Can multisite be enabled without me knowing?

  • Resolved beedle

    (@beedle)


    9 years, 6 months ago

    So I have an install of WordPress single site that has been used for a long time. There were some security intrusions that caused some significant issues some time ago. I can elaborate if necessary.

    More recently (maybe a month or two ago?) I noticed that I no longer had Add New under Plugins and couldn’t access the Theme or Plugin Editors in the backend.

    Further, WordPress was prompting me to “notify the site administrator” that there was a new version. I don’t have permission to do it.

    All of this sounds like a multisite install and that I’m an Admin, not a Super Admin. Is there a way to tell for sure if multisite is installed/enabled? Certainly I’ve checked the wp-config.php file and it is not enabled that way. I just didn’t know if there is something other, more obscure way to enable it that someone interested in being sneaky might do.

    When I go to domainname.com/wp-admin/network it says “You do not have sufficient permissions to access this page.” Does that appear at that URL even for a single site install?

    I found some support topics discussing giving Super Admin privileges via phpMyAdmin and I don’t have a wp_sitemeta table which seems to be where that is stored. Not sure if that table name got changed in later versions of WP (the posts are mostly fairly old or I can’t tell how old) or if that’s evidence that I don’t have multisite installed.

    Is there some other definitive way for a regular admin use (not super admin) to tell if multisite is installed?

    I don’t know if this is a security issue related to what happened before where they posted lots of pages/content/links to knockoff designer products they were selling on other sites. I could see secretly installing multisite being a nice way to push content out that the site admin wouldn’t seen.

    Or I think this could be something completely different and despite not having made any changes, something like a plugin is now causing an issue.

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
  • Thread Starter beedle

    (@beedle)

    9 years, 6 months ago

    So I deactivated all plugins and the issue still exists.

    Also, I have not yet tried the “force database upgrade” trick I came across in some other threads of people who lost some menu items. Those all seemed to pertain to a much older version of WP and I’d like to rule out the multisite enabled possibility first.

    Moderator Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

    (@ipstenu)

    🏳️‍🌈 Advisor and Activist

    9 years, 6 months ago

    In theory? Yes.

    Check your WP-config.php file to see if multisite is active.

    But I think instead, your account was de-administrator’d

    Thread Starter beedle

    (@beedle)

    9 years, 6 months ago

    Thanks for the response.

    As I mentioned, I’ve checked wp-config.php and multisite is not enabled.

    Regarding my account, I am listed as the role Administrator in the backend. I have also created a new user and given admin privileges and logged in with that account just to see if anything was different. Same issues in that new Administrator account as in my current one.

    Moderator Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

    (@ipstenu)

    🏳️‍🌈 Advisor and Activist

    9 years, 6 months ago

    Did you see either of these in wp-config?

    define('DISALLOW_FILE_EDIT',true);

define('DISALLOW_FILE_MODS',true);
    Thread Starter beedle

    (@beedle)

    9 years, 6 months ago

    Thank you so much, Mika.

    That was it. I’m a bit embarrassed as I’m definitely familiar with setting those constants in wp-config.php and can’t believe I missed seeing it when I looked at that file previously. Could/Would a plugin ever add that to wp-config.php as I did not add it?

    Moderator Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

    (@ipstenu)

    🏳️‍🌈 Advisor and Activist

    9 years, 6 months ago

    Could/Would a plugin ever add that to wp-config.php as I did not add it?

    Oh sure. Normally it’s just someone thinking they’ll make things more secure, though.

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
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