barky81

@esmi: “We understand that but it has zero merit as a review because you didn’t even try to contact the plugin’s developer before posting the review.”

I can only assume that you have not read this thread?

The dev had support forums at his own website. I and many others participated in those forums. Among the many topics on those forums: scan errors/hangs/site crashes (db errors), etc.

The *dev* took down all that info instead of simply leaving it for people to see. (He still could have moved his active support to here without *deleting* the older posts.)

Here are a couple of examples still in the Internet archive (don’t know for how long):

https://web.archive.org/web/20130707074019/https://www.wordfence.com/forums/topic/scan-not-stop/

https://web.archive.org/web/20130707053544/https://www.wordfence.com/forums/topic/split-scan-taking-forever/

https://web.archive.org/web/20121231035418/https://www.wordfence.com/forums/topic/cant-complete-scan-wordfence-db-error

I still have numerous email notices of posts in those forums from when I participated, and they date back to Fall 2013…

The issue at that time was occasional db crashes during scans…(since then the frequency of such crashes has increased with each new version to the point at which every scan crashed…leading to this review).

Granted it was his choice to delete all that history; but to do so and then claim there has been no past effort on the part of users to get help!?!?! That seems like maybe it crosses a line?

@esmi: “After all, how do you know that the issues were not at your end?”

Precisely because I had previously addressed these issues directly with the dev–unsuccessfully. Also because a review of the support forums here show a continuing pattern of some users experiencing the same issue.

And finally because the dev himself clearly admits that the plugin consumes A TON OF MEMORY; in fact he starts by asking for 256 megs, and then suggesting that if that is not enough, keep INCREASING in 50 meg increments until either (1) you run out of physical server memory or (2) your scans complete.

What the dev simply doesn’t explain is what to do when you run out of server memory trying to run his plugin…(oh wait, I think that was the point of my 1-star review).

Once again, here is the FAQ from the dev:

QUOTE–
If you see an error about running out of memory, you can try the following:

Go to the Wordfence options page.
Click the advanced options link to show the advanced options.
Scroll all the way to the bottom where you’ll see an option to specify the maximum memory that Wordfence uses.
Try increasing this to 300 Megabytes (the default is 256 megs)
Do another scan.
If you still get an out of memory error, try increasing by another 50 and re-scan.
You can keep increasing by 50 megabytes, but be careful that your web server does not run out of memory because this may cause the operating system to behave unpredictably. You can refer to your web host’s documentation to find out what the maximum memory is that you’ve been allocated.
END QUOTE–

I am sorry that you consider my effort to provide an informed review as having “zero merit.” But I accept that as your opinion.

@julian fox

The plugin is only free if you decide not to pay for the premium features. I don’t understand why anyone would pay for premium features when the plugin doesn’t work properly for them. Only if the plugin worked could one evaluate the potential value of the premium features.

Also, I feel I should again point out that this is a 1-star (thus, basically, negative) review.

To recap:

I and others did/have tried to work with the dev on the memory issues. Got no where.

The suggestion to “cut up the scans” is based on experimenting with the current options. There is NOT currently any way to effectively “cut up the scans”. The current options don’t really affect the intensive components of the scan process.

Yes, let’s be absolutely clear:

It is not specific to my site. It is apparently common enough that you have an FAQ (quoted above) specifically ABOUT this issue.

I am quite sure “the busiest WordPress sites in the world” run on more than 1 gig of server memory (setting aside the idea that they run on *farms* with separate database servers–which isolates it from the process killer on the webfront end).

Affected sites are LOW traffic/HIGH content sites running on MODEST (single) server resources. They run on modest resources *because* they are low traffic (unless they use your plugin, of course). I am quite sure I could double (maybe triple) my server resource and “solve” the problem–albeit at a much higher monthly expense. At least until I accumulated enough additional site content/files/etc for scans to have to run even longer and to consume all available memory again.

I certainly never said it was a “memory leak”.

I will assume more of your users don’t see their Mysql db killed because they are on shared hosting plans that isolate them from the db engine. All they see are unexplained “out of memory” errors or scan failures/hangs/etc. I could be wrong, but I doubt it.

I just quickly scrolled through the last 2 weeks of support threads in your forum here and easily identified at least 13 related to “out of memory” issues and “scan not completing” (again, memory related) threads.

I am sorry if my review offends you.

Mark,

I appreciate your effort at this point but…

I immediately upgraded and tested the new version as soon as it released.

It made no improvement to the situation.

In fact, I have been forced to disable the plugin to prevent it randomly running without notice and killing my website (free sites cannot schedule scans).

The issue is *memory consumption*, period. My site doesn’t run out of connections, it runs out of memory. I can watch TOP on one screen in a console and watch your plugin running in the dashboard on another screen…gradually all the real memory is consumed; then the swap file–in my case 1 gig of real/500 megs of swap–then the process killer terminates mysql. Of course, the variability of other web activity (visitors/googlebot/etc) means that *when/where* it fails is influenced by other memory consumption–but it is your plugin that consumes all memory.

As a result, small sites and sites with limited files/links/etc. can successfully use the plugin because it finishes before it is forced to consume all the memory.

But the more pages/posts/files/links/etc, the worse it is. The longer it runs the more memory it consumes. Your failure to even breakup the scan process into simple component parts so that we could complete individual portions of the scanning process makes it a timebomb for any growing site…

[Comments moderated, Please do not attack other posters who are often simply trying to help.]

The dev clearly admits that the plugin consumes A TON OF MEMORY; in fact he starts by asking for 256 megs, and then suggesting that if that is not enough, keep INCREASING in 50 meg increments until either (1) you run out of physical server memory or (2) your scans complete.

What the dev simply doesn’t explain is what to do when you run out of server memory trying to run his plugin…(oh wait, I think that was the point of my 1-star review).

Here is the FAQ from the dev:

QUOTE–
If you see an error about running out of memory, you can try the following:

Go to the Wordfence options page.
Click the advanced options link to show the advanced options.
Scroll all the way to the bottom where you’ll see an option to specify the maximum memory that Wordfence uses.
Try increasing this to 300 Megabytes (the default is 256 megs)
Do another scan.
If you still get an out of memory error, try increasing by another 50 and re-scan.
You can keep increasing by 50 megabytes, but be careful that your web server does not run out of memory because this may cause the operating system to behave unpredictably. You can refer to your web host’s documentation to find out what the maximum memory is that you’ve been allocated.
END QUOTE–

As a sidenote to WSUSA, “wf” DID in fact respond, just not constructively.

First, although you apparently didn’t realize it, this is a review–not a support request.

As a review, it was presenting factual information about the product and past interactions with the dev.

Second, I reviewed the current support forum before posting my review. If you do so, you will also discover numerous open support requests concerning scans failing, crashing, etc. I have concluded that the dev either cannot or will not address the memory issues related to his plugin and that therefore, additional support requests are a waste of time/effort.

Third, the dev didn’t even attempt to address the *content* of my review: That the product is a memory hog that can under certain circumstances consume all server memory.

If the dev had not deleted ALL the posts from their own website, then everyone could review the MANY posts on this subject over the past year. Why would a dev do that?

I believe you are demonstrating my point very well.

In the support forums of your site before you took them all down and started over here at WordPress because “so many of the forum posts we had on here referred to a much older version of Wordfence and were no longer relevant.”