WP 3.6 – Live Writer no longer connects

Update:

When adding my account to Windows Live Writer I try using the WordPress option and entering my information. After a couple of 503 errors it says it could not detect the blog settings and it shows another screen to select the blog type and address. In the drop down there is a “WordPress 2.2+” and “WordPress” option.

When I select the WordPress option and keep clicking next it will throw the 503 errors but eventually it will get through and connect to my blog and pull the settings.

Now I tried to create a test post and every time I hit publish to blog it gives the 503 error. I did this about 15 times to see if one would go through. When I finally went to check my blog it is full of these posts.

So for some reason it is getting a 503 error but yet these posts are still being uploaded? It was only a simple post with a title and one line of text, not sure if longer / more complex posts will fail or work different.

Any updates from 1and1, folks?
I’ve tried today but still have all the same errors. When trying to get the site’s theme WLR even published that temp posts but fail to get the theme. At the end, the normal posts I try to publish or save draft return always 503 error. I’m considering buying a licence of blogjet but I think the tool is poor. If I have to invest in one licenced tool I’d prefer one more powerful, with rss, social networks integration and better features.

After waisting 15mins with the 1und1 support i did some investigation in reproducing the problem.
I think the reason is the security-setting at their apache-webserver: It denies the second request, which is shortly coming after the first. Load https://csenf.de/__xmlrpctest.php
. First you get a normal xml-rpc-Error, generated by wordpress itself. Reload the page shortly and the 503-Error by the webserver appears. Wait a few seconds and you get the xml-rpc response.

The question is now, how we can convince 1und1 to let multiple xml-rpc-requests to our wordpress pass.

i have the strong feeling that your 15 minutes with the 1und1 support weren’t wasted and you dont have to convince them ??

also my glass sphere tells me that tomorrow in the morning all your problems will be gone

1und1 told me, that they can reproduce the problem in house with my testcase. The issue is now escalated to the next level and they working on it, thumbs up.

Finally, a response from them which makes sense:

“We have settings within mod_security to prevent botnets from DoSing the wordpress installations with Xpingpack spamming.

The limit is you are allowed to post, but there is a 10 second delay between the get and the next post.

Currently we are in development to find a compromised balance between preventing botnets and affecting live-users/wordpress users.

We do apologize for any inconvenience.”

Downgrade to 3.5.2 solves this? I can’t remember something similar to this happening in 3.5.2; Maybe I’ll adopt this solution for now. This issue impacts our productivity.

no it doesn’t solve this.

I think the 3.6 upgrade was just a coincidence. It appears that 1and1 has made these security changes around the same time which is affecting us.

I just tried to get the theme and do a test post and I finally did not get any 503 errors at all. My WordPress blog appears to be back up and running with Windows Live Writer the way it used to be.

Thanks to all above who worked with 1&1 support to expedite the solution to this problem.

Yep, I can confirm it’s working for me again as well. Just tested downloading a draft and it worked.

I can confirm this. The iOS app and ifttt are working.

Yes, both Marsedit and my home-grown Python scripts are working now ??

Many, many thanks to those who had the patience to deal with 1&1 support and get this escalated – we all owe you a drink (or two).