Hi @sdagency, thanks for your question.
Sorry to see you’ve had a speed issue with Wordfence enabled. Naturally with a large customer-base running Wordfence across a range of server and plugin configurations, this is not the normal kind of performance we expect to see.
I have seen a few cases before where removing and reinstalling Wordfence helped, or deactivation/reactivation of the plugin with Delete Wordfence tables and data on deactivation checked on the Wordfence > All Options page. This could have been due to the database user not having truncate permissions for example, resulting in some tables growing infinitely and contributing to your site load speed.
Another thing to look at would be to make sure WordPress cron is running as it should. Otherwise, regular cleanup of the database will not be performed by WordPress itself or any plugins including Wordfence. You would be able to tell if there is a problem with wp-cron by looking at the Cron Status in the Wordfence > Tools > Diagnostics page. If there are Cron Jobs listed on this page that have a date in the past (older than current date) this would indicate Cron jobs are not executing as they should.
Let me know how you get on!
Thanks,
Peter.
Peter,
What an awesome response. Thanks.
Checked chron jobs. Today is the 7th. I have many for the 7th but also for the 8th, 10th, 13th, 14th and 18th. Is that a problem?
I tried the delete tables option, deactivating and re-activating.
Fatal error: Unknown: Failed opening required ‘/home/domainacct/public_html/wordfence-waf.php’ (include_path=’.:/usr/local/php73/pear’) in Unknown on line 0
My site is down.
OK, guess I didn’t realize you have to remove the prepend from php.ini.
Did that, restores site, restored php.ini.
Deleting the tables did not change GTMetrix scores.
I don’t think I’ll uninstall because setting this up on Siteground is a nightmare. They used to help out with this, but now they say “That’s advance, you have to hire someone” or take away your chat support.
Might not be Wordfence related, but if it is I’ll have to go with AIOWPS security or something.
I did have an issue recently where the install of Wordfence on the main site impacted other sites onmy same hosting plan. Not sure if that’s telling or not. The rules from the main site WF were blocking SG Optimizations on the subsites.
Spoke too soon, when I restored the php.ini with prepend it downed my site.
Hi @sdagency, I appreciate the extra information, it sounds possibly like a server configuration issue that might need to be tailored to your server setup.
It’d be great to get a better understanding of the configuration so that I can advise you further if Wordfence itself is still present. Can you send a diagnostic report to wftest @ wordfence . com? You can find the link to do so at the top of the Wordfence Tools > Diagnostics page. Then click on “Send Report by Email”. Please add your forum username where indicated and respond here after you have sent it.
Note: For the fastest response time, please make sure and add any information or questions directly to this topic and not the email address above unless asked.
Thanks again,
Peter.
I did get the site restored, but went ahead and sent you a report. THANKS.
Hi @sdagency, have you used an alternative username with the diagnostic as I’m not seeing this one? If not, the PHP email sending may not be functioning on the site.
Peter.
Are you looking for my WP site username? Obviously I can’t post that here due to security. Do you need me to email that username to wftest @ wordfence . com?
Hi @sdagency,
No, sorry for the confusion, in diagnostics requests as above we ask for the forum username to be sent so that we can easily find your email. However, I can’t find any reference to “sdagency” at all in our support inbox.
Thanks,
Peter.
Hi @sdagency,
I am still unable to find a diagnostic from your username. I will still be happy to look further into your issue if required.
Thanks,
Peter.
Resent the report from Diagnostics with my sdagency forum username here. Thanks.
Hi @sdagency,
I cannot see anything in the diagnostics that would suggest you have a particularly large set of plugins or a configuration that highlights any issues where Wordfence might take longer to run. If you’re not experiencing database “bloating” issues as I discussed earlier in this topic, it is not clear that Wordfence is the absolute cause.
All I can really do is again highlight that the sizeable amount of installations that Wordfence is present on that are not reporting these kinds of issues with site performance. We are always working to improve plugin efficiency in both front-end and back-end processes, and if you have tried re-testing with different combinations of your plugins enabled/disabled you may wish to consult your host as to whether your server configuration might be suffering a performance hit somewhere due to configuration or a bottleneck.
Thanks again,
Peter.
