Cannot save "enable firewall" option

Try turning on the option “Disable config caching,” near the bottom of the Wordfence options page, then save the options and try changing the other options again.

Config caching normally makes Wordfence a little faster, but some hosts have trouble with it. More details are here:
Disable config caching

Hi:

Thanks for the suggestion. I tried that and it didn’t work. It didn’t even save that option when the page refreshed.

Any other suggestions would be appreciated.

It might be a problem with your site’s database settings, where Wordfence cannot create its own tables — there are instructions on fixing tables in the second part of this page:
My options don’t save. How can I fix that?

You can also check if the tables couldn’t be created by clicking the link near the bottom of the options page that says “Click to see a list of your system’s database tables in a new window” — if you can’t find a bunch of tables with “_wf” in the name, like “wp_wfHits” or “wp_wfStatus”, your site is unable to create tables. Your host can probably help if you aren’t familiar with the database permissions in the link above.

Hi:

Yes, the tables are there. I have uninstalled the plugin, restored the database to a state before the plugin was installed and then installed again but I got the same result.

Thanks!

Ok, this is definitely unusual — sorry for the difficulties! It’s possible this is from a conflict with another plugin or the theme, but I haven’t seen a problem quite like this, and normally, the firewall option is already turned on in a new installation.

Usually, I think the only option that would cause the options page to refresh like that is the “Live Traffic” option — were you trying to also change that one? And can you try going to the Live traffic page under Wordfence’s menu, and turn off Live Traffic there, using the slider at the top of the page? If that setting “sticks” when you change it and leave the page, then that rules out some issues. (This is the same option as the checkbox “Enable Live Traffic View” on the Options page, so that should change as well, if this works.)

You can also try viewing the javascript console (while on the Options page) to see if there are any warnings, which are sometimes a sign of a plugin conflict. Here are instructions in case you need them:
Open the javascript console

If none of these help, I would recommend turning off other plugins temporarily, and checking if the Options page works then. If it does, then you can turn on one plugin at a time and check the page in between, to find out which one is causing the conflict. Let us know if this helps, or if you still have trouble.

Hi:

Yes, the firewall option was turned on. But when I tried to enter my email address and save, all options were turned off. After that nothing saves.

Live traffic is disabled.

There are no errors in the javascript console

Doing the whole turnoff-turnon plugin thing is a 2-3 hour ordeal. I have to backup, test the restore to make sure the backup worked, go through the process one plug in at a time and then restore. If you have any other ideas I would appreciate them before going to this extreme.

Thanks.

There

Hi:

I think this might be related to the platform I am running on. I just looked up the precise system requirements on the wordfence website and a Windows/IIS configuration is explicitly disclaimed. Shoot.

Sorry for wasting your time!

Ok, thanks for following up — we don’t see IIS very often. And that’s all right too, since I learned another symptom of IIS-related issues! I think for some people, it seemed to run better than others, but I don’t know what the differences were.

It seemed to work just fine – as long as I didn’t actually tried to change any of the configuration options. I bet it’s something related to how the data is getting written to the database or read from the database.

Yes, and that can still cause trouble with other parts of Wordfence when running on IIS, too. Blocked IP addresses, scan logs, and temporary data from the scans are all written to database tables, so it might not provide much protection on IIS.