Don't Log Admins Not Working Properly

Do you mean that you are seeing your own IP on Wordfence’s “Live Traffic” page — not the site’s access_log file, correct?

On the Wordfence Options page, have you tried adding your IP to the “List of comma separated IP addresses to ignore”? This should ignore your IP on the Live Traffic page whether you are logged in or not.

You might also try enabling “Don’t log signed-in users with publishing access”, if it is ok not to log other users on the site who have publishing access.

Right now, all of these options are still working for me, so if they do not help, let us know.

Hi WFMatt

Yes that is what I meant.

Those options are already set and have been all along – I’ve never seen my own access logged before and that’s why I wrote – Yes, I tried adding my user names and was still seeing it. Didn’t use my ip, sometimes it’s dynamic. I can try now, but still expected WF to honor the settings (Don’t log signed-in users with publishing access) (or the user names)

I will try the ip now but that won’t be a permanent solution for me.

Hi again,

Blocking the current IP worked though the setting (Don’t log signed-in users with publishing access) isn’t working for whatever reason, nor is the (List of comma separated usernames to ignore:)

Ok, thanks for checking on these — it helps rule out certain possible problems.

Do you know that the IP Wordfence is showing is definitely your own IP? I ask because if you added CloudFlare to the site, or if your host added a reverse proxy of another type, it can change the IP that Wordfence sees. (If you’re behind a firewall, googling “my ip” should tell you your public IP that should match Wordfence’s Live Traffic page.)

Also, do you have any plugins that modify user roles? I haven’t seen the “Don’t log signed-in users with publishing access” option fail before, and since ignoring the IP worked, I don’t think it’s an issue with the plugin’s settings being saved/loaded correctly.

You’re welcome.

Yes I do know it is my ip. (Google: “my ip”)

I do not use CF.

No plugins modifying user roles. No users except for those I am in control of.

I hadn’t seen the “Don’t log signed-in users with publishing access” option fail before either.

I have certain urls on my site that only “I” use or can access and I saw it in my logs last night, with my user info, when I never have before.

This is definitely an unusual issue — ignoring traffic by IP address is after ignoring by username, so it’s not breaking before it gets there!

First try enabling the option “Disable config caching” on the Wordfence Options page. If your config cache was somehow broken (possibly file permissions or something the host has changed), it might cause a problem like this.

Next, are you using any plugins that cache database requests? It’s possible for a plugin like that to return incorrect results in some cases.

If that still doesn’t help, if you can try disabling other plugins and switching to a default theme like twentyfifteen (temporarily), and see if it works again after that, it could help identify a plugin conflict. If any of the plugins modify the user information within WordPress, it could be changing the user before the user is matched.

I found it unusual too – especially since I’ve never seen it do this before and have had the same theme, the same plugins and WF since I put the site up 3 years ago.

I tried disabling config caching per your suggestion – logged in – checked the logs, and it’s logging me. So, I added the IP back, saved, logged out, back in and I’m not in the logs.

Last, I do not use any caching plugins. I had tried them a long while back, but they caused issues I wasn’t happy with and was willing to sacrifice the few seconds of time to do without them. I’m not working for Google speed page results.

With that said, I can try the disable plugin thing, theme etc – if I get a chance, but will have to leave it as it is for now… the biggest puzzle is nothing has changed except wordpress and plugin updates. and this didn’t occur.

Hi WFMattR,

Just an FYI – not sure these are related – but I also noticed something else the last few days (since the last update in fact) I don’t have anything in “Pages not found” when I typically do, and it’s the first thing I check in my logs… however I do know that there ARE 404s because I caught an IP trying to hack, hack away in “Top Consumers”. So I have to assume that something has changed that is preventing the filter for pages not found to be working correctly, as it normally would.

Thanks for the update — the 404 issue is a known bug and the dev team is working on it, so that should be unrelated.

Let me know when you do check on the plugins — if it is an incompatibility, you might need the other plugin’s author to fix it, but we can take a look at it here too.

There is also a chance that the host has changed something that is causing problems, or (though this would be very rare) a database bug or recovery from a power loss may have made a duplicate row in the options database or caused a broken index.

If you want, you could reinstall Wordfence entirely. If you want to keep your settings you can use the “Export Wordfence Settings” button on the Options page, and save a copy of the token it gives you. Then if you turn on the option “Delete Wordfence tables and data on deactivation”, and deactivate and remove the plugin, then install it again, you should have a fresh start. You could check your Live Traffic first to see if it is working, then paste the token into the import box at the bottom of the Options page, and click the Import Settings button, to bring back your settings and see if it still works.

Hi Matt,

I may try the uninstall, reinstall – even before the plugins route –

I have to take into account the fact that they’re all the same plugins as when I originally put the site up and haven’t changed. I also keep them at a bare minimum. There’s really very few.

Also – I have to note though that although you said the 404 thing is a known issue, it started around the same time I noticed my ip being logged – I’ve rarely seen the Page Not Found page completely blank. I do though see that 404’s are occurring with my redirection log. (Not valid 404s mind you, but ips trying to poke) So something is wrong with WF.

Ok — we just had an update today that fixes the 404’s (version 6.0.17), so let me know if the other problem seems to go away, too.

The other options (ignoring by username, logged-in users w/ publishing access, etc.) were working on our test servers even when the 404’s weren’t, so that’s why I was still thinking there is another issue — but there could also be something different about your host’s configuration where something unexpected happens, and they still may be related!

Thanks Matt,

I will try and let you know ??

Hi Matt,

Update fixed the issue. Thanks! ??

Great, thanks for the follow-up. I’m still not sure why that was happening on your server, but not on our test servers, but that’s good that it’s working normally again.

Hi Matt,

I’m not sure either. I’m not savvy with server side things – so no clues on my end but I’m glad it worked out too. Thanks again for all of your help.