Strange issue when trying to login.

I’m having the exact same issue with one of my sites.

My client is now having the same issue on one of the sites. So its not browser related. Strange that it suddenly started doing it?

Hello, @611design

Thanks for your patience.

Can you send diagnostics from one of the sites that is working and one of the sites that is not working to wftest @ wordfence . com by going to Wordfence > Tools > Diagnostics > Send Report by Email. There, enter your forum username in the second field and let me know here when those are sent. Please also confirm which site is allowing a login and which is not.

I see on the site you listed here you have a plugin that looks to slightly modify the login form. Can you confirm if you disable that the issue is persisting? If you have a staging site, or can test on a live site, are you able to log in with only the Wordfence plugin active? If so, there may be a second plugin conflicting, or potentially a theme.

Thanks,
Scott

Hi Scott

Thanks very much for getting in touch. I have sent you 2 reports, one from https://themerchantshousehotel.co.uk/ which lets me login fine.

the one from https://riversidesalisbury.co.uk/ does not let me login.

They both use the Impreza theme and these plugins with the same setup. The riverside did originally work but not now and they are both running the same setup and versions of the plugins and on the same server.

Imagify
Really Simple SSL
UpSolution Core
Wordfence Security
WPBakery Page Builder
WPForms Lite
Yoast SEO

Im not using anything to modify the login page but i think the theme has a white label option but im not using that. I have not tried switching off all other plugins. I did try the Yoast as i have had issues with that in the past but that did nothing. Its when i rename the Wordfence folder by FTP to old.wordfence which then disables the the plugin and lets me in. Nearly all my sites run the same Theme and im slowly finding more each day displaying the same issues. I run a couple on another theme and have not had the issue yet.

I will try turning off plugins and using a default theme and let you know the results.

Thanks, Andy

Scott, after a little bit more testing and realising that a site that does not use Impreza had the same issue, its looks like its the combination of Wordfence and WPBakery (js_composer) as disabling it on the site that runs the other theme i can then login, so i did the same on the Riverside and then i can login.

But most of my sites run Wordfence and WPBakery and a lot are fine, no issues logging in but slowly more are starting to have the issue, most are on the same version of WPBakery, so im not sure what is causing the issue.

If you find anything in the Wordfence log that would be interesting. I aslo run 2FA on all and might test one without on a broken login site and see what that does.

Thanks for confirming. I do not initially see anything standing out in the diagnostics. Can you confirm that disabling WPBakery on all sites having this issue is solving it currently?

Thanks again,
Scott

Hi @wfscott

Yes turning it off always lets me in. The strange thing is that i have many sites all with the same setup of WP Bakery and no issues. WP Bakery is enhanced with the Impreza wordpress theme but i also have a site with just the standard WP Bakery install and that has the issue but uses another theme.

Also i work for an agency and use the same setup as my sites and non of those have the issue so im stumped? I tried replacing the WP Bakery on the broken site with a copy from a working site but no change. If you see this site https://newforesttkd.co.uk/wp-login.php which is just the standalone WP Bakery with a different theme. I have saved the password and login details but when i go to login you cant click the Eye icon to see the password, its like that on any that don’t work. Also a client on a site with the issue called to say they could not login and it was the same issue that i get so its not a local thing?

Im a bit stumped. If i cant work it out i will have to try a different security plugin to see if that works ok.

Thanks for the additional information. I see WPBakery is a premium plugin and I’m unable to check on specific settings currently, however, it is possible there is a specific option in that plugin that all the affected sites have enabled. Are you able to take a look and see if anything stands out there?

Hi Scott

I have checked the settings and they both seem the same. On the ones that you cant login the little password reveal Eye wont let you reveal the password. If i inspect the eye button and then go to the console tab on the ones that you cant login there are 3 jQuery errors showing but on the ones that you can login you don’t see these, any thoughts??

Uncaught ReferenceError: jQuery is not defined
at password-strength-meter.min.js?ver=192d8c0342b888f38ebc96e3483c053e:2:1081
wp-util.min.js?ver=192d8c0342b888f38ebc96e3483c053e:2 Uncaught ReferenceError: jQuery is not defined
at wp-util.min.js?ver=192d8c0342b888f38ebc96e3483c053e:2:1384
user-profile.min.js?ver=192d8c0342b888f38ebc96e3483c053e:2 Uncaught ReferenceError: jQuery is not defined
at user-profile.min.js?ver=192d8c0342b888f38ebc96e3483c053e:2:6234

Thanks for your patience here, @611design

Checking with the QA team, on the site you mentioned as having the issue, we also noticed the jQuery issue:

user-profile.min.js?ver=6.5.2:2 Uncaught ReferenceError: jQuery is not defined

Missing jQuery would break both Wordfence’s login and likely the eye icon that shows your password, that you mentioned.

We were seeing jquery.min.js on the site you mentioned that was working correctly, so that does appear to be related to the issue.

Can you confirm if you have the Wordfence captcha enabled on some or all of the sites that are having the issue, or if 2FA is enabled on all those sites, for example? If so, can you please try briefly disabling the captcha/2FA on one of the sites that is having the problem to see if there is any change?

Hi Scott

Thanks for the reply and taking to time to look into this. Yes, turning off 2FA stops the login issue. If i disable the 2FA on the affected site it lets me login fine with both Wordfence and WP Bakery activated. BUT if i set the 2FA up again from scratch the error comes back?

Any other thoughts?

Andy

Andy,

Thanks for the additional information and for your patience.

If you’d like to try using 2FA again, you can try enabling that and inputting the 2FA code directly on to the end of the password when you submit the login.

I would also check to see if the captcha is enabled on any affected sites to see if you can disable the captcha, but use 2FA still.

I am going to check on my side to test with the plugin when possible and I will update you if I see anything standing out.

Scott

Hi Scott

Sorry for my late reply! If i add the 2FA to the end of the login URL that seems to work fine. Is that what you were suggesting?

If it works like this i can live with it but its not ideal.

with the captcha, are you talking about it being on the login page or just on the website as a whole? some i run the google captcha on the contact page btu that would not be the mail page or login. I will see if there is any correlation between the sites that have the issue and the ones that run the captcha.

Thanks

Andy

Andy,

Thanks for your patience here. We were able to take a closer look at the WPBakery code.

The two functions?outputGlobalHeaderCustomHtml()?and?outputPostHeaderCustomJs()?in the file?js_composer/include/classes/core/class-vc-base.php?are both hooked to the filter?print_head_scripts.

When using that filter, the function is supposed to return a value?Whether to print the head scripts. Default true., however, the WP Bakery plugin is using it as if it were an action, and it is just returning nothing. When the function returns nothing, to WordPress that means to not print scripts. jQuery and our scripts do load when we comment out those hooks.

I recommend checking back with WPBakery on that and they can see about implementing a change based on the above.

Thanks,
Scott

Hi Scott

Thanks for all your time on this issue. I will try and pass on the info to WP bakery and see what they say.

If i get a response i will let you know what they say.

Andy