WP Staging Temporarily Flagged by GoDaddy as Virus – False Positive: Why Your Site is Safe

GoDaddy flags WP Staging containing malicious code. What to do next!

Edit March, 09 2024: We have released WP Staging 5.4.1 to solve this issue. If you still get false positive reports please contact us and your hosting provider.

Here at WP Staging, we take security very seriously. That’s why we were surprised to learn that GoDaddy recently flagged WP Staging Pro 5.4.0 (Free 3.4.0) for containing “malware” or “viruses.” We want to assure all our users that this is a false positive error.

What is a False Positive?

A false positive happens when a security scanner mistakenly identifies a safe file as malicious. It’s like a fire alarm going off when there’s no fire. While frustrating, it’s not uncommon.

WP Staging is 100% Malware-Free.

We can confidently say that WP Staging is entirely free of any malware, viruses, or malicious code. We have a rigorous development process that prioritizes security at every step. Our plugin is also actively used by hundreds of thousands of satisfied customers worldwide.

What Caused the False Positive?

The exact reason for the false positive is unclear at writing of this news. Security scanners can sometimes misinterpret functionalities of legitimate plugins, leading to these errors.

What We’re Doing

We’ve contacted GoDaddy to address this issue and ensure our plugin is properly whitelisted. In the meantime, you can be confident using WP Staging on your WordPress site.

Here’s how you can be extra sure:

  • Download directly from WP Staging: We recommend downloading the plugin from our website, wp-staging.com, or the free version from wordpress.org to avoid potential conflicts.
  • Reviews and Reputation: We have a long history of providing a safe and secure product. Check out the thousands of positive reviews from our users!

What you can do:

If you get such a false positive message from your hosting provider, please forward us the exact error message so we can look at the flagged file. Please also forward this article to them, tell them this is a false-positive error, and ask them to whitelist the WP Staging plugin.

Is there something else important to know?

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. We appreciate your understanding and continued trust in WP Staging. If you have any questions or concerns about this, please don’t hesitate to contact me and my team.

All the best,
René Hermenau, Founder

Author: Rene Hermenau

I'm René Hermenau, founder of WP STAGING. I've been building WordPress infrastructure software since 2013 and writing code on GitHub since 2011. My repos live at github.com/rene-hermenau. WP STAGING started as a small developer project solving the same problem I kept hitting on client work: there was no fast, safe way to clone a WordPress site for staging or migration without breaking serialized data, file paths, or media references. Today we are a team of more than 10 people. The free plugin runs on hundreds of thousands of WordPress installations, and the Pro version powers backup, migration, and staging workflows for agencies, hosting platforms, and ecommerce stores. I'm still hands-on with the codebase and technical architecture. Our releases are built as a team, but many of the core architectural decisions are ones I helped design, test, and evolve over the years: how we handle large database exports, how we keep memory usage flat on multi-GB sites, and how we make migrations atomic against partially written tables. "When you touch code, leave it 10% better than before and write a test." If you're stuck on a WP STAGING question, the docs are at wp-staging.com/docs. If you hit a bug, file it on GitHub at github.com/wp-staging. Our team reads everything that lands there.