Article photos showing blue question mark

Did you recently install a security plugin and or manuall add any .htaccess file?

Examine your site with an ftp program to locate any .htaccess .passwd file somewhere in the tree:
.../wp-content/uploads/wppa/
If there is a .htaccess file in …/wp-content/ with content like:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^Taarten(.*) /wp-content/uploads/wppa-source/album-1$1 [NC]
RewriteRule ^Birds(.*) /wp-content/uploads/wppa-source/album-2$1 [NC]
RewriteRule ^Gpstest(.*) /wp-content/uploads/wppa-source/album-3$1 [NC]
RewriteRule ^test-gallery(.*) /wp-content/uploads/wppa-source/album-23$1 [NC]
RewriteRule ^Album-32(.*) /wp-content/uploads/wppa-source/album-32$1 [NC]
RewriteRule ^second-ngg-gal(.*) /wp-content/uploads/wppa-source/album-44$1 [NC]
RewriteRule ^Dynamic-album(.*) /wp-content/uploads/wppa-source/album-45$1 [NC]
</IfModule>

i.e. with no comments but only a bunch of redirected album names, you must delete that, it has been erroneously created by wppa version 5.4.5 and 5.4.6.

If you are still on that rev, upate first to the current version!!!

Hi Jacob,

Thanks for the quick response – I checked the wppa-htaccess.php file and didn’t see anything that looks like what you sent me above.

As for security plugins, I just recently added BruteProtect because the site was experiencing large brute force attacks. Do you think this plug-in is interfering somehow with the WPPA plug-in? I’d be hesitant to deactivate BruteProtect because I don’t want to make the site vulnerable to more attacks.

Anything else I can be telling you to help you narrow down what the issue might be?

Thank you for your help!

The php file wppa-htaccess.php creates a .htaccess file in ../wp-content/wppa-pl/

That is ok, but in the first releases it created it at update time accidentially in wp-content/.

If you such a .htaccess file there ( compare with the one in ../wp-content/wppa-pl/ ) you MUST delete it.

You can try disabling BruteProtect for a few minutes to exclude this as a cause, that should do no harm?

Hi Jacob,

I don’t see an htaccess.php file in the wp-content folder – just in the folder it is supposed to be in.

I shut off BruteProtect for a few minutes and the pictures still didn’t show. I also tried shutting off my other security plug-in, but that didn’t change anything either.

Anything else I should be trying?

Hi Jacob,

One other thing – I noticed the coding looks different now when I insert photos into the article. I don’t know if this is the cause of the issue or if this is how it is supposed to look – what do you think?

This is the coding that shows when I insert a photo:
[wppa type=”photo” photo=”401″]Any comment[/wppa]

[wppa type=”photo” photo=”401″]Any comment[/wppa]

The shortcode generator has been improved recently and this is correctly generated code.

It looks your server is a windows system and IISPassword has been installed – see: https://www.iistools.com/en/iispassword.html – and has been misconfigured.

Please ask your hosting provider ore any one who is responsable for the installation and/or configuration of the IISPassword protection tool.

If you find somewhere in the filesystem inside …/wp-content/ a file names .passwd, try it again after deactivating that file by means of renaming it.

I can assure you that this is a site misconfiguration issue and has nothing to do with a wppa+ configuration or behaviour issue.

Hi Jacob,

Thanks for the update – I wasn’t aware that IIS Password had been installed – but I will look into this and see what I can find.

Thanks for all of your time and help!

Hi Jacob,

I contacted my hosting provider and this is what they responded:

“IISPassword parses the .htaccess files to handle the list of users allowed to view a site or subfolder. If the user’s plugin is adding custom code into the .htaccess file, then it is possible that is causing problems for IISPassword. IISPassword is very picky about extra things in the .htaccess file. If the user’s plugin adds extra Apache specific lines to the .htaccess file, then that will cause problems on the Windows 2003 platform.”

All of this is Greek to me, as I’ve never heard about IISPassword until a few days ago. Does WPPA add custom code to the .htaccess file? I believe you when you say the plug-in isn’t the issue, but I wanted to double check this fact with you before I follow-up with my host.

Update to 5.4.10 and UNtick Table IV-A18. This will remove the .htaccess file in the ../uploads/wppa/ folder, that was put there to overrule other plugins blocking .htaccess files. Maybe a windows server does not understand RewriteEngine Off

Hi Jacob,

I did exactly as you said above – updated to today’s version and unticked that option in Table IV – and it WORKED!

Brilliant!

THANK YOU for all of your time and help on this issue – so good to see my pictures again! ??

Hello I think I am having the same problem. Suddenly some photos that used to be visible are now showing a box with a question mark. I have no idea what happened. Can you help?

A link please…

https://www.thefrenchconnectionevents.com/blog/invitations/

the photos used to be visible. I have no idea what happened. I don’t recall making any changes.

As far as i can see despite all your ′security′ plugins/settings, you do not have plugin wp-photo-album-plus installed on your site.