“Local Changes” cant sync website with templates

Hi @ryan2685, sorry to see you’re having a problem with Central templates.

Could you confirm whether “reapplying the template” involved duplicating the existing template, then moving your sites over to the new version of that template and re-syncing? Some templates that predate newer plugin features can report “Local Changes”.

If you didn’t already do that, does it help now or are the same two changes shown? Are you also running a mixture of Free/Premium sites?

Many thanks,
Peter.

Hey @wfpeter thanks for your reply.

I have not made a new template but I have done this, this morning I have done this and assigned it to some of my environments and it seems to be going well but they are yet to scan I will leave this over the weekend and will send in a update then if this has had a positive effect.

To answer your other question no we only use free plans at this moment in time. I should ask is there an issue having multiple licenses under a single email we haven’t done this yet but would be good to know for the future.

@wfpeter can confirm after letting the environments sit over the weekend this has NOT resolved the issue and it has come back but when I try to resync it says

“The template is in sync with the site configuration. You can re-apply the configuration using the button below.”

When I then resync it keeps saying “Local Changes” and does not sync to the template or template changes.

hi @wfpeter just looking to follow up on this ?

hi @wfpeter any additional steps on this ?

Hi @ryan2685, again my apologies for the delay and thank-you for the information provided so far.

Firstly, there is no issue with having multiple licenses associated with the same email account, you’re able to register for unlimited free licenses with the same email address too.

If the templates believe they are in sync but need to be reapplied citing “Local Changes” after updating to “new” versions of those templates as you’ve done, I think the best course of action would be to privately message us the account in question to see if we can identify the reason from our side. Please email wftest @ wordfence . com the email/username used for Central so we can identify your account. Place your forum username in the subject line so we can find it, and let us know here when you’ve done so!

Thanks again,
Peter.

@wfpeter I have now sent that email sorry for the delay i was on annual leave.

@wfpeter just looking to follow up on this again.

Hi @ryan2685, apologies for the delay, I missed your additional response and I appreciate you taking the time to send the email over to us.

This took me a moment to identify, but your sites should be now showing as “In Sync” across both templates as they are for me. The “Basic Template – latest” was rectified because one site had a blank email address for alerts so could’ve been fixed by visiting the Configuration tab, clicking on the cog for each site and picking “Review Changes” at the bottom of the “Template Actions” dropdown.

However, the issue with your “Cloudflare Template” was that “0” was set in the template but nothing was set on your sites. These two values mean exactly the same thing but Central was dissatisfied with the difference. I’ve changed your template’s value to be blank to rectify in the short-term but have reported this as a bug to the team so it doesn’t return in future.

Thanks for your patience,
Peter.

hi @wfpeter I have now had a look at the sites and after doing a scan they have all went back to “local changes” for the most part see screenshot here https://postimg.cc/s1yWdjrF I have had to upload it here due to wordpress not rendering my uploaded files

looking forward to your response and I should say when I go to review changes it simply tells me that my template is in sync but still says “local changes” the cloudflare template however seems to be working without an issue.

Hi @ryan2685 thanks for the extra information.

I tried resyncing the templates first thing this morning and all templates reported “In Sync” without reporting any differences between the templates/site configurations at all, whereas previously I’d seen a few individual site differences being reported.

I then attempted to make the templates report “Local Changes” again by bulk updating the 19 sites on the “Basic Template – latest” but was unable to force it back into that state. That’s not the result I was expecting based on what has been happening so far but I’ve made the team aware of the details in case the templates lose sync again on their own in the near future.

Thanks again,
Peter.

Hi @wfpeter firstly I would like to apologize for raising so many other cases I have done so due to the very lengthy response times but I also understand this is free support and were not paying for it so please accept my apology on that.

Next Up I would say I have noticed some weird behaviour the last few times I go into wordfence normally there will be a few cases where there are local changes on the basic plan but id say 70% + would be fine but when I am in the account for more than a minute then every single website reports local changes.

The same is now happening for my cloudflare template where these are now all being logged as “local changes, template modified” which is a different issue altogether.

If you need more details let me know and I will see what I can do.

Hi @ryan2685, it’s totally fine. We try to provide the same quality of support to all our customers when we look into an issue regardless of product level, although there will be times when we are unavailable or tied up on other tasks in terms of the forums.

The issue seems to directly correlate with another event happening, such as a scan and re-sync, as things were holding together well yesterday. I kept refreshing every half hour or so and “In Sync” continued to be reporting. I will now speak to the team in more detail to see if they can find out what might be happening. Please leave the current status of “Local Changes” for the moment as it might help our investigations. I’ll try to get back to you as soon as I can.

Thanks again,
Peter.

hi @wfpeter thanks for your response I will await your next response here thanks for your continued efforts and patience.

Hi @ryan2685,

I’m just messaging to let you know we’re now looking closely into any perceived differences that Central sees between your templates and your sites. We have reproduced those templates and haven’t had problems keeping them in sync, a bit like I had on Monday, but haven’t run through a full cycle of automatic scans, updates, etc. yet.

If we can’t reproduce it ourselves once those trigger, we will try to look at the raw Wordfence settings data coming in from your site and see if anything is being detected as a local change that shouldn’t be.

Many thanks for your patience,
Peter.