disabling image CDN on SSL – leaves img src artifacts-breaks Top & Related Posts

Hey there! Thanks for reaching out about that.

The reason why you’re seeing that is because we use Photon in some areas of Jetpack, even when you’ve disabled the module. When we think we really need Photon, we keep leverage it.

In you case, in Related Posts and the Top Posts widget, we want to create resized images that will fit the layout. Since we can’t just do that with CSS, as it would be terrible for performance, we use the Photon features.

Does it make sense to you? Let me know if you need further clarification ??

Hi, yes this helps me understand what’s happening. I still need to know what the solution is?

Do I enable photon for a period of time so these photos are archived or do I have to discontinue use of the related posts and Top posts features because it seems that the SSL is too slow on the site to work well with photon?

ETA: The reason I disabled the image cdn is because it left all images unavailable on the site while the images were being saved to the CDN. This was not especially acceptable to me because I didn’t know how long that would be the case. How could a person estimate how long to expect this mirroring of images to take?

• This reply was modified 6 years, 11 months ago by arcane.

Then I upgraded the site to SSL in August and it broke the images for Related posts and for the Top Posts widget. Perhaps I didn’t leave it on long enough initially for jetpack to upload the images again – or maybe I did and the SSL slows the site too much for the image CDN to work or something else about my site configurations precludes this.

At present, you seem to have your Related Posts and Top Posts widget set to display text only. Can you temporarily enable images on one of these areas so that we can see the issue you described?

Thank you.

Hi! I have done as requested with the top pages and posts widget as well as related posts. I had changed it back to this when it looked like the thread may not be answered. I will leave it as is for the interim for troubleshooting. Thank you!

We see the issue you were referring to.

Have you made any en masse changes to the media of your site recently?

For example, does the following file still exist in your media library?

uploads/2014/03/IMG_5092.jpg

Once we get some feedback, we can take the next troubleshooting step in resolving your issue.

Hi! I have made a number of changes to photos recently – mostly header/feature image replacements – but this problem existed a long time before that.

In August/September, I upgraded the site to SSL and this is when the related posts / top posts broke. I gave it a day to catch up during which many photos were missing not just the top and related posts photos. So I turned off photon. That gave me the result of all photos except the top and related photos working. Fast forward to a week ago when I did a whole bunch of cleanup on the site and replaced photos that weren’t sized right for the theme. Then that left only the Top and related posts not working and that’s when I posted.

Yes, that photo and 4 resized versions still exist and are dated 4/9/2015 when I ftp in to look. It’s the 5th photo on this page: https://archaicarcane.com/stuck-in-the-middle-frozen-slant-o-matics/ as well as the feature image.

Thank you for helping.

The issue appears to be that the Photon User-Agent is being blocked. Can you please whitelist requests to image files made from the Photon/1.0 user agent?

Thank you.

Alright, so I have 4 options here.

1. In the webserver “visitor” logs, I see requests for those image files from the 192.0.[64-127].[1-254] range, so I’ve whitelisted this in Wordfence. Wordfence does not have a way to whitelist by user-agent. This is done but I don’t think it worked. I don’t see any requests being blocked or allowed via Wordfence’s Live Activity. I think that is key. I should be seeing the requests either allowed or denied and I’m not so I think it’s further up the chain.

2. (Wordfence) Disable the “Block IPs who send POST requests with blank User-Agent and Referer” option that seems to be working for other plugin issues but this is undesirable because it will have a larger effect than just the photos being available to Photon.

3. The webserver has hotlink protection enabled. I suspect this might be part of the issue? I don’t recall enabling it but maybe I did around the same time and thought it was the SSL? I had been troubleshooting someone else’s website that had had a data breach so I may have been trying to lock my own site down further. It looks like I can only whitelist this by URL so I’ve added https://i0.wp.com, https://i1.wp.com, https://i2.wp.com, https://i3.wp.com, https://i4.wp.com but I don’t think it’s going to work – enabled just before I posted this reply. Will update if it does.

4. The last thing I can do is whitelist in .htaccess. I think this line of “code” would work? RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !*Photon* [NC] This feels undesirable because a user-agent can be spoofed but I can do it for testing.

Which would you think would work best here? Or did I miss an option?

OK, it’s definitely the hotlink protection. I opted to remove jpgs from the file types protected and just like that, all of the images for top posts and related posts reappeared.

So, is there a way to keep the hotlink protection enabled and whitelist the CDN servers? Hotlink protection in cPanel only wants to use website addresses (the https://iX.wp.com additions don’t work), and it looks like Photon acts a little like a crawler? How do I make the 2 work together?

So, is there a way to keep the hotlink protection enabled and whitelist the CDN servers?

The Whitelist all communications between WordPress.com and Jetpack section here may assist you:

https://jetpack.com/support/hosting-faq/

Afterwards, if you’re still having an issue with your hotlink protection configuration, please try reaching out to your host or a specialization expert for feedback:

https://jetpack.pro/

Thank you.

Thank you. I’ve spent some time with that post already. I will spend some more time with the host. ??

Excellent! Keep us posted and let us know if you need more help from our end ??

Will do. ??