Unable to Install – site inaccessible

  • Just installed and tried to activate WordFence on my WP site. Installed from the dashboard and everything seemed to go fine.

    Upon activation, I entered the email address as requested, received the confirmation email and clicked on the link.

    Read the part about leaving the Firewall in “training” mode.

    Went to the next step. I downloaded a backup of my .htaccess file and clicked the button to continue.

    This resulted in an error page “Internal Server Error.” There was a sentence about notifying the site administrator (me) of the problem. No detail or suggested solutions.

    This apparently locked up my site. No access to any WP admin functions. The regular site access was also gone. Everything resulted in the same “Internal Server Error” page.

    I was able to restore all site functionality by putting back the original .ht access file. I then deactivated WordFence.

    Any idea what the problem could be? Could this be caused by my host’s additional security for WP sites? (Anything WP get bombarded by attacks, so they have had to install additional security measures).

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

  • I had similar problems quite some time ago when I first started working with Wordfence. What got things fixed was working with my hosting provider, as well as being very careful about plugin conflicts (testing Wordfence with no other plugins loaded, for example), as well as testing with a stripped down generic theme.

    There are probably hundreds of things that could cause behavior as you describe. The trouble shooting process is a logical series of steps involving things like your server logs. Again, hopefully your host can help you begin that process.

    Wordfence folks here are helpful, but clearly they are overwhelmed with trying to provide free tech support. I bought Premium version, still not immediate support but it’s better on that side. Premium is highly recommended, better firewall and country blocking.

    MTN

    Thread Starter jrm21

    (@jrm21)

    Thanks for the info. Could you provide any detail as to what your hosting provided did to fix the problem?

    I am having several issues at the moment, and I am sure they are related.

    Besides WordFence not activating, I have a Twitter widget that will not authenticate and have tried two Google analytic plug-ins that will not authenticate. Interestingly, these plug-ins work on another site I have hosted with the same provider. There is something specific to this one site, and the problems persist even with a standard theme.

    I have worked with the developer of my custom theme, but they cannot track down the issue (which doesn’t seem to be caused by their theme). My provider simply tells me that other WP sites on his server (including my own) work just fine.

    I have no idea where to start. We thought problems might be with some permissions on the wp-admin folder, but changing that didn’t seem to fix anything.

    It been very frustrating. My provider is very accommodating… but I don’t know the right questions to ask.

    • This reply was modified 7 years, 10 months ago by jrm21.
    • This reply was modified 7 years, 10 months ago by jrm21.

    Hello, interesting I got involved in this discussion, as my hosting provider just did a server software upgrade and broke my Wordfence firewall, which has now reverted to “Basic.” Groan x 2. I’m so sick of this stuff.

    In any case, it was almost a year ago that my host did get the WF firewall to fully function. This is their summary of the process (which I now have to engage them in again, groan x 2.)

    “backup copy the cPanel PHP wrapper script and then I edited the wrapper to check first for a php.ini in the public_html, then if none is found check the user dir, then if none is found to
    check in the normal location of the global php.ini. Then I copied the cPanel PHP wrapper script to a more permanent location in case I recompile Apache at some point. Then I created
    local php.ini files for the three domains, using the directive needed for each in the corresponding local php.ini file, corrected perms, and restarted Apache.”

    MTN

    BTW, one of the reasons I pay for premium WF is so I can use the Firewall in “Extended Protection” mode. If this involves hours of configuration work more than once a year, I’m done and will revert back to the unpaid Wordfence, combined with IQ Block Country plugin for my country blocking. So we shall see. I have a test site I can experiment with, can’t say much more than that for fear of talking too much about Premium version and violating forum rules.

    MTN

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