Cannot Update WordPress Or Install New Plugins

Hi @mgrech thanks for reaching out to us.

From your description it sounds like a case for learning mode on the firewall, although persisting when deactivating Wordfence could mean we need to look into this a little further.

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 perform the updates/plugin installations that were causing issues. 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 try again to see if these actions work correctly.

https://www.wordfence.com/help/firewall/learning-mode/ is an amazing resource for learning more about the WAF and learning mode.

If this doesn’t work, I’ve seen memory limits set on the server also prevent updates like this. Check your PHP error logs after attempting to trigger the updates again and paste any errors you see occur at that time here so I can help you interpret them if necessary.

Let me know how you get on!

Peter.

• This reply was modified 4 years ago by wfpeter.

Hi there, thanks for this. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Mike

hi there, i uninstalled and re-installed wordfence and now everything is working well. i am not sure why i had issues before.

Hi @mgrech,

Thanks for letting me know, and I’m glad to hear you were able to fix the issues you were having with a reinstall.

If you have any problems with Wordfence features in the future, please start a new topic any time and we’ll be glad to help you out.

Peter.