Contact form not sending mail

  • Hi, I love BulletProof Security and use it on nearly all the websites I create and manage for my clients, but I need to bring to your attention the fact that one client with BPS installed is not receiving any email from the contact form on her website. The theme is Divi by Elegant Themes. I spoke with the WordPress support team at her host and though the ticket is still open, one of them said he has seen this before with BPS, and that it usually shows up just after an update. He thinks it has to do with permission for the .htaccess file interfering with functions WordPress needs to be able to write to it for, adding that so many security breaches are about sending spam using the site’s email functions that it’s not surprising the protection for it is quite aggressive, but in this case it could be the reason her contact form is not sending emails to her. She is an artist who has had her site up for nearly 20 years and has gotten consistent business through it via email, so of course this is impacting her income and we need to resolve this as soon as possible. We redesigned her site in late 2014 so it’s quite new – The url is https://www.judybuswell.com. Could you please advise me how to overcome this situation? If I need to change BPS settings, or adjust permissions on the .htaccess file? This would also help me if similar issues arise with other client’s websites that also have BPS installed. Please let me know if you need more information or admin access to the site to help me out.

    Thanks so much, Hannah

    https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/bulletproof-security/

Viewing 15 replies - 16 through 30 (of 42 total)
  • Thread Starter Hannah West Design

    (@vesica)

    Hm…permission for htaccess reverted to 404

    Thread Starter Hannah West Design

    (@vesica)

    Strange, it keeps reverting to 404 – got the site back up with minimal wp rewrite rules, but admin is still funky…going to check that htacces file now

    Thread Starter Hannah West Design

    (@vesica)

    Nope – deleted admin htaccess and still cannot access admin…will see if I can restore it (saved the code in a text file)

    Thread Starter Hannah West Design

    (@vesica)

    Just saw your last message – I have to leave soon, but twill do this now and see if this restores things…

    Thread Starter Hannah West Design

    (@vesica)

    I don’t see any W3 lines in wp-config at all…

    Plugin Author AITpro

    (@aitpro)

    Maybe your web host requires that the .htaccess file has 404 file permissions. On some web hosts that is mandatory and automated. On other hosts they do not allow 404 file permissions and then you have all the inbetweens with all the other web hosts.

    Some web hosts require that you have both a BPS Root and BPS wp-admin htaccess file in order for things to work correctly. On other hosts that is not required. In any case, if you use the default generic WordPress root htaccess code/file then a wp-admin htaccess file would not be needed for any host.

    Thread Starter Hannah West Design

    (@vesica)

    Oh, what am I thinking? W3 was already deactivated before we started this diagnostic. Now I just need to get the site back up before I leave!

    Plugin Author AITpro

    (@aitpro)

    I don’t see any W3 lines in wp-config at all…

    Hmm yeah then that would mean W3TC is not setup and working correctly. The W3TC code MUST be in the wp-config.php file in order for W3TC to work correctly.

    Plugin Author AITpro

    (@aitpro)

    Ok since you deactivated W3TC already then when you deactivate the W3TC plugin it removes the W3TC code from the wp-config.php file.

    Thread Starter Hannah West Design

    (@vesica)

    renamed wordfence plugin folder thinking amybe it was aggressively protecting htaccess or something and site is still down.

    Plugin Author AITpro

    (@aitpro)

    Try renaming the /plugins folder itself to /_plugins.

    Thread Starter Hannah West Design

    (@vesica)

    Saw your previous message about file permissions…their WordPress support guy said he didn’t know why it was set to 404 and thought that was part of the problem, so I don’t think it’s required by the host.

    I went back and the root htaccess file had reverted so all the W3TC stuff was there again and the permission had again reverted to 404, so I changed it and replaced the default WP rewrite rules. I had deleted the admin htaccess, and now the site and admin are back up. Now I’m super-short of time but don’t want to leave for the afternoon with the site unprotected at all. I just made sure W3TC won’t reactivate by renaming the plugin folder. Should I go ahead and re-create root/admin htaccess files and activate them?

    Thread Starter Hannah West Design

    (@vesica)

    Sorry, I renamed the Wordfence and W3TC plugin folders, but not the enclosing plugin folder. Can I leave it that way and reactivate BPS for now?

    Plugin Author AITpro

    (@aitpro)

    Sure that is fine. Anything that gets you back into the site.

    Thread Starter Hannah West Design

    (@vesica)

    Oh, this is so weird. Just went to look at the root htaccess and it was blank again, though this time with 644 permissions. I just removed all the W3TC stuff from BPS custom code and created a new root htaccess file, activating now…

Viewing 15 replies - 16 through 30 (of 42 total)
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