Firewall Cannot Configure

Resolved mark_macrae
(@mark_macrae)

3 years, 7 months ago

My site is on SiteGround’s Site Tools.

Every time I push from the staging site to the live site, I get the same warning from WordFence: “To make your site as secure as possible, take a moment to optimize the Wordfence Web Application Firewall:”

Up until this week, I just clicked the “click to configure” button, got a popup to prompt me to backup some files. So I just clicked a couple of times to downloaded a couple of files (.htaccess and something else), and let the plugin do it’s optimization. Boom. Easy.

However, this latest push update I can no longer get that to work. Clicking on the “Click to Configure” button just takes me to the Firewall Options page. Clicking on the “Optimize the Wordfence Firewall” button on that page does absolutely nothing. The browser doesn’t even try to load a page. No popup. Nothing.

I use Firefox as my browser, which sometimes causes issues, so I have also logged in using Microsoft Edge. No good. Same problem.

I have since read the documentation on WordFence’s website which suggests a better long-term solution for websites on SiteGround’s Site Tools. It sounds like maybe that solution would relieve me from having to contsantly re-optimize the firewall every time I deploy the staging updates. HOWEVER… the solution still requires that the “Optimize the WordFence Firewall” button work. Which it doesn’t.

Help.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

Plugin Support wfpeter
(@wfpeter)

3 years, 7 months ago

Hi @mark_macrae, thanks for getting in touch.

Sometimes having the firewall pre-optimized on a staging site will cause issues as paths to the auto_prepend_file directive differs from the live site, or the staging site can’t be seen externally so it seems like you’re taking the correct approach to avoid communication errors and other issues while in development.

As for why the button is now disabled or unresponsive, it could be down to a plugin or theme that’s been installed or updated since the last time the site went live. It does sound like a classic plugin conflict case where I’ve seen other buttons disabled because our Javascript doesn’t load/run properly after an error was introduced before our scripts had a chance to initialize.

To test for a plugin conflict occurring elsewhere, you could try running Wordfence with a default theme such as Twenty Twenty-Two and all other plugins disabled. If you’re able to use the button with nothing else active, re-enable everything else one-by-one until the disabled button issue reoccurs. If you can’t get the page to work properly under any conditions, by all means take a look at your browser console and use a service like Snipboard to screenshot any red error messages you may be seeing there.

Thanks,

Peter.
Thread Starter mark_macrae
(@mark_macrae)

3 years, 7 months ago
For some reason I didn’t get an email notification of your reply… Anyway. I had not installed any new plugins, so I did take your advice to check the Console, and lo and behold there are a ton of warnings and errors when I navigate to the WordFence admin page (I removed my site URL from the errors)…
```
Uncaught TypeError: $(...).wfCircularProgress is not a function
    <anonymous> /wp-admin/admin.php?page=WordfenceWAF&subpage=waf_options:425
    <anonymous> /wp-admin/admin.php?page=WordfenceWAF&subpage=waf_options:432
admin.php:425:29
Uncaught TypeError: $(...).wfCircularProgress is not a function
    <anonymous> /wp-admin/admin.php?page=WordfenceWAF&subpage=waf_options:469
    <anonymous> /wp-admin/admin.php?page=WordfenceWAF&subpage=waf_options:476
admin.php:469:26
Uncaught TypeError: $(...).wfCircularProgress is not a function
    <anonymous> /wp-admin/admin.php?page=WordfenceWAF&subpage=waf_options:509
    <anonymous> /wp-admin/admin.php?page=WordfenceWAF&subpage=waf_options:516
admin.php:509:30
Uncaught TypeError: $(...).wfCircularProgress is not a function
    <anonymous> /wp-admin/admin.php?page=WordfenceWAF&subpage=waf_options:549
    <anonymous> /wp-admin/admin.php?page=WordfenceWAF&subpage=waf_options:556
admin.php:549:26
Uncaught TypeError: o.widget is not a function
    <anonymous> /wp-includes/js/wp-pointer.min.js?ver=6.0.2:2
    <anonymous> /wp-includes/js/wp-pointer.min.js?ver=6.0.2:2
wp-pointer.min.js:2:31
Uncaught TypeError: o.widget is not a function
    jQuery 3
mouse.min.js:9:192
Uncaught TypeError: o.ui is undefined
    jQuery 3
slider.min.js:9:141
Uncaught TypeError: $.ui is undefined
    jQuery 3
jquery-ui-timepicker-addon.1664898183.js:15:2
Uncaught TypeError: r.widget is not a function
    jQuery 3
tooltip.min.js:9:140
Uncaught TypeError: $(...).datetimepicker is not a function
    <anonymous> /wp-admin/admin.php?page=WordfenceWAF&subpage=waf_options:641
    jQuery 13
```
Now, having said that I didn’t add any new plugins – I have been working on adding some jQuery and Ajax-y code which maybe has introduced a conflict, but these errors all seems to be WordFence
Plugin Support wfpeter
(@wfpeter)

3 years, 7 months ago

Hi @mark_macrae,

The reason why Wordfence’s functions would be causing all these Javascript errors for you but not across the wider customer-base would be down to something breaking before our scripts have a chance to initialize. This could be a syntax error or a script that failed to fully load in the correct order.

If you already followed my instructions to disable everything except for Wordfence with a default WordPress theme and this is still happening, it could be down to an error in custom code so naturally try commenting that out or temporarily excluding it from loading.

Thanks,

Peter.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

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