New GD Press Tools Pro is not just a regular minor revision, but it contains many changes in the core classes as a cleanup operation for upcoming major 4.0. Some settings are improved and many settings are now part of new Security panel that will hold everything security related.
Image on the right shows what is in the new plugin menu. This is most likely what will end up in the 4.0 version also. As for the new Security panel, it hold new panels that have older settings moved there to ensure better centralization. All security settings are now global, and controlled by the network admin (in multi site / network environment).
Registration filter settings are also moved to security panel, and now allow greater flexibility of the filter and banning rules. Domain list is expanded with new domains by default. Validation procedure is vastly improved, and all code for that is now part of new Security class. New validation methods are added to the mix.
Due to changes to registration filters, please check all the settings once again, and make sure that it’s set as it should be. This is most important for domains list, that will be overwritten with new one, so save your own list before proceeding with the update. Also, please test new filtering to make sure that things are working, and report any problems with it.
Next version of the plugin will get one more Security panel where you will find recommendations about various security issues and status of most important ones: chmods for some access sensitive files, improvements to htaccess files and much more. Also, there will be some new WP 3.1 related features to expand use of the new Admin Bar.
GD Press Tools Pro 4.0 will be dropping support for WordPress 2.9. As for the Lite version of the plugin, since it doesn’t have most of the features from Pro, it will support older versions of WP. Currently released Lite 2.5.7 supports 2.8 and higher. Lite 2.6 will drop support for WP 2.8, but that’s still months away at best.
More about GD Press Tools Pro:
http://dv4p.com/gdpt
