Wordfence blocks WP-CRON

Hello Fonda61,
that sounds odd. Wordfence should not be blocking wp-cron. If you enable Wordfence and try to surf to wp-cron.php are you able to reach that page and get a 200 response? (You can check response codes of requests by keeping a browser console open while requesting the page).

I have reactivated Wordfence. There is an immediate issue detected by plugin WP Crontrol, it reports this error: “There was a problem spawning a call to the WP-Cron system on your site. This means WP-Cron events on your site may not work. The problem was:Unexpected HTTP response code: 503”.
I did exactly what you suggested above with a new window in firefox and console opened. This is what I see in the Network tab of the console:
GET https://www.fondaphotos.com/wp-cron.php [HTTP/1.1 200 OK 340 ms]

Hello Fonda61,
Thanks for trying that. Is it possible that wp-cron is working but that Wordfence is blocking the plugin “WP Crontrol” from accessing it?

Did you notice specific cron jobs that did not run? Which type of jobs were those in that case?

If you set the Wordfence “Firewall” to “Learning mode”, does “WP Crontrol” still report a problem with wp-cron?

Yes the problem persists with the firewall in learning mode or even disabled.
There are many tasks which are not executed:
– wordfence_daily_cron
– wordfence_hourly_cron
– newsletter (5 min frequency)
– newsletter_reports_country (5 min frequency)
– jetpack_clean_nonces (hourly)
That’s for the time being.

Now I have also set-up a cron task with the mechanism proposed by my hosting company. It runs every hour and launches the wp-cron.php file. Apparently this allows all the pending tasks to run. After that, tasks start piling-up again until the next run. I visit the site in the meantime which means that Wordfence prevents wp-cron from running when users visit the website.

Hello,
I’m glad you were able to find a temporary fix but if you are up for it I would like to get to the bottom of this. I installed “WP Crontrol”. Where in “WP Crontrol” were you seeing the error message?

I’m also curious to know what plugins you have installed. Would you consider sending me a diagnostics report? At the bottom of the Wordfence page “Diagnostics” click on “Send reporty by email” and change the prefilled address to [email protected]

Thanks for all the time you spend investigating this issue. I’m glad to help. I am sending you 2 emails, one with a screenshot that shows the error message, the other with the wordfence diags.

Hello Fonda61,
I looked at your files and checked with the team. The only reasonable possible cause we have come up with so far is that the Wordfence settings are somehow blocking wp-cron.

If you enable Wordfence again: After the “WP Crontrol” plugin reports that it can not spawn a wp-cron instance, can you see anything in the “Live Traffic” or “Blocked Ips” that looks like it could have been a block of wp-cron.php?

Are you possibly blocking your own servers IP in some manual block of IP-ranges on individual IPs? (You can try clearing all blocked IPs if you want).

I have cleared all blocked IPs and wp-cron is running well now. I don’t know which IP was responsible and how it got blocked (I never permanently block IPs which haven’t been blocked by wf initially) but the most important is that the issue is resolved.
A big thank you for your support!!!

I am having this same exact issue. Was a solution ever presented other than clearing out your blocked IP list?

I found a solution. I loaded my blocked IP list and after all were loaded I used the “Find” feature in my browser to search for my website hosting IP address. It was there in the blocked list. I unblocked it and the cron error went away.