How to disable firewall? Disabled setting does not save.

Hi Matt,

Are you able to change other Wordfence settings on the options page? If not, turn on “Disable config caching” near the bottom of the new Diagnostics page on the Wordfence menu.

Otherwise, it might mean that the web server is unable to write to the files in wp-content/wflogs/ — if you can check the owner and permissions of those files, that may be the reason.

-Matt R

I’m having this same issue. My wflogs folder is writable.
Testing the disable config caching setting now to test.

No luck. I set the firewall to “disabled” then hit SAVE and the setting comes back to learning mode on a page refresh.

On the wordfence options page I was able to turn on “Automatically updates Wordfence to the newest version within 24 hours of a new release” as a test. Write access is granted on that directory / files.

Same here, Matt. All my settings work perfectly fine except the ability to disable the firewall.

i followed some directions from the Wordfence diagnostics page and created/made writable the following folders and still cannot disable the firewall:

wp-content\wfcache
wp-content\plugins\wordfence\tmp

I am having a similar problem.

I am able to disable the firewall, but the ALERT, to enable the application firewall, at the top of EVERY WordPress admin page is STILL visible. I don’t want this alert at the top of EVERY WP admin page – ESPECIALLY if I have DISABLED the application firewall.

PLEASE DISABLE.

Can you give us information about where the Enable/Learning Mode/Disable switch setting is stored? This could help pin down where the permission needs to be changed/applied.

I am having a similar problem.

I am able to disable the firewall, but the ALERT, to enable the application firewall, at the top of EVERY WordPress admin page is STILL visible. I don’t want this alert at the top of EVERY WP admin page – ESPECIALLY if I have DISABLED the application firewall.

PLEASE DISABLE.

I don’t think all the CAPS are particularly necessary.

@matt & @keanon: Can you check your browser’s javascript console to see if there are any error messages, when you choose to disable the firewall and click the Save button? If the ajax requests are failing on that page, it could cause the issue.

If you’re not familiar with the console, we have instructions here:
Open the JavaScript console for troubleshooting plugins

(The option is stored directly in wp-content/wflogs/config.php because it needs to be available before WordPress itself starts.)

@barry: The alert will be dismissible in an upcoming maintenance version, sorry for the inconvenience.

-Matt R

Thank you @wfmattr for the quick response.

We love the WordFence Pluggin and look forward to testing out the firewall when time permits.

No errors in the javascript console.
this pops up on page load in the console but nothing more when selecting disable and hitting save.

load-scripts.php?c=0&load[]=jquery-core,jquery-migrate,utils&ver=9768f3a…:9 JQMIGRATE: Migrate is installed, version 1.4.0

Yup, no errors here either.

request:

wafStatus=disabled&learningModeGracePeriodEnabled=1&learningModeGracePeriod=04%2F20%2F2016+08%3A16am
+-0400&ruleEnabled=1&ruleEnabled=2&ruleEnabled=3&ruleEnabled=9&ruleEnabled=11&ruleEnabled=12&ruleEnabled
=13&ruleEnabled=14&ruleEnabled=15&ruleEnabled=16&ruleEnabled=17&ruleEnabled=18&wafConfigAction=config
&action=wordfence_saveWAFConfig&nonce=EDITEDoutBYmattFORpostingONwpFORUM

response:

{"success":true,"data":{"learningMode":false,"rules":{"18":{"ruleID":18,"type":null,"category":"priv-esc"
,"score":null,"description":"User Roles Manager Priviledge Escalation <= 4.24","action":"block"},"1"
:{"ruleID":1,"type":null,"category":"whitelist","score":null,"description":"Whitelisted URL","action"
:"allow"},"2":{"ruleID":2,"type":null,"category":"lfi","score":null,"description":"Slider Revolution
: Local File Inclusion","action":"block"},"15":{"ruleID":15,"type":null,"category":"xss","score":null
,"description":"dzs-videogallery 8.80 XSS HTML injection in inline JavaScript","action":"blockXSS"},"16"
:{"ruleID":16,"type":null,"category":"sqli","score":null,"description":"Simple Ads Manager <= 2.9.4.116
 - SQL Injection","action":"block"},"17":{"ruleID":17,"type":null,"category":"rfi","score":null,"description"
:"Gwolle Guestbook <= 1.5.3 - Remote File Inclusion","action":"block"},"3":{"ruleID":3,"type":null,"category"
:"sqli","score":"40","description":"SQL Injection","action":"failSQLi"},"9":{"ruleID":9,"type":null,"category"
:"xss","score":"100","description":"XSS: Cross Site Scripting","action":"failXSS"},"11":{"ruleID":11
,"type":null,"category":"file_upload","score":null,"description":"Malicous File Upload","action":"block"
},"12":{"ruleID":12,"type":null,"category":"lfi","score":null,"description":"Directory Traversal","action"
:"block"},"13":{"ruleID":13,"type":null,"category":"lfi","score":null,"description":"LFI: Local File
 Inclusion","action":"block"},"14":{"ruleID":14,"type":null,"category":"xxe","score":null,"description"
:"XXE: External Entity Expansion","action":"block"}},"whitelistedURLParams":[],"disabledRules":[],"isPaid"
:false},"nonce":"EDITEDoutBYmattFORpostingONwpFORUM"}

p.s. I don’t think it has been mentioned by anyone but I am running wordfence as network activated on my multisite, if it makes a difference.

Same here. WordPress 4.5 and clicking the Save Button won’t do anything (no page load, nada).

Ok, now we’re beginning to more into CAPS territory ??

… This is still not fixed with the update today (4/15). Still cannot disable the firewall.