Making a site backup with Wordfence installed

Hi @rgrigoletti, great news that you’re enjoying Wordfence!

You shouldn’t need to disable Wordfence when making a backup. If your backup action is being blocked, you could try doing it when in Learning Mode. From the Wordfence Dashboard click on Manage WAF. Then you will see Basic Firewall Options > Web Application Firewall Status. Change the option to Learning Mode. Now perform the actions that were causing issues. This will help Wordfence learn that these actions are normal and it will allow them in the future. After you have finished performing the actions, switch the WAF from Learning Mode back to Enabled and Protecting. Now test to see if these actions work correctly.

https://www.wordfence.com/help/firewall/learning-mode/ is an amazing resource for learning more about the WAF and learning mode.

You can also ensure your backup is including all Wordfence database tables by referring to the Wordfence 7 Tables section of: https://www.wordfence.com/help/advanced/remove-or-reset/. Don’t follow the remove or reset instructions though, it’s just for table name reference.

I hope that helps you out.

Thanks,

Peter.

Hi @wfpeter, thank you very much for the answer and the instructions!

Peter, I have another question, even bigger. I have a website that has Wordfence installed and it is the main domain in hosting. I want to install another site on the same hosting, in a subdomain folder. When I try to migrate this new site using the Duplicator plug-in, it gives the following warning during installation: “Wordfence Firewall detected at home/public_html. The Wordfence (blah, blah, blah) … We recommend turning off the Wordfence firewall of the WordPress instance located at the mentioned path “. How do I proceed? In this case, do I need to reset the Firewall? I tried to disable the firewall, but the warning continues.
Thanks in advance.

Hi @rgrigoletti,

Thanks for your supplementary question. It is recommended for the sake of efficiency and accuracy to have 1 installation of Wordfence per WordPress site, even on a shared space such as this. However, when duplicating a site, Wordfence may continue to point to the old site’s path and effectively detect 2 installations running for the same site, which is why you’re seeing this warning.

The auto_prepend_file = code is added to .htaccess in the root directory of your site by Wordfence so that it can run before any other scripts on your site to detect problems.

Now that you have duplocated the site to a 2nd location, if you open the new site’s .htaccess with the file manager/editor of your choice and alter the path from /home/public_html/wordfence-waf.php to reflect the new site’s path such as /home1/public_html/wordfence-waf.php, then this should resolve your conflict.

Thanks,

Peter.

Hello Peter, how are you?
Thanks for the quick response.
In fact, Wordfence is active on the website that is already installed, not on the website that I intend to migrate as a sub-domain. In this second website Wordfence is not yet installed. The Duplicator warning appears when I start the migration process for this website, as it recognizes the firewall that is active on the website that is already hosting.

Hi @rgrigoletti,

I’ve looked into this further for you and a separate installation per site of WordPress is certainly recommended from a security and efficiency point of view. Just ensure that the waf location is correct as I highlighted above and you’ve disabled Scan files outside your WordPress installation in Wordfence > Scan > Scan Options and Scheduling to prevent Wordfence from one site scanning the other site’s folder.

Thanks again,

Peter.