WordPress Comments Not Working

  • Resolved supertrooper2

    (@supertrooper2)


    7 years, 7 months ago

    WordPress Comments does not work on my website anymore:

    When posting a comment I have observed that the website tries to contact to 162.158.38.91 – then I get the following error message:

    The operation timed out when attempting to contact 162.158.38.91

    I checked this ip address and found that it belongs to Cloudflare.

    Does this mean that Cloudflare is blocking the posting of WordPress comments on my website?

    I have also noticed that in the few weeks before comments stopped working, the comments in the data base have very large comment_id’s. e.g. 9821051757928252862. Before the malfunction the last comment_id’s was much smaller. e.g. 23003.

    Another significant observation on the database is that before the malfunction, all comments had a comment_date_gmt as well as a comment_date. After the comments started malfunctioning the comment_date_gmt column is completely blank.

    Could there be a problem in the SQL Comments database?

    Please help.

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 19 total)
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  • Moderator Steven Stern (sterndata)

    (@sterndata)

    Volunteer Forum Moderator

    7 years, 7 months ago

    Let’s check the database. Please access it via phpMyAdmin from your hosting control panel. Select ALL the tables and, and the bottom, where it says “with selected”, choose “Check Table”. If any are not “OK”, then use “Repair Table”.

    Thread Starter supertrooper2

    (@supertrooper2)

    7 years, 7 months ago

    Do I need to make a back-up of the database first?

    Moderator Steven Stern (sterndata)

    (@sterndata)

    Volunteer Forum Moderator

    7 years, 7 months ago

    if the DB is corrupt, it’s not going to do much, but certainly export it it as a backup first.

    Thread Starter supertrooper2

    (@supertrooper2)

    7 years, 7 months ago

    I “checked” the DB and all of the tables were OK!

    Could the problem be related to the comments where the comment_date_gmt column is completely blank? There are approx 250 of these comments, which have mostly been posted in the last month. For these comments the comment_agent is also blank.

    Is there a process involving the comment_agent, the comment_date_gmt, which is failing resulting in blank columns?

    The error message when trying to post a comment is as follows:

    The operation timed out when attempting to contact 162.158.38.91 (an iP address belonging to Cloudflare.

    Even when I disable Cloudflare, empty all “W3 Total Cache” caches and clear the browser cache, I get the same “timed out” error message.

    Please advise.

    Moderator Steven Stern (sterndata)

    (@sterndata)

    Volunteer Forum Moderator

    7 years, 7 months ago

    If you’re getting Cloudflare related errors, I think it’s best to contact their support and they can see what’s going on.

    Thread Starter supertrooper2

    (@supertrooper2)

    7 years, 7 months ago

    I have completely deactivated Cloudflare, W3 Total Cache and Akismet, and still get the same “timed out” message.

    Surely this would suggest that it is WordPress problem?

    Is there anything else I can do to verify this?

    Please advise.

    Moderator Steven Stern (sterndata)

    (@sterndata)

    Volunteer Forum Moderator

    7 years, 7 months ago

    If you are getting a message about an IP address, then it’s coming from Cloudflare.

    Thread Starter supertrooper2

    (@supertrooper2)

    7 years, 7 months ago

    Steve

    The Cloudflare folks say the error is not with their system but must be due to an error in WordPress.

    After WordPress Comments stopped working with the error message to 162.158.38.91, we switched our commenting system to Facebook Comments.

    None of these comments have a “comment_author-iP” or a “comment_date_gmt” in the WordPress database.

    As evident by these anomalies in the WordPress data base (comments without input into the columns “comment_author-iP”, “comment_date_gmt”, “comment_agent”), there is clearly something not working correctly in WordPress.

    Please advise what steps we can take to track down and solve this problem.

    Thread Starter supertrooper2

    (@supertrooper2)

    7 years, 7 months ago

    Hi Steve

    The folks from Cloudflare did some more tests and provided the following analysis:

    I’ve tested this- it doesn’t appear to be a CloudFlare issue.

    The comments-post.php script is issuing a 301 redirect which is not correct behaviour.
    `
    Request URL:http://focusingonwildlife.com/news/wp-comments-post.php
    Request Method:POST
    Status Code:301 Moved Permanently
    Remote Address:[2400:cb00:2048:1::681c:306]:80

    Response Headers

    Cache-Control:max-age=2592000
    CF-RAY:2de17a09c31d4408-SFO-DOG
    Connection:keep-alive
    Content-Type:text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
    Date:Tue, 06 Sep 2016 11:10:50 GMT
    Expires:Thu, 06 Oct 2016 11:10:50 GMT
    Location:http://162.158.218.129/$
    `

    You can see it’s redirecting to http://162.158.218.129/$, which may well be valid, but it doesn’t set a host header, hence we can’t handle the request. You need to ensure a host header is sent on every request you send, as per the HTTP 1.1 spec.

    This is likely a misconfiguration or a plugin that is not functioning properly- it’s not a CloudFlare issue; I would imagine the only reason this works with CloudFlare disabled is because your site responds on your origin IP directly.

    We have deactivated all plugins and switched the theme to 2012. However this does not resolve the problem at all.

    Could this be due to an error in the WordPress Comments database?

    Please help.

    • This reply was modified 7 years, 7 months ago by supertrooper2.
    Moderator Steven Stern (sterndata)

    (@sterndata)

    Volunteer Forum Moderator

    7 years, 7 months ago

    Let’ try one thing:

    Install the plugin “better search and replace”.

    Have it search for http://162.158.218.129 and replace it with http://focusingonwildlife.com

    Thread Starter supertrooper2

    (@supertrooper2)

    7 years, 7 months ago

    Hi Steve

    I installed “Better Search & Replace” and ran the search for the Cloudflare iP’s, which are triggered when posting a comments on WordPress Comments:

    162.158.150.253; 162.158.218.129; 162.158.38.91

    All tables in the database were searched but no cells were found requiring a change.

    If I give you a link to one of the posts on our website, would you follow the link and try to post a comment? Perhaps when seeing the problem you would be able to diagnose the problem.

    When would be the best time of the day for you? (I would then set it up for you).

    Please confirm.

    Moderator Steven Stern (sterndata)

    (@sterndata)

    Volunteer Forum Moderator

    7 years, 7 months ago

    I was just able to post a comment at http://focusingonwildlife.com/news/in-a-world-of-7-billion-people-how-can-we-protect-wildlife/#respond

      I’m am 100% sure you mean well but please never offer credentials on these forums.

      http://codex.wordpress.org/Forum_Welcome#The_Bad_Stuff

      Now for the why: The internet is a wonderful place full of very nice people and a few very bad ones. I’m sure everyone here is very nice however, by giving some ones keys to your house you are trusting they wont steal anything. Likewise the person who takes the keys is now responsible for the house FOREVER.

      If something was to go wrong, then you the author may well legally become liable for damages, which they would not normally have been as their software is provided without warranty.

    Thread Starter supertrooper2

    (@supertrooper2)

    7 years, 7 months ago

    Hi Steve

    Because of the problem with WordPress Comments, we had deactivated WordPress Comments and replaced by Facebook Comments. Your comment was posted on Facebook Comments!

    Please try to post another comment NOW.

    (WordPress Comments is now reactivated).

    Moderator Steven Stern (sterndata)

    (@sterndata)

    Volunteer Forum Moderator

    7 years, 7 months ago

    Yup, it fails. Use Jetpack commments and see if that works.

    Thread Starter supertrooper2

    (@supertrooper2)

    7 years, 7 months ago

    Hi Steve

    So we have installed Jetpack Comments and see the same error message:

    The connection has timed out – The server at 162.158.150.174 is taking too long to respond. The site could be temporarily unavailable or too busy. Try again in a few moments.

    Try to post a comment in the Jetpack Comments box (just below the Facebook Comments).

    It seems that the problem is somewhere within the WordPress setup!

    What else can we do to resolve this “WordPress” issue?

    Please help.

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 19 total)
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