Hello wfphil,
now I am puzzled. Because – when I tried to login to my admin board (via the secure login provided by the ManageWP dashboard as I always do) it now worked again. So there seems to be no problem after all. But a few days before it was. Very strange.
What I’ll do:
I’ll remember your advice in case the problem will occur again.
I’ll wait until the staging plugin bug will be fixed and try to set up a staging site to experiment with the influence of different plugins to the performance of wordfence.
And I hope this will enable me to find out which plugin might cause these confusion.
Thanks for all your efforts!
Helmut
Plugin Support
wfphil
(@wfphil)
Hello Helmut,
You’re welcome.
Yes, once the staging site plugin bug has been fixed and you can test your setup then hopefully you can begin to start running tests to find out what is causing the issue. I haven’t received an email from my last message about the error logs. Please feel free to send those if you wish.
OK, wfphil,
I built up a staging site. With all my plugins I actually use. Then in Wordfence I enabled the “login security options”. I logged out from my staging site and logged in again, and it worked!
Nevertheless: when I first logged in to my staging site, Wordfence sent me the following message – but this time without blocking me out of my site:
This email was sent from your website “Bibelwelt” by the Wordfence plugin at Thursday 27th of April 2017 at 06:41:11 PM
The Wordfence administrative URL for this site is: https://bibelwelt.de/1493236161768/wp-admin/admin.php?page=Wordfence
A user with username “hs-14_bw-wp” who has administrator access signed in to your WordPress site.
User IP: 2003:dd:fbc8:5400:1cbe:532c:77e6:e73a
User hostname: p200300DDFBC854001CBE532C77E6E73A.dip0.t-ipconnect.de
User location: Giessen, Germany
If all this is so – then I think none of my plugins could have caused the trouble I have had.
But there is no explanation why sometimes I get a message from Wordfence like the one above and am locked out – and next time there is a message and I am not locked out – and another time there is no message and I can log in.
I think I should now enable “login security options” in Wordfence on my normal site as well and hope that everything runs fine.
Best regards
Helmut
Plugin Support
wfphil
(@wfphil)
Hello Helmut,
The difficult thing with investigating intermittent issues properly is being able to investigate the issue when the problem is present.
However, the problem can disappear whilst you are investigating it leading you to believe that a certain action has fixed it, such as disabling a particular plugin, when in fact that wasn’t the cause of the apparent fix.
Please keep me informed.
Dear wfphil,
I wish you a happy 1st of May!
When I tried to login to my WordPress dashboard today I experienced the same failure as I described it to you many times before:
Into the login window I enter my correct username and password, and when clicking OK, I don’t be logged in, but get the very same login window again.
In the same second I get an Email from Wordfence (see the end of this post – the shown time is when I tried to login last time).
You asked me to copy and send you my “root PHP error log”. But I do not find any file named “error_log” in the root directory of your WordPress installation. Instead I sent you a screenshot of the root directory, so you can see yourself.
Some days before I could login without problems. I did not change anything on the site since then, no plugin, not even a comma in any post.
I’m only glad that I am pausing with the work on my homepage anyway for at least some weeks.
Have you still got no idea what might cause my problem?
Best regards
Helmut alias dobby14
And here once more the text of a Wordfence alert email:
[Wordfence Alert] bibelwelt.de Admin Login
This email was sent from your website “Bibelwelt” by the Wordfence plugin at Monday 1st of May 2017 at 04:54:41 PM
The Wordfence administrative URL for this site is: https://bibelwelt.de/wp-admin/admin.php?page=Wordfence
A user with username “hs-14_bw-wp” who has administrator access signed in to your WordPress site.
User IP: 2003:dd:fbc2:1b00:34e7:a8e2:5d9f:e610
User hostname: p200300DDFBC21B0034E7A8E25D9FE610.dip0.t-ipconnect.de
User location: Giessen, Germany
Plugin Support
wfphil
(@wfphil)
Hello Helmut,
A belated happy May Day to you too!
There is definitely an intermittent problem involved here. Is the same problem happening with the staging site as well please?
Hello wfphil,
I am totally confused.
Yesterday I could login again. Even when I updated the Wordfence plugin and enabled the login security option in Wordfence I could login again after having outlogged.
Today I can’t login again, just as two days before.
But to my staging site I could login today. When trying to update the Wordfence plugin there, however, I got a failure message.
Looks like a gambling game to me…
Plugin Support
wfphil
(@wfphil)
Hello Helmut,
What was the failure message that you got on the staging site please?
This is what I would do as initial tests once the staging site is up and running:
- Have my FTP program running in the background so that I can make changes to the WordPress file system immediately.
- Keep logging in regularly until the problem arises.
- Then re-name the active theme directory.
- Try to login.
- If the problem remains then it won’t be the theme – skip step 6.
- If I can login then I will re-name the theme to its correct name to see if I can login again. If it fails then that strongly suggests the theme is the cause.
- Try to login to make sure that it fails and the problem still exists.
- Re-name the ManageWP – Worker plugin directory.
- Try to login.
- If the problem remains then it won’t be this plugin.
- If I can login then I will re-name the ManageWP – Worker plugin directory to its correct name to see if I can login again. If it fails then that strongly suggests the ManageWP – Worker plugin is the cause.
I would repeat theses steps with every plugin until I have a strong idea of which plugin is causing the problem. As this is an intermittent problem though I would replicate my results multiple times to confirm my suspicions of what is actually causing the conflict.
Thank you, wfphil,
I will try out your advice at the time the problem arises again.
Just for information the days when I could NOT login to my backend in May: 1, 3, 6, 7.
The other days – 2, 4, 5, and today – I can login. Funny…
Best regards
Helmut
Hello wfphil,
a few days ago I tried the procedure you advised me with my staging site when I could not login. As I had rename the plugin “wp-edit pro” I could login again. So I assumed this plugin could have caused the problem.
BUT: When today I could not login to my normal site and tried to fix it by renaming the plugin “wp-edit pro”, that did not work.
Should I now do the above procedure with all of my plugins and theme of my normal site, too? Why did you say I should do it only with the staging site?
By the way: I could login into the staging site without problems. But when I tried to update the staging site plugin there, I got a failure message…
Just a question concerning step 5 and 6 in your advised procedure: You wrote at the end of step 5 “skip step 6”. But I think, in every case I should re-rename the theme or plugin after processing them, shouldn’t I? Otherwise, at the end every plugin would be deactivated…
Just for clarification: in my “by the way”-passage the word “today” is missing. I could login to my staging site today…
Plugin Support
wfphil
(@wfphil)
Hello Helmut,
I would use the staging site for testing so that you don’t affect the functionality of your site for your visitors as you run tests.
With regards deactivating plugins, my initial thoughts were that the ManageWP – Worker plugin was the likely culprit as it was the only plugin in your list that had functionality that could affect the login process.
I would try this. Switch to a default WordPress theme such as 2016 on the staging site and leave this theme active continuously. When the login fails on the staging site deactivate all plugins except Wordfence and ManageWP – Worker. If you are now able to login then that is a good sign. Activate all plugins again and see if you can login. If it fails then that would strongly suggest that Wordfence and ManageWP – Worker are not conflicting with each other, but instead another active plugin is casuing the problem. You would then have to run through numerous tests deactivating and activating all the other plugins one by one until you find one that breaks the login. The only problem is that this is an intermittent problem that comes and goes by itself so you need the problem to exist long enough for you to go through this testing process to find out which plugin is causing the conflict.
Hello wfphil,
since yesterday I can’t login to both sites (normal and staging). And I experimented with my staging site:
And I can’t login, any plugin whatever I rename.
At last I renamed ALL plugins, but it doesn’t work either. Is that a hint that it MUST be a theme problem in any case? But I can’t change the theme because I don’t get into my backend…
Plugin Support
wfphil
(@wfphil)
Hello Helmut,
That is a very interesting update – that could certainly point to the theme being the cause of the problem.
As you can’t login you can change the theme by editing the WordPress database directly but this should only be done if you are competent at editing the database and know how to properly backup and restore the database in case a serious problem arises from editing the database. Therefore, you may have to wait until you can login to change the theme.
