Does Wordfence conflict with Google Cloud Engine?

  • We installed the plugin on WordPress hosted by Google Compute Engine and trying to see if there are any conflicts. The developer said the following:

    “Because the Wordfence plugin really messes up the routing between the GCE VM instance VPC (Internal) network (there are 2 networks; one private and one public for each VM), the auto-scaling feature, regional/Zone transfer/migration, built-in load-balancing as well as the built-in WAF, we will not be able to use the Wordfence plugin.”

    Just want to check if there are settings we need to adjust to allow this to work?

    Thanks!

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

  • Hi @vegaspro22,

    Your developer mentioned a few issues, but I believe there are two settings you can change to allow Wordfence to work.

    1. Enabling MySQLi storage engine

    By default, Wordfence will save firewall related data within /wp-content/wflogs/*. However, in an instanced setup, the file-system is read-only.

    To get around this, add the line define('WFWAF_STORAGE_ENGINE', 'mysqli'); after <?php on a new line within /wordfence-waf.php.

    Wordfence will then save all its firewall data within the database instead of attempting to use the file-system.

    https://www.wordfence.com/help/firewall/mysqli-storage-engine/

    2. Making sure that inbound IP addresses are correct

    If your site is also behind a proxy or load balancer, you may need to change How does Wordfence get IPs.

    To do this, find out what your IP address by visiting https://www.google.com/search?q=what+is+my+ip and then compare that to Your IP with this setting to make sure that they match.

    3. Using Import/Export settings when migrating

    If you’re moving your WordPress site to another host, you should go into Wordfence -> Tools -> Import/Export options and copy the exported token.

    Once your new site is up, reinstall Wordfence (remembering to check off Delete tables and data on deactivation) and import the token.

    —

    What I would recommend is setting up a staging site to see if Wordfence works properly with your environment first. If you do find any issues, feel free to come back and we’ll see if we can tweak some other settings to get it to work.

    Dave

    Thread Starter vegaspro22

    (@vegaspro22)

    Hi Dave, thanks for the response. This is on a staging site already. Does that change anything you have said?

    Hi again,

    It does not, I recommended having Wordfence on a staging site first, so if it breaks your website, it won’t be shown to your users.

    Dave

    Thread Starter vegaspro22

    (@vegaspro22)

    yes, we are 100% on staging site first. So we will follow the steps.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • The topic ‘Does Wordfence conflict with Google Cloud Engine?’ is closed to new replies.