Blocking translated pages

Hi @juicerocket, thanks for contacting us.

I wasn’t able to replicate the issue you show despite trying multiple pages and translations in quick succession so was wondering whether this could potentially be an issue where your IPs are not being detected properly and a block for another user is having an affect on all visitors.

If you look up your public facing IP address at https://www.whatsmyip.org/ and visit Wordfence > Dashboard > Global Options > General Wordfence Options > How does Wordfence get IPs and cycle through the options, do any match your IP? Make sure to click SAVE if you do have to change this.

You may find the “How does Wordfence get IPs” section informative on: https://www.wordfence.com/help/dashboard/options/#general-wordfence-options

Let me know how you get on with that and whether you see any further blocks in the mean time.

Thanks,

Peter.

You’re not able to replicate because we had to disable WordFence (we can’t let a client site have an issue on live). As a backup, we also changed the translation plugin from GTranslate to TranslatePress.

When I got to those settings, this is selected: “Let Wordfence use the most secure method to get visitor IP addresses. Prevents spoofing and works with most sites. (Recommended)” and my IP is shown twice below it.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 8 months ago by juicerocket.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 8 months ago by juicerocket.

Hi @juicerocket,

Thanks for letting me know. If you see this behaviour continue even with the new translation plugin, I would also recommend using Learning Mode – which is usually turned on for the first 7 days of a new installation but may have turned off if Wordfence was used during a testing/staging period.

From the Wordfence Dashboard click on Manage WAF. Then you will see Basic Firewall Options > Web Application Firewall Status. Change the option to Learning Mode. Now try altering the translations on your site that were causing blocks. This will help Wordfence learn that these actions are normal and it will allow them in the future. After you have finished performing the actions, switch the WAF from Learning Mode back to Enabled and Protecting. Now test to see if these actions work correctly.

Thanks again,

Peter.

I did more testing and WordFence is definitely blocking ALL translated pages whenever the plugin is activated. I tried putting the firewall into learning mode and it still blocked the translated pages.

We are using GTranslate, but the issue happens using other translation plugins too — my guess is this will happen on any site you test it on, by installing GTranslate and then looking at the translated pages.

Please fix this WordFence glitch.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by juicerocket.