NORG Edge Router for WordPress

• Any request while disabled, or carrying the x-norg-edge loop-guard header or an upgrade header.
• Admin, AJAX, cron, WP-CLI and XML-RPC requests; WordPress internal paths and rest_route requests.
• Anything but GET, except HEAD on NORG’s own artefacts and POST to the MCP path.

1. A marked request (?norg_edge) is made uncacheable, whatever follows.
2. Traditional search crawlers (googlebot, bingbot, applebot, duckduckbot, baiduspider, yandex, slurp) are passed through. This list is a constant; no setting reaches it.
3. The user agent is matched against the policy feed by lower-cased substring; the first match wins.
4. The matched pattern’s serving policy decides what happens, as below.

Ranges are published by the operators and refreshed by NORG daily (OpenAI’s and Anthropic’s JSON files, Perplexity’s two files, Meta via its autonomous system). Which address is checked depends on NORG_TRUSTED_PROXY: auto takes CF-Connecting-IP from a Cloudflare peer, the last X-Forwarded-For or X-Real-IP hop from a private or shared-space proxy, else REMOTE_ADDR. A query string ?agent=true forces the mirror for a preview, if one exists.

A 200 from the content service is served. A definite 404 triggers a render request and the strip fallback: the live page is captured in an outer output buffer, scripts, styles, navigation and other chrome are removed, and the result is served with X-Norg-Edge: stripped if at least 120 words remain; otherwise the untouched page is served. A transport error, timeout or any other status serves the untouched page.

On a mirror response the plugin defines DONOTCACHEPAGE, DONOTCACHEOBJECT, DONOTMINIFY and DONOTROCKETOPTIMIZE, and calls LiteSpeed’s no-cache hook. For agents to reach it in the first place, it registers the agent user agents with WP Rocket, LiteSpeed Cache, WP Super Cache, WP Fastest Cache, W3 Total Cache and FlyingPress when it detects them (the page caches section lists each mechanism). Caches that run before PHP at the host need a host rule; WP Engine’s is one internal rewrite. Mirror HTML is deliberately not marked noindex. NORG’s shared assets under /.norg/ are served cacheable for 60 s.

The key is read from the constant on each request and never written to the database. The settings screen shows the field as locked, and the REST connect endpoint answers 409 rather than overwrite it.

The key is encrypted before it is saved, with a key derived from the site’s own authentication salt (wp_salt('auth')), using libsodium’s secretbox where available, otherwise AES-256-GCM via OpenSSL. Rotating the salts makes the stored key unreadable and it must be re-entered.

Page content from WordPress. Cookies or authorisation headers. Anything at all for an ordinary human visitor while the plugin is in serving mode. The one flow that describes people, citation page-views, runs only in record-only mode and is described in the table above exactly as it is built.

• Settings screen. Settings → NORG Edge Router: Site ID and Site Key (masked; leave empty to keep), environment, visitor-address source, the switches above, status rows, the cache-plugin table, host advice, and the read-only list of agent user agents for your host.
• REST. GET norg-edge/v1/status and POST norg-edge/v1/connect, both requiring manage_options. NORG’s dashboard uses them with a WordPress Application Password you issue and can revoke. Connect never returns the key and answers 409 when the values are pinned in wp-config.php.
• WP-CLI. wp norg-edge configure, status, check, heartbeat and apply-cache-bypass, running the same code paths as the screen.
• Site Health. Three tests under Tools → Site Health: connection, AI agents reach the plugin, background tasks.
• Keyed health probe. A request carrying x-norg-edge-check equal to the Site Key (compared in constant time) receives a JSON status; off with NORG_EDGE_ORIGIN_PROBE.

The manifest names a version, a package URL (a GitHub release asset) and its SHA-256. The plugin downloads the package itself and refuses it unless the file’s hash matches. A valid Site ID and key select the general or canary channel; the manifest itself carries no secret. Automatic installation follows NORG_EDGE_AUTO_UPDATE; with it off, the update appears on the Plugins screen for an administrator to approve. The status page reports when DISALLOW_FILE_MODS or AUTOMATIC_UPDATER_DISABLED prevents updates. Minimum WordPress 6.0 and PHP 7.4; no other runtime libraries.

Deactivate removes the cron events, the entries it added to cache plugins, the .htaccess block if one was written, and its lock. Uninstall additionally deletes its options (settings included), the update-manifest transient and every _transient_norg_edge_* row. On request NORG deletes the site’s mirrors and record.