How to reactivate Wordfence after having renamed its directory ?

  • Resolved grizzli06

    (@grizzli06)


    4 years, 1 month ago

    Hi,
    Wordfence has recently locked my website, including the Admin.
    this is because I have used a software to backup mu website on my PC, so it has identified that the number of requests/second exceeds the liit for a human…

    So I have renamed the “wp-content/plugins/wordfence” directory with “wp-content/plugins/wordfence-old” as suggested here: https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/wordfence-locked-me-out-of-my-website/.

    Therefore Wordfence is no longer activated and I can access to the WordPress admin.

    My question is: how can I declare in Wordfence an autorized administrator email ? Have I just to activate again Wordfence from the WordPress admin and look to the place where I can declare this email ?

    Thank you for your reply,
    Michel

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • Thread Starter grizzli06

    (@grizzli06)

    Update:
    I have reactivated Wordfence from the WordPress Admin, and the Website is locked again…
    Furthermore, I cannot rename the “wp-content/plugins/wordfence” directory with “wp-content/plugins/wordfence-old” by FTP as I previously did, because there is no “wordfence” directory ! (just a “wordfence-old” following my prevous renaming action).

    What can I do ??

    Plugin Support wfpeter

    (@wfpeter)

    Hi @grizzli06, thanks for your messages and sorry to see you’re having trouble with this.

    It looks like you didn’t name the Wordfence folder back before re-activating the plugin as described in the steps, so the directory being used for the active plugin is “wordfence-old”. By renaming that folder again to “wordfence-old-2” or something like that should open the site back up to you.

    You will need to install the Wordfence Assistant Plugin after once again renaming your Wordfence plugin folder to “wordfence” via FTP to regain access to your site.

    Once downloaded, you can use the tool to deactivate the firewall, which will keep you from being blocked once Wordfence is renamed in FTP and turned back on. This will NOT disable the part of the firewall that is blocking exploits.

    Once Wordfence is activated again, find your public facing IP address at: https://www.whatsmyip.org/

    Unblock your IP on the Firewall > Blocking page (you can search for the IP using the advanced filters)

    If you can’t find your IP there, then take a look at Live Traffic to see if all logins and logouts seem like they have the same IP address.

    If they do, look at Wordfence Dashboard > Global Options > General Wordfence Options > How does Wordfence get IPs and cycle through the options there until it displays the IP address you discovered on https://www.whatsmyip.org/. That will be the setting you need to use going forward, so click the SAVE button once you’re done.

    Thanks,

    Peter.

    Thread Starter grizzli06

    (@grizzli06)

    Hi Peter,
    Thank you for your complete reply,
    My site is supposed to be highly secured, so I will see if it is not hacked during the coming weeks/months: maybe it is not necessary to perform all these tasks…
    Thank you and best regards,
    Michel

    Plugin Support wfpeter

    (@wfpeter)

    Hi @grizzli06 thanks for your reply.

    Keep a note of my advice in case you need to act on it in the future, but I wish you well going forward. If you have any other queries with Wordfence in the future, don’t hesitate to start a new topic and we’ll be glad to help!

    Thanks,

    Peter.

    Thread Starter grizzli06

    (@grizzli06)

    Thank you very much for your outstanding support !

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
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