redsand

Hi jdcarlson,

I’m sorry to hear about the issue you’re having, but I’ll be happy to help. That’s strange, as the plugin already whitelists internal site pingbacks.

Regarding the WP-SpamShield Support page, please clear your browser cache and submit your request again. You should have no problem. Once we get your support request, we’ll be happy to look into it for you and see what the issue is.

– Scott

Please note that the WP-SpamShield Support page is our main support venue, not the WordPress forums here, so that will always be the best way to get a quick response and resolve any tech support issues.

I understand. This all can be frustrating sometimes. 🙂

Thank you for that info. I took a quick look at your site, and I see the issue. (Now, there may be more than one, but we’ll need to knock this out first in order to tell.)

The plugin’s minimum required PHP version is 5.3, but your site is running PHP 5.2.17. I’m not sure what you’re familiarity with web software is, but in case you’re not familiar (and please forgive me if you are), PHP is the software that runs your site, like Windows, or Apple operating system on your home computers.

If you take a quick look at the plugin documentation, it has the following for minimum requirements:

Requirements

• A FeedBurner, FeedPress, or FeedBlitz account
• WordPress 3.8 or higher (Recommended: WordPress 4.0 or higher)
• PHP 5.3 or higher (Recommended: PHP 5.4 or higher)

So, unfortunately, your site doesn’t meet the minimum requirement to run the plugin. (Most plugins now require PHP 5.3 or PHP 5.4 as a minimum. The current PHP version is 7.0.)

We don’t make those requirements up arbitrarily…PHP 5.2 reached its “End of Life” (stopped being supported by the PHP development team) 5 years ago in 2011 (it was originally released in 2006). In web development time, that’s like talking about ancient Egypt and the pyramids. 🙂

Here are a few reasons (of many) why it’s important to upgrade your PHP as soon as possible:

1. Security Issues – There are known security issues in PHP 5.2, so you are putting your website at risk of hacking, and possibly other websites on your server.
   Even if there were no known security issues, you would not want to use a version of PHP that isn’t supported, because if (and when) one is discovered, no one will be issuing security updates. Unfortunately PHP 5.3, and 5.4, have also reached EOL, so you would probably not want to use them either. (Although they are much better than 5.2, so if that was your only option it would still be an improvement.)
2. Website speed and performance problems – PHP 5.2 is slow. PHP 5.3 is a bit faster, and each version up to 5.6 is a bit faster than the previous one. PHP 7.0 is twice as fast as PHP 5.6.
3. Code problems – A lot of coding standards have changed over the years, so it will be difficult to have a smoothly running site on 5.2. A lot of plugins and themes may have issues running on your site. WordPress and plugins are optimized for newer versions.

Now for the good news. Upgrading is usually quite easy. With PHP, it is not like your computer’s operating system — you don’t have to reinstall a whole other system from scratch. Web hosting companies often have multiple versions installed at once and it just requires changing a configuration file. There are a few ways to do it:

• Directly in the code. (If you’re not familiar, you should skip this option.)
• If your site has a cPanel or other control panel administrative area you can usually do it through there.
• If you don’t have or feel comfortable with those options, you can contact your web hosting company’s support staff and ask them to upgrade it for you, and they will do it for free. When you do, just ask them to make sure you have “PHP 5.6 or greater, MySQL 5.6 or greater, The mod_rewrite Apache module”. (Just copy and paste.) Please see the WordPress requirements page for more info on this.

Every good, reputable company will have at least PHP 5.5 or PHP 5.6, and some will have PHP 7.0. If yours does not, then you want to leave them immediately and get a new web hosting company.

That should take care of it for you. Your site will run much better after upgrading. 🙂

After you get the PHP version upgraded, if you have any further issues with the plugin (which I don’t think you will), then just submit a support request at our WordPress Plugin Support page, and we’ll be happy to help you get things squared away.

If you would be willing to update your rating and review, it would be much appreciated. 🙂 Here is the link: https://wordpress.org/support/view/plugin-reviews/rs-feedburner#postform

– Scott

Hi ac1643,

We’re not aware of any conflicts between the plugins. We’ve worked with that author before on compatibility with one of his other plugins, and he seems to be very good about working to ensure compatibility. If you do experience any issues, you just need to let us know. I would recommend only using one spam solution, as you said. The brute force protection on the other plugin should be fine.

For the future, if you ever want to check for compatibility issues, the Known Issues page contains every issue that we’re aware of. If it isn’t on there, then there aren’t any known issues with a certain plugin. As you can see, there are not a lot of plugins that WP-SpamShield conflicts with, because we place a high priority on compatibility and work to ensure that.

– Scott

Please note that the WP-SpamShield Support page is our main support venue, not the WordPress forums here, so that will always be the best way to get a quick response and resolve any tech support issues.

Hi Tony,

As mentioned above, for us to help you further, we’ll need you to submit a support request.

The plugin does not make permanent changes, so there is nothing to “undo”.

Once you deactivate it, and then uninstall it through the WordPress admin, it removes all traces of itself. If you still see the effects of a plugin after you remove it, that usually means one of 3 things: 1) It was not uninstalled properly (ie simply deleted through FTP instead of uninstalling through WordPress admin), there is a cache plugin on the site, and the plugin needs to have the cache cleared, 3) there is a caching issue in your browser where it is loading stale content and you need to clear the browser cache.

Please keep in mind, that this is not our main support venue…The support URL listed in the plugin documentation is our main support venue.

Hey sitedart,

Thanks for taking the time to write your great review, and for the positive feedback!

I’m sorry to hear about the issue you had with blocked access to certain pages. We’d be happy to help you fix that. 🙂

Perhaps it’s just the wording and I’m misunderstanding your meaning, but that doesn’t sound like something the plugin does. It should only block comment, contact form, registration, and miscellaneous form submissions, but not actually block a user’s access to any pages. (Again, I may have misinterpreted your meaning.) Either way, if you would like any help, just head on over to the WP-SpamShield Support page, and we’ll be happy to help you get that particular issue knocked out. We want you all to have a flawless experience. 🙂

– Scott