WordPress Plugin 2.6.16 is now available with critical security patches, significant performance optimizations, and numerous bug fixes to improve stability and compatibility.



## How to Update to Version 2.6.16

To get the latest version of the Search Atlas WordPress Plugin, follow these steps:

1. Log in to your WordPress admin dashboard.
2. Go to **Plugins → Installed Plugins**.
3. Locate **Search Atlas** in the list and click **Update Now** if an update is available, or enable auto-updates to receive future releases automatically.
4. Once updated, verify the version number shown under the plugin name reads **2.6.16**.

If you do not see the update available yet, try clearing your browser cache or waiting a few minutes for WordPress to sync with the plugin repository, then refresh the Plugins page.

If you experience any issues after updating — such as broken thumbnails, memory errors, or authentication conflicts — deactivate and reactivate the plugin first. If the problem persists, contact our support team via the chat widget below.



## 🔒 Security Enhancements

This release includes several important security improvements:

- Whitelabel password is now encrypted at rest instead of stored in plain text
- Prevented path traversal attacks from unvalidated slugs in imported ZIP manifests
- Validated all file paths built from ZIP manifest slugs before reading them

## ⚡ Performance Improvements

Significant optimizations have been made to reduce resource usage and prevent system failures:

- Capped image-processing resource usage to prevent unbounded memory consumption
- Added a maximum image dimensions setting that downscales oversized images before conversion
- Cached image dimensions to avoid repeated file reads on every page render
- Batched the content URL rewrite query to prevent database table locks
- Raised the memory limit before heavy image processing to avoid out-of-memory failures
- Reduced memory usage during HTML rendering on large pages
- Prevented memory exhaustion caused by bot and vulnerability-scanner traffic
- Prevented image conversion from exceeding PHP's maximum execution time during media optimization

## ✨ UI and UX Improvements

Several usability enhancements have been implemented:

- Surfaced the Focus Keyword as a read-only field in the Gutenberg SEO sidebar
- Excluded Website Studio and custom HTML pages from SEO audit, inventory, and analysis surfaces
- Hid SEO meta fields on Website Studio-synced pages and show a read-only notice instead
- Labeled Website Studio-synced pages with a post state in the admin Pages list
- Stopped admin notices from causing layout shift and viewport scroll when navigating between plugin features
- Fixed checkbox alignment with their labels in Search Atlas → Settings (general options, including the Disable Redirection checkbox)
- Bundled the default plugin logo locally instead of hotlinking it
- Fixed icon alignment on the Schema Markup metabox
- Fixed a color mismatch and text crowding on the Schema Markup metabox Remove button
- Fixed the **Hide Dashboard** option so it actually hides the dashboard from the admin menu, and corrected its help text
- Streamlined the plugin entry file for maintainability

## 🐛 Bug Fixes

This release addresses numerous bugs to improve reliability and compatibility:

- Fixed several bugs surfaced by static analysis
- Fixed broken thumbnails for orphaned images and cleaned up converted files when the originals are deleted
- Made multi-page imports idempotent so re-importing no longer creates duplicate pages when a slug collides
- MetaSync REST authentication now coexists with third-party JWT authentication plugins
- Heartbeat status badge now re