aurora-wordpress-admin/CHANGELOG.md

Changelog

All notable changes to Aurora Admin are documented here, one entry per version bump. Starts at 2.1.0 — earlier history (the theming rebuild, window chrome/taskbar, Site Editor support, etc.) lives in git log and PROJECT_STATUS.md, not reconstructed here.

[2.7.1] - 2026-07-05

Fixed

• Native form fields (text inputs, textareas, selects) on several classic/non-block-editor screens — most visibly the title field on the Edit Media screen, but the same fix applies wherever it occurred — were showing stark white, breaking the dark theme. Root cause: some native WP screens style specific fields via a 2-ID selector (e.g. core's #titlediv #title { background: #fff }), which beats our existing rule's single #wpbody-content id no matter how many classes are stacked on it — the exact same CSS-specificity trap as an earlier block-editor background bug. Added !important to the form-field rule block, since there's no legitimate case where a native admin form field should stay white.

[2.7.0] - 2026-07-05

Added

• New File Manager (aurora-admin-file-manager), browsing/editing the WordPress install's own files — built fresh (not embedding elFinder), in the spirit of the "WP File Manager" plugin already on this site (same root, same manage_options-only gate). Create/upload/download/ rename/delete files and folders, plus a plain-text editor for code/config files. A Pro feature — the riskiest surface in the whole plugin (arbitrary read/write access to the site's own PHP files), so it's gated the same way as Database Explorer.
  • Every path a client sends is resolved to a real, ABSPATH-contained path via realpath() before any filesystem operation — containment is checked against the resolved path, not string-matched against the raw input, so symlink tricks and encoded traversal can't slip past.
  • Uploads/new files/renames all reject a blocklist of server-executable extensions (.php, .phtml, .cgi, .sh, etc.) — the single most important control here, since uploading a webshell is the whole ballgame.
  • Deliberately not built: zip/unzip (zip-slip extraction vulnerability), chmod/permissions editing, and cross-directory move/copy — each is a meaningfully larger, riskier scope than a first pass warrants.

Fixed

• File Manager's REST endpoints now also check License::is_feature_available('file-manager'), not just manage_options — found while wiring it up that the page-level lock alone doesn't stop a direct REST call from bypassing it entirely. The same gap exists in Database Explorer, Role Editor, and Activity Log's REST controllers and is not yet fixed — flagged as a follow-up.

[2.6.0] - 2026-07-05

Added

• Real replacement pages for Pages, Media Library, and Users — the remaining native admin screens that were only dark-themed skinning, now built the same way as Posts/Comments/Plugins (own REST controller, own Vue page, native screen redirected away):
  • Pages (PagesData.php + Pages.vue): same as Posts, but shows the parent page instead of categories. edit.php?post_type=page redirects; other post types are untouched.
  • Media Library (MediaData.php + Media.vue): a thumbnail grid (not a rebuilt drag-drop uploader) with type filters (Images/Audio/ Video/Documents/Unattached), search, and delete. upload.php (both grid and list mode) redirects; media-new.php (the actual upload screen) is untouched, same reasoning as leaving the block editor alone for Posts/Pages.
  • Users (UsersData.php + Users.vue): filterable by role, with edit/delete actions. Deleting a user always reassigns their content to whoever performs the deletion, rather than exposing WP core's reassign-or-delete-everything choice as a one-click REST action — deliberately simplified to avoid a surprising, highly destructive default. users.php redirects; user-new.php (account creation) is untouched.
  • All four gated by their own Settings toggle (modern_pages, modern_media, modern_users — modern_posts already existed), each defaulting to on.

[2.5.0] - 2026-07-05

Added

• Real replacement Posts management page (aurora-admin-posts), the same kind of full custom page as Comments/Plugins rather than dark-themed skinning over the native edit.php list table. New PostsData.php REST controller (list with status/search filters, trash, restore, permanent delete) and a new Vue page matching the Comments layout (status filter pills, search, table with title/author/categories/comments/date/status, inline row actions, pagination). The native Posts screen (edit.php, default post type only — Pages and other post types are untouched) redirects to it, gated by Settings > Posts' restored "Modern posts table" toggle (removed a few commits ago when it had no implementation behind it — now it does).

Fixed

• The modern_plugins/modern_comments settings toggles now default to visually "on" in the Settings UI to match their actual PHP default (previously they defaulted true server-side but showed off in the UI until explicitly saved) — same fix applied to the new modern_posts.

[2.4.2] - 2026-07-04

Fixed

• Admin Notices only ever showed on the Aurora Dashboard — everywhere else, admin_notices fired normally, but on the Dashboard specifically the notice was invisible: DashboardTakeover hides #wpbody entirely there (to hide the native dashboard, not our own), and that's exactly where WordPress prints admin_notices output. Notices now render directly inside the Aurora dashboard frame instead on that one page. Along the way, also worked around a separate WordPress core behavior (common.js unconditionally relocates every .notice element to right after the page's <h1>) using core's own documented below-h2 opt-out class, since without it the notice would've just been silently moved back into the hidden #wpbody by that script regardless of where it was placed server-side.

[2.4.1] - 2026-07-04

Fixed

• Dashboard scrolling was broken — content below the first ~1500px (Server Health, Media Analytics, etc.) was completely unreachable. .aurora-dashboard-frame never got the height cap + internal scroll treatment #wpbody-content got in an earlier fix; combined with html/body being locked to overflow: hidden (to fix a phantom scrollbar on a different page), there was no scroll mechanism left at all for the dashboard specifically. Mirrored the same max-height/overflow-y treatment onto .aurora-dashboard-frame.

[2.4.0] - 2026-07-04

Added

• Settings > Menu's "Menu search" toggle now actually does something — previously had no implementation at all. Shows a real search box at the top of the sidebar that filters both the WP-native menu list and the Aurora nav section by title, auto-expanding every section with a match.

Fixed

• Settings > Dashboard's "Custom dashboard" toggle now actually gates the dashboard takeover — previously the Aurora dashboard always replaced the native one regardless of this setting, with no way to turn it back off.
• Settings > Plugins' "Modern plugins page" and Settings > Comments' "Modern comments page" toggles now actually gate their respective takeovers/redirects the same way — previously both ran unconditionally regardless of these settings.

Removed

• Settings > Posts' "Modern posts table" and Settings > Users' "Modern users page" toggles — both described a custom management interface that was never built. Shipping a checkbox with nothing behind it is worse than not having the checkbox; removed rather than left as dead UI. Their categories are removed too, since they had no other fields.

[2.3.1] - 2026-07-04

Fixed

• Sidebar accordion now treats the "Aurora" branded nav section as part of the same single-open accordion as the WP-native menu list, instead of being the one exception that stayed open regardless of what else was expanded. Expanding any native section now collapses Aurora too, and vice versa.

[2.3.0] - 2026-07-04

Added

• Settings > Media's "Allow SVG uploads" toggle now actually does something — previously existed in the UI with no implementation behind it, so every SVG upload was rejected. Fixes both of WordPress's default blocks (the upload_mimes allowlist and the real-mime sniff that nulls out the file type for SVGs specifically), plus a PHP warning (wp_get_missing_image_subsizes() reading undefined width/height metadata keys that SVGs never had) that could otherwise corrupt the upload response on environments with warnings displayed inline. Also does basic sanitization on upload (strips <script> tags, inline event handler attributes, javascript: URIs) since SVG can carry executable content.

[2.2.0] - 2026-07-04

Added

• Settings > Login's "Style login page" and "Login logo" fields now actually do something — previously they existed in the UI with no implementation behind them at all. Styles wp-login.php with a dark theme (background, card, inputs, button) and swaps in the configured logo image in place of the WordPress logo, linked to the site's home URL instead of wordpress.org.

[2.1.1] - 2026-07-04

Fixed

• Image fields (Logo, Dark mode logo, Login logo, Admin favicon) now open the real WordPress media library picker. wp_enqueue_media() was never called, so wp.media was undefined client-side and every image field silently fell back to a plain URL prompt instead.

[2.1.0] - 2026-07-04

Added

• Free/paid feature gating: Role Editor, Activity Log, Database Explorer, Analytics, White Label, and the remote site switcher are now Pro features. Menu Creator, Admin Notices, Comments, Plugins, and the core shell/theming stay free. Locked pages show an upgrade prompt instead of the real feature; the sidebar shows a lock badge on locked items.
• Real license validation against the auroraplugins.com license server (validate/activate/deactivate), replacing the earlier placeholder that treated any non-empty key as active. Status is cached for 12 hours and re-checked immediately on a license-key change. The Settings page shows a live status line (active/invalid/unreachable) under the License key field.
• File-integrity tamper protection: if the code implementing the license gate has been modified, every paid feature re-locks regardless of an otherwise-valid license — makes stripping the check out of a redistributed copy not actually unlock anything.

Fixed

• Role Editor's REST endpoint 500'd when hit via the REST API — it called get_editable_roles(), which WordPress only auto-loads for normal wp-admin page requests, not REST requests.