Ongoing issue with 503 error code message

  • Resolved mudstompers4

    (@mudstompers4)


    1 week, 4 days ago

    I became aware of having an issue with the 503 Service Unavailable error message beginning August 29, or possibly September 5, I generally check my website on Saturdays to make sure everything is working correctly. Once discovering the issue I have been going back and forth with my hosting company, Network Solutions. Finally this past week after several weeks with no access to my website, they escalated my case. I received the following response from them the next day “I have renamed the subfolder /wp-content/wflogs as /wp-content/wflogs_old and resolved this issue. A heads up, the Wordfence Security plugin creates various logs and data files in the /wflogs directory. Currently, the new /wflogs directory has been auto-created where the logs of the Wordfence Security plugin will be saved”

    I went and checked my website and I finally had access to it again. Then today, being Saturday, I went to sign into my website and had the 503 error code again. So I contacted my hosting company again today. The agent helping me looked at the website and reported that WordFence was causing the problem and so he deactivated it and told me I should not activate it again that it was not compatible with my webpage. Once he deactivated it I was able to view my website again and sign into it.

    Not wanting to run the website without website security I went in to see what other plug-ins were available and of course yours was the first one to come up. I noticed at the bottom of the window that WP indicated that WF was compatible with the version of WP I was running.

    I was confused and concerned about how to pick another security plug-in not wanting to end up having the same issue with one of them, since they all indicated the same compatibility. So I went back to chat with my hosting company. Their response was that I would need to ask you about the compatibility. I have used WF for years. I have not changed anything on the website in years, just made sure that updates were going through as they should and no other issues were coming up.

    Looking at the post from someone else having this issue and your response, I will mention that I have minimal plug-ins and no other security plug-in other than yours. And everything is up-to-date.

    I am running WP 7.1.1
    When I was finally able to sign in this morning I had a notification that my PHP was 7.4.something and that it was about to stop being supported. I am certain I had it at a more current level, because PHP is something that I watch, after an experience I had with a different hosting company. So I’m not sure if something happened while the website was inaccessible or not, but I did update that today to 8.3.
    My theme is GraphenePlus and I have a back-up theme, Twenty Twenty-Five.

    Is there any other information I need to provide? I am not a website professional, I just set up and now maintain my husband’s website. So any help/advise you can give me would be greatly appreciated.

    Thank you.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
  • Plugin Support wfpeter

    (@wfpeter)

    1 week, 1 day ago

    Hi @mudstompers4, thank-you for the detailed message.

    This doesn’t mean Wordfence is incompatible with your website, your theme, or WordPress 7.1.1. The “compatible” label you saw is accurate. What your host found suggests something else, though. Wordfence’s firewall normally keeps its working data in files in the /wp-content/wflogs folder. On some servers, those files can’t always be read or written reliably, and they can get into a bad state. Renaming the folder cleared them, which is why your site came back, and the same thing seems to have happened again a week later.

    For servers like this, Wordfence has a built-in option to store that firewall data in your site’s database instead of in files. Here’s what I’d suggest:

    1. Ask Network Solutions to add this single line to the file named wordfence-waf.php in your site’s main folder, on a new line just after the first line (<?php). If the file isn’t there, they can add the same line to wp-config.php instead:

    define('WFWAF_STORAGE_ENGINE', 'mysqli');

    1. Once that’s done, reactivate Wordfence. Try to do it at a time when you can check the site over the next few days.
    2. If the 503 error ever comes back, please ask your host for the server error log entries from that time and send them to us. If you can get into your dashboard, please also go to Wordfence > Tools > Diagnostics, click “Send Report by Email,” and send it to us with your forum username where indicated. As the inbox is unmonitored, let us know here if you do send it over.

    You don’t necessarily need to send anything else for now. Just let us know how things go after the change, and we’ll be glad to help further if needed.

    Many thanks,
    Peter.

    Thread Starter mudstompers4

    (@mudstompers4)

    1 day, 8 hours ago

    Thank you, I will take this information to them.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

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