Jetpack and location of xmlrpc.php

Hi @rgdudley

In your wp-admin dashboard, if you go to the Settings>General area, there are two URL entries, WordPress Address (URL) and Site Address (URL

The “Site Address (URL)” setting is the address you want people to type in their browser to reach your WordPress blog.
The “WordPress Address (URL)” setting is the address where your WordPress core files reside.

So in the WordPress Address field, you would put the address where WordPress is actually installed for the site, in this case it would be https://earth01.net/Rambling/WPfiles/

That will tell Jetpack to look for XMLRPC at https://www.earth01.net/Rambling/WPfiles/xmlrpc.php.

HOWEVER, Jetpack also looks here: https://www.earth01.net/Rambling/WPfiles/xmlrpc.php?for=jetpack – if you click that link, you’ll see a 406 Not Acceptable error.

That error message means that your hosting provider is blocking some kind of requests to their servers (where your site is located). Usually, this is a Firewall, or some other security issue.

You will need to reach out to your host to get that fixed.

Let us know if you have any other questions!

Thanks for that clear explanation.

I will have to contact iPage, but I don’t have much hope. Previous discussions (chats) with them have been difficult. But this will help me get started. Maybe I should be looking for a new host?

This is really just a hobby, but it is becoming more of an irritation.

In the past (over one year ago) Jetpack worked just fine.

Also related to this same issue is the current inability to be able to post blogs directly from MS Word or Open Live Writer which was extremely convenient.

Hi there @rgdudley,

We cannot directly suggest changing host for this very reason; however, if you feel you can have a better service by migrating your site to another hosting provider, you should surely browse around to get a better idea of what the other hosts have to offer.

As for the connection issue that has now appeared, it’s possible that the host has recently implemented some security layers that weren’t there before, which are now blocking the endpoint Jetpack uses to connect to your site. I can’t tell you for sure, though – your host can shed more light on this.

Last but not least, I’m not sure we can help with the issue you have with WordPress and MS Word or Open Live Writer: if Jetpack is involved, we can take a look at it. For further WordPress support, I suggest asking in the www.ads-software.com forums here:

Support Forums

Hope this helps! Let us know if there is anything else we can assist you with.

Well after looking around I realize that the blog I created for my wife https://www.earth01.net/CarolConsiders/ connects to jetpack just fine. I have examined the two installations and cannot find the differences.

I suspect that some difference was created by a plugin I was trying to resolve another issue (posting from Word or LiveWriter which we had done in the past). I have removed the plugins from my own setup, but I assume that there are lingering pieces of code now embedded in the installation that are causing this problem. Reinstalling WP does not seem to help as I assume it protects elements that were customized. Are there alternative install options. For example clean install that protects blog entries?

Hey @rgdudley,

Unfortunately due to your Jetpack connection not working as expected, we can’t dig as we’d like in order to suggest to you the best step to take at this stage.

I’d suggest reaching out to your host (I know you don’t have much hope on this!) and seeing if they have a backup of your site you can manually restore on a fresh WordPress install.

We still see a block on your xmlrpc.php file/page which prevents Jetpack from connecting as expected, so I am afraid you will need to contact your host to go ahead with this ??

Hope that’s all clear. Let me know what you find out!

Thought I would post an update.

As of ~17 February 2022 both of my blogs seem to be using Jetpack just fine… not sure what happened. I did not do it ??

However I was still unable to connect open live writer or MS word to the sites to use for creating blog posts (very convenient when it works).

Those programs would not connect to, or use, the xmlrpc.php file.

HOWEVER I found a suggestion that recommended changing the name of xmlrpc and have Live Writer of Word link to that new name.

This trick worked for both programs. I guess the host (iPage) blocked access to that file.(?)

Ideally it would be better to rewrite the contents of xmlrpc but I suspect the host is blocking access to the file name somehow… although Jetpack seems to have been allowed .

• This reply was modified 3 years ago by rgdudley.