Wordfence on 2 WordPress Installs (main site & test site

  • I have two WordPress installations. They are exact copies of one another. One is my main site and the other is a test site. I have the Wordfence plugin installed on both. I just logged into my test site WordPress dashboard for the first time and it is asking me to optimize the word fence firewall.

    A dialog box pops up and says this: To make your site as secure as possible, the Wordfence Web Application Firewall is designed to run via a PHP setting called auto_prepend_file, which ensures it runs before any potentially vulnerable code runs. This PHP setting is currently in use, and is including this file: /home/associat/public_html/wordfence-waf.php

    Question #1: The file above is for my main site. Shouldn’t that file be in the directory for my test site since that is the WordPress install I am currently logged on to?

    Also on the dialog box it says: You can proceed with the installation and we will include this from within our wordfence-waf.php file which should maintain compatibility with your site, or you can opt to override the existing PHP setting.

    Question #2: Then it has a toggle button that says include/Override. I assume I click include, correct?

    Then it says: NOTE: If you have separate WordPress installations with Wordfence installed within a subdirectory of this site, it is recommended that you perform the Firewall installation procedure on those sites before this one.

    Question #3: I don’t understand the above note. Do I need to do anything here?

    Sorry I am very new to this just want to make sure I fully understand what I’m doing.

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

  • Hi @wrigley82

    Thanks for asking these questions, please allow me to gather some information first before answering them:
    – Regarding the directories of these websites, is the test site installed in a sub-directory of the main site, like you have the main site in “/public_html/” then the test site in “/public_html/test/”?

    – “They are exact copies of one another”, did you copied all files and directories from the main site and started the test site with this copy? also, what about the database, is the test site utilizes a duplicated database from the main site with just some options changed that are necessary for it to run?

    Thanks.

    Thread Starter wrigley82

    (@wrigley82)

    Thank you for responded to my questions. Yes, my test site is installed in a sub-directory of the main site, it is “/public_html/test/”

    Yes I copied all files and directories from the main site and started my test site from those copied files. And yes I duplicated the database from the main site and changed some options so that my test site will function.

    Thread Starter wrigley82

    (@wrigley82)

    @wfalaa,

    Hello, I’m still I’m sure on how to set up word fence on my main site and my demo site. Any thoughts on my questions above? Thank you for your assistance.

    Hi @wrigley82
    Sorry for my late reply, here you are what you should do in this case:
    – Log in your main website, go to (Wordfence > Firewall > All Firewall Options) and under “Protection Level” section, click on “Remove Extended Protection”.
    – Then log in your test site and optimize the firewall there, you shouldn’t get any warning this time.
    – Return back to your main website and optimize the firewall there, also no warnings will be prompted there as well.

    Let me know how it goes,
    Thanks.

    Thread Starter wrigley82

    (@wrigley82)

    Hello @wfalaa,

    I logged into my main website, and removed Extended Protection. Now when I go to my Demo site, the site will not work. I get the following error.

    demo.associationofhorizon.org is currently unable to handle this request.
    HTTP ERROR 500

    Not exactly what I wanted to do. It was working right before I removed extended protection. What do I do?

    @wrigley82 this could be a totally unrelated issue, I recommend enabling WP_DEBUG mode in the site you have this issue with, you can do that by editing (wp-config.php) file and replace this line:
    define('WP_DEBUG', false);
    with:

    define('WP_DEBUG', true);
define('WP_DEBUG_LOG', true);
define('WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY', false);

    Now, when you load this website again, you can check this file (/wp-content/debug.log) for any error messages.

    Let me know how it goes,
    Thanks.

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
  • The topic ‘Wordfence on 2 WordPress Installs (main site & test site’ is closed to new replies.