Tidyup

Ok, I figured it out, you need to update Wordfence to latest version, 6.3.1. The prvious one removed the blocking option from the menu… small error ;o) but they fixed it now.

Are you getting this? Error Message: Connection lost. Saving has been disabled until reconnected

Do you find you can edit a page for 2 minutes and then your site and wp hangs for 5 minutes before you can do anything again? using wordpress 3 or 4? Then read on….

Right, in order to help everyone else having issues, let me post my findings. There’s lots of stuff on the web and I found some of it useful but not all of it and there seemed no good list of lots of things to try, so here’s my list and it helped me out.

So lets cover off some basics first… this generally is not to do with internet connections or speed etc. It could be, but I found this comment is usually a standard response to the dreaded ‘Error Message: Connection lost. Saving has been disabled until reconnected‘ message and is wrong. You need to look harder I’m afraid 🙂

I found a series of things are worth trying, on their own or in combination.

1) Install something like Error Log Monitor wordpress plugin, it might give you some insight into the issue. IT won’t fix it, but you might see something useful.

2) Find a plugin to turn off auto save, I used WP-CMS Post Control as it allowed me to just turn off that one thing, which is all I wanted to do. Might not help, but it may do so.

3) Ask you ISP who hosts the site to check into ModSecurity and see if this is an issue. I found mine was causing issues with the firewall and getting me blocked. (ModSecurity a live intrusion detection system where there are certain rules for checking the vulnerable scripts or malicious files uploaded in the sites. Hence if the rule matches, it will block your ip automatically in mod_security.) You will need your ISP to do this.

4) Ensure your IP is not blocked by your ISP – I found that my shared server was having too many connections and I was getting blocked. THis meant I could do maybe 5 mins of work and then got blocked, I was unblocked automatically in 10min but then blocked again in 5… very annoying! As it stands, my ISP have a way of letting me unblock myself, so I ended up unblocking myself every 5 mins via a control panel. Most ISP should have teh same facility, and even if you don’t have a fixed IP, you can at least unblock yourself to work.

5) You can try the uninstall all plugs and themes suggestions… persoanlly i don’t think these are the issue. Sure, uninstall everything if you like, but I would try 1-4 first. I found this answer to be a bit of a misdirection myself, but I note it, as it might help some.

So, what is the real cause… still an unknown really. I spent 3 hours chatting to my very helpful ISP (dataflame) and came to this conclusion. There seems to be something odd with WP and how many connections it wants to hold to a database. I noted anywhere from 5-10 and all i had was 2 windows open editing and copying a page. Infact it seems like at times it just wants to keep adding to those connections as time goes on. I watched it grow in connections and the same amount of windows were open, maybe it was just me but it was doing something odd.

Anyway, I resolved it, and I got the work I needed to done! A pain to figure it out though.

CONCLUSION… try my points 1-4, but if you get this error you will inevitably need ISP help to keep reseting your IP.

Is it just new WP, no, I have sites in v3 and v4 and never had any issues, and now i do. So you can’t rule out some OS change on the servers as an issue also as why hadn’t it happened before. That said, you google that issue and it’s been around since 2011!

Whatever it is, it’s fricking annoying, causes big issue and isn’t easily sorted without some detective work. Good luck and I hope you find this useful. If people find other tips please post.