); // check if file is protected by checking // if it is in the protected folder before // doing any permission checks if(0 === stripos($file_info['dirname'].'/', mgjp_mv_upload_dir('/', true))){ // disable caching of this page by caching plugins ------// if(!defined('DONOTCACHEPAGE')) define('DONOTCACHEPAGE', 1); if(!defined('DONOTCACHEOBJECT')) define('DONOTCACHEOBJECT', 1); if(!defined('DONOTMINIFY')) define('DONOTMINIFY', 1); //-------------------------------------------------------// // try and get attachment id from url -------------------// global $wpdb; $attachments = $wpdb->get_results( $wpdb->prepare( " SELECT post_id, meta_value FROM $wpdb->postmeta WHERE meta_key = %s AND meta_value LIKE %s ", '_wp_attachment_metadata', '%'.$file_info['basename'].'%' ), ARRAY_A ); $attachment_id = false; foreach($attachments as $attachment){ $meta_value = unserialize($attachment['meta_value']); if(ltrim(dirname($meta_value['file']), '/') == ltrim($file_info['dirname'], '/')){ $attachment_id = $attachment['post_id']; break; } } // ------------------------------------------------------// if(!$permission = mgjp_mv_get_the_permission($attachment_id)) $permission = get_option('mgjp_mv_default_permission', 'logged-in'); $permissions = mgjp_mv_get_the_permissions(); // permission set up error detection $standard_error_txt = ' '.esc_html__('Therefore for safety and privacy reasons this file is unavailable. Please contact the website administrator.', 'media-vault').'<p><a href="'.home_url().'">&larr;'.esc_html__('Return to homepage', 'media-vault').'</a></p>'; if(!isset($permissions[$permission])) wp_die(__('The permissions set for this file are not recognized.', 'media-vault').$standard_error_txt); if(!isset($permissions[$permission]['logged_in'])) $errors[] = 'logged_in'; if(!isset($permissions[$permission]['cb'])) $errors[] = 'cb'; if(isset($errors)){ $error_txt = __('The permissions set for this file have left the following important parameters undefined:', 'media-vault') .'<ul><li>\''.implode('\'</li><li>\'', $errors).'\'</li></ul>' .'<p>'.$standard_error_txt.'</p>'; wp_die($error_txt); } if($permissions[$permission]['logged_in']) is_user_logged_in() || auth_redirect(); // using is_user_logged_in is lighter than using just auth_redirect if(false !== $permissions[$permission]['cb']){ if(!is_callable($permissions[$permission]['cb'])) wp_die(__('The permission checking function set in this file\'s permissions is not callable.', 'media-vault').$standard_error_txt); $permission_check = call_user_func_array($permissions[$permission]['cb'], array($attachment_id, $rel_file, $file)); if(is_wp_error($permission_check)) wp_die($permission_check->get_error_message().$standard_error_txt); if(true !== $permission_check) wp_die(__('You do not have sufficient permissions to view this file.', 'media-vault').$standard_error_txt); } if(function_exists('attachment_get_remote_url') && $remote_url = attachment_get_remote_url($attachment_id)){ header("Location: ".$remote_url,TRUE,307); } } // end of permission checks //-------------------------------------------------------------------// $filesize = filesize($file); header('Content-Type: '.$mimetype); // always send this if(false === strpos($_SERVER['SERVER_SOFTWARE'], 'Microsoft-IIS')) header('Content-Length: '.$filesize); if('safeforce' !== $action){ //--OPEN FILE IN BROWSER functions-------------// $last_modified = gmdate('D, d M Y H:i:s', filemtime($file)); $etag = '"'.md5($last_modified).'"'; header("Last-Modified: $last_modified GMT"); header('ETag: '.$etag); header('Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate'); // HTTP 1.1. header('Pragma: no-cache'); // HTTP 1.0. header('Expires: Thu, 01 Dec 1994 16:00:00 GMT'); // Proxies // Support for Conditional GET $client_etag = isset($_SERVER['HTTP_IF_NONE_MATCH'])?stripslashes($_SERVER['HTTP_IF_NONE_MATCH']):false; if(!isset($_SERVER['HTTP_IF_MODIFIED_SINCE'])) $_SERVER['HTTP_IF_MODIFIED_SINCE'] = false; $client_last_modified = trim($_SERVER['HTTP_IF_MODIFIED_SINCE']); // If string is empty, return 0. If not, attempt to parse into a timestamp $client_modified_timestamp = $client_last_modified?strtotime($client_last_modified):0; // Make a timestamp for our most recent modification... $modified_timestamp = strtotime($last_modified); if(($client_last_modified && $client_etag) ?(($client_modified_timestamp >= $modified_timestamp) && ($client_etag == $etag)) :(($client_modified_timestamp >= $modified_timestamp) || ($client_etag == $etag)) ){ status_header(304); exit; } }else{ //--FORCE DOWNLOAD Functions-----------------------// // required for IE, otherwise Content-disposition is ignored if(ini_get('zlib.output_compression')) ini_set('zlib.output_compression', 'Off'); header('Pragma: public'); // required header('Expires: 0'); header('Cache-Control: must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0'); header('Cache-Control: private', false); // required for certain browsers header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="'.$file_info['basename'].'";'); header('Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary'); } // If we made it this far, just serve the file if(ob_get_length()) ob_clean(); $filesize = filesize($file); //Handel partial request header("Accept-Ranges: 0-$filesize"); $buffer_size = 1024 * 1024; //1MB #bigger = more ram usage but less cpu if(isset($_SERVER['HTTP_RANGE'])){ preg_match('/bytes=(\d+)-(\d+)?/', $_SERVER['HTTP_RANGE'], $matches); $offset = intval($matches[1]); $length = intval(isset($matches[2])?intval($matches[2]) - $offset:$filesize - $offset); if($length < 1) $length = $filesize - $offset; if($length > $buffer_size*10) $length = $buffer_size*10;//limit max partial *will trigger a ERR_CONTENT_LENGTH_MISMATCH on client but will perform better... header('HTTP/1.1 206 Partial Content'); header('Content-Range: bytes '.$offset.'-'.($offset + $length).'/'.$filesize); $file = fopen($file, 'r'); // seek to the requested offset, this is 0 if it's not a partial content request fseek($file, $offset); //split the file so we could <code>stream</code> just the range we need while($length > 0 && !feof($file)){ if($length > $buffer_size) $bytes_to_read = $buffer_size; else $bytes_to_read = $length; $length -= $bytes_to_read; echo fread($file, $bytes_to_read); flush(); } fclose($file); exit; } flush(); readfile($file); exit; }

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4. ★★★★★ dimgord

   10.5y ago

   Found it while looking for restriction view access – it’s just what I needed, thanks a lot!

   Read on wp.org ↗
5. ★★★★★ mojamba

   10.8y ago

   Recently installed and started using this plugin and it works wonderfully. But, seeing how long it has been since last being updated, I do worry if it will break in some future WP update. For now, all good. Let’s hope someone keeps this plugin active as I didn’t see any other plugin trying to solve this problem (which, itself, was a huge surprise).

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6. ★★★★★ wyzyncom

   11.0y ago

   Good plugin for securing / hiding media files (PDF’s and images) that are only to be seen in the member area by logged-in users. Member management plugins like Ultimate Member don’t offer this option. Result is that files which are imported into a member page are still publicly visible and accessable. Not good, because the member area and all its components should be visible by logged on members only. A big flaw in WordPress, as far as I’m concerned. But this plugin solves the problem easy and in an intuitive way. Why not a 5 star rating? Because I think it’s a pitty that this plugin hasn’t been updated for a long time. Really hope the developer will restart his project. I would wanna pay for this plugin.

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7. ★★★★★ Martin Sauter

   11.0y ago

   I installed this plug-in 2 minutes ago, it was absolutely straigh forward and does exactly what I expected. This plug-in deserves more attention from the WordPress community since it solves a major security problem of WordPress. Hopefully the developer continues his work. And yes: We would pay for this plug-in as well!

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8. ★★★★★ thunksalot

   11.2y ago

   I would gladly pay for a working version of this plugin. If someone resurrects it, please let me know. In the meantime, it’s totally unreliable. Works for some files, not others. Works for a little while, then you notice the next week that it has stopped working. It’s problems are probably mostly related to being 2 years and many updates behind the development of WP core. In any case, don’t waste your time unless you have a lot of time to waste.

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Automated install-time checks, tested on PHP 7.2.16 · WP 5.3

Whether ChatGPT and Claude name this plugin when asked the category question, and whether the readme gives them something to quote.

Not measured yet for this plugin’s topics. Its tracked searches are not among the measured topics. See the topics measured so far.

Growth timeline

Install-tier crossings we have observed, and how long each tier took to outgrow

1. 2026-01-11 900+ → 800+ down after 237 days in tier
2. 2025-05-19 1K+ → 900+ down

Competes with

The plugins that solve the same job, ranked by shared tags then reach, closest match first. The letter on the right is each plugin's health grade (A best, F worst).

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Media Vault: 800+ active installs, 4.4★ (27 reviews). Plugin Pulse (WP Mayor), as of 2026-10-31. https://plugins.wpmayor.com/plugin/media-vault