Blank ithemes security pages after updating to 8.1.2

Hi xberg,

Do you remember from what release you updated to 8.1.2 ?
Was it 8.1.1 or 8.1.0 or even older ?

One thing you could try is deactivate the plugin and then manually delete and copy back the 8.1.2 better-wp-security folder. This way you are 100% sure the installed files are complete/correct. Then activate the plugin again and see whether the issue is resolved.

+++++ To prevent any confusion, I’m not iThemes +++++

Hi @nlpro
Thank you for your kind support despite not belonging to iThemes!

I was upgrading from V8.0.2 to 8.1.2.

After your note I disabled and deleted iThemes Security, then re-installed through the classic process of “add an extension”.

After this same bug symptoms as before: blank page on “configuration (settings)” page. It seems iThemes did not keep my settings when I used the delete function of the WP panel: not a huge issue but something to keep in mind (and also why you probably recommended to manually delete)

So 8.1.2 breaks on some configurations.

Yes, the manual approach keeps your old settings.

Hmm, looks like a react specific issue.

No errors in the browser console ?

Further tests:

– downgraded to 8.0.2 (after deleting the plugin). After a new configuration setup settings page works but the dashboard page was blank for 15 minutes, and then suddenly worked.

– updated to 8.1.2: settings and dashboard page blank.

@timothyblynjacobs

There seems to be some react issue with 8.1.2.
Can you give us any advise how to debug an issue like this?

Hello,

I’ve got the same problem. The JS console is full of errors from ithemes’ JS files.

Screenshot: https://ibb.co/7zwSNVc

• This reply was modified 2 years, 11 months ago by simkog.
• This reply was modified 2 years, 11 months ago by simkog. Reason: edit image link

Found what caused the problem for me. I have this code snippet to remove query strings from links on my site.

// remove query strings
function acme_remove_cssjs_ver( $src ) {
  if( strpos( $src, '?ver=' ) ) {
    $src = remove_query_arg( 'ver', $src );
  }
  return $src;
}
add_filter( 'style_loader_src', 'acme_remove_cssjs_ver', 10, 2 );
add_filter( 'script_loader_src', 'acme_remove_cssjs_ver', 10, 2 );

modified to this:

// remove query strings
function acme_remove_cssjs_ver( $src ) {
  if( is_admin() || wp_doing_ajax() ) return $src;
  
  if( strpos( $src, '?ver=' ) ) {
    $src = remove_query_arg( 'ver', $src );
  }
  return $src;
}
add_filter( 'style_loader_src', 'acme_remove_cssjs_ver', 10, 2 );
add_filter( 'script_loader_src', 'acme_remove_cssjs_ver', 10, 2 );

• This reply was modified 2 years, 11 months ago by simkog.

@simkog

Thank you for letting us (the community) know.
How did you find out?

@nlpro Turned off all of my plugins / mu-plugins / themes. That caused the iThemes Security Dashboard to show up. After that, I turned them all on one by one and found out this small snippet caused the problem. Somehow the plugin’s JS files don’t like the URLs if the ?ver query string is missing.

Ah right, classic WordPress debugging. Well done.

@xberg

Are there any errors in the browser console ?

I’m sorry you’re experiencing this issue @xberg, @nlpro is correct, you’ll want to look for errors in your browser console. That’s really the only way we can figure out what is causing the issue.

@simkog I’m glad you got your issue sorted. For future reference, the issue is that removing the query string from the script URLs prevents your browser from “busting the cache” and will end up serving stale versions of JavaScript files. We wouldn’t recommend using a code snippet like that without some other mechanism of “busting the cache”.

@timothyblynjacobs
Thanks Timothy, your input is much appreciated.

@simkog

…some other mechanism of “busting the cache”.

Like manually clearing the browser cache. Anyway changing the code snippet like you did is a far better (server) solution ??

Hi @xberg, I hope the information provided helped resolve the issue. Since we haven’t received a response, I’ll mark this post resolved. If you still need some assistance, feel free to open a new support topic, and we’d be happy to assist. Thank you!