Wordfence Cloud – Cloudflare issue

Hello @mdeluk and thanks for reaching out!

Head over to Wordfence Central, go to the Connection Issues tab. Clear out any sites that might be in here.

Now head over to your site and log in as an admin. Navigate to Tools > Diagnostics > Other Tests > Clear all Wordfence Central connection data. Clear the connection data and then from the Wordfence Dashboard, click on “Connect this site” in the Wordfence Central widget.

https://www.wordfence.com/help/central/connect/#troubleshooting-connection-issues also has some troubleshooting steps you could follow.

Let me know if this helps!

Thanks!

Hi Adam,

I actually managed to figure this out last night, it was due to the maintenance plugin I had enabled.

Is there any maintenance plugins that Wordfence is compatible with that wont flag up errors?

Hello again @mdeluk

They should work fine. Are you seeing blocks when using a maintenance plugin? You should be able to navigate to Tools > Live Traffic and whitelist those actions.

You could also try Learning Mode:
From the Wordfence Dashboard click on Manage WAF. Then you will see Basic Firewall Options > Web Application Firewall Status. Change the option to Learning Mode. Now perform the actions that were causing issues. This will help Wordfence learn that these actions are normal and it will allow them in the future. After you have finished performing the actions, switch the WAF from Learning Mode back to Enabled and Protecting. Now test to see if these actions work correctly.

https://www.wordfence.com/help/firewall/learning-mode/ is an amazing resource for learning more about the WAF and learning mode.

Let me know if that helps!

Thanks!

Hey

They are actually already in learning mode.

The issue is with Wordfence Central which gets a “Error Detected” connection issue as soon as I enabled the plugin, well a few minutes maybe an hour after.

I am using two different maintenance plugins on two different sites, but they stop working when this is the only thing that is enabled/changed.

Site using “Brenda” plugin gets this message:
“We received a non-200 HTTP code when connecting to your site: 401. The response was Only authenticated users can access the REST API.”

Site using “SeedProd” maintenance plugin gets this message:
“We’ve detected CloudFlare blocking our requests to your site. For help on resolving this issue, see our troubleshooting connection issues article here.”

100% not a CloudFlare issue as IP is whitelisted and it works perfectly fine after I disabled SeedProd and leave it an hour two.

Cheers

@mdeluk

This could be an issue with the REST API access. I see these types of errors often when the host is blocking or limited access to the REST API. Check with them to make sure this is not an issue.

Let me know what you find!

Thanks!

Nah it can’t be a host issue. We have other sites on our dedicated server that are working 100% fine (but they don’t have maintenance plugins installed).

The only sites we have issues with have active maintenance plugins… it’s 100% to do with this.

Can you send a diagnostic report to wftest @ wordfence . com? You can find the link to do so at the top of the Wordfence Tools > Diagnostics page. Then click on “Send Report by Email”. Please add your forum username where indicated and respond here after you have sent it.

I’ll review the plugins list to see if I can find anything wrong with it.

Thanks!

Hi Adam,

No problem I have sent a report from both the sites with issues, thank you ??

Matt

Thanks for sending those reports in @mdeluk

I did a bit of research on the The Coming Soon Page & Maintenance Mode by SeedProd plugin. It disables the WordPress REST API and you can’t change that behaviour unless you upgrade their plugin to the premium version.

In order to connect to Wordfence Central, your REST API needs to be enabled. Which is why it works when you disable this plugin.

Hope this helps!

Thanks again!

Ah okay I see, is that the case with the Brenda plugin then as well on the other site?