cmaessen

You can disregard this issue. I hadn’t had the time yet to provide feedback but just after I submitted this we traced it down to the BuddyBoss theme.

I can only get it to work if I disable the plugin or use the option “Disable anti-spam for miscellaneous forms”. First one obviously isn’t a solution for this issue and the second one introduces its own set of issues.

I could of course try to whitelist the JetPack server IP addresses. However, that would introduce a whack-a-mole situation as JetPack uses a range of constantly changes IP addresses. The current ones in use are listed here: https://jetpack.com/support/hosting-faq/

Though if WP-SpamShield could recognise JetPack communication as valid traffic it would solve this issue.

The URL for my site is https://www.realskeptic.com.

What I described isn’t a solution, it’s when/what triggers the problem on my install. Current workaround is to disable the plugin and wait for an update or feedback from the programmers on how to resolve it.

The problem is triggered by connecting to wordpress.com. Disabling the plugin and enabling it will let your site work. Right after the activation and permission for which wordpress.com account to use your site will stop working (I can see the redirect url to my dev server that should trigger the successful activation screen).

At that point nothing is returned anymore by the front end of WordPress (I can still access the admin area). There’s no error message, no page content, nothing in the debug log, and the http response code is 200 (WP_DEBUG, WP_DEBUG_LOG, and WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY are turned on).

They fixed a related issue for the WordPress 4.4.1 release according to their release notes:

35156 wp_list_categories() does not accept comma-separated IDs for exclude_tree parameter

I haven’t spotted 36006 in the release notes and I haven’t checked yet if this issue also got resolved with this release.