Cannot access my webpage as it keeps displaying This site can’t be reached

You can double check the physical paths to your website are correct in the Firewall files (.user.ini -if you have one- and wordfence-waf.php) in your root directory using FTP. If the file paths are incorrect, the plugin will break and the site will not load.

The user.ini file will look something like this:

; Wordfence WAF
auto_prepend_file = '/path/folder/another_folder/youraccountname/yoursite/wordfence-waf.php'
; END Wordfence WAF

In wordfence-waf.php the code will be similar:

if (file_exists('/path/folder/another_folder/youraccountname/yoursite/wp-content/plugins/wordfence/waf/bootstrap.php')) {
	define("WFWAF_LOG_PATH", '/path/folder/another_folder/youraccountname/yoursite/wp-content/wflogs/');
	include_once '/path/folder/another_folder/youraccountname/yoursite/wp-content/plugins/wordfence/waf/bootstrap.php';
}

it’s the path you are concerned with. Just ensure that whatever you see there matches what it actually is.

If you do not know what your site’s actual server path is, you can find out by temporarily placing a new file in your web root called anything (test.php works) and include this code:

<?php echo realpath('index.php'); ?>

and then load this file by going to yoursite.com/test.php to see the actual path. Ensure that you copy only the path, and not the index.php at the end of it.

I think @topsan123’s problem might be a little different, since running a WAMP setup.
I use a local Development setup with WAMP for some things as well Of course WordFence is completely meaningless to that development environment and need not actually run.

But for testing purposes I tried it anyway, and this is what I see:

During WordFence activation, it runs through a lot of stuff, including parsing the rules file.

There is an odd (and unexpected) incompatibility between what WordFence does during wfWAFRuleParser::parse() and the typical (or some) WAMP setups..

So while parsing, it suddenly and silently crashes. (Crashes the running process.)
No visible errors anywhere, other than the apache-log shows an MPM client died and it being restarted.

Instead of the plugin getting enabled, you get the standard Chrome/Windows “cannot be reached message), because for a while the Apache server/PHP is not responding to the redirected connection.

If the WAMP setup is done correctly, the service restarts automatically, and a second later the test site serving is normal (you are still on the “cannot connect message, though).
But it is normal in the sense that all you (or I in my case) have to do is press the browser Back button to get back to the plugins list.. With the Apache process automatically restarted, everything is normal again.
No need to go remove it in the plugin folder, because it never got activated.

The only thing I cannot do is enable WordFence. The parser will consistently crash the system during the activation process every time, and so the plugin never get’s activated.

I never took the full trouble to figure out why the parser is so tricky for Apache/PHP, since I certainly don’t need WordFence on a “loopBack” connected development environment with no access other than me. I only installed it for potential plugin compatibility testing purposes.:-)

Ahh… My unfortunate “have to know everything” curiosity took over, and I got the thought to test this with a different PHP version.

Running in a PHP 5.6.25 environment, enabling WordFence fails. It cannot parse, because PHP 5 crashes.

Switching to a PHP 7.0.10 based WAMP environment, it succeeds. ??

@efishinsea

Thanks for your instruction. I have tried installing and activating the plugin again. Actually this time I cannot even activate the plugin.It displays the message above after I pressed the activate button. So I’ve followed your instruction to find the files but I couldn’t find any.

Thanks

• This reply was modified 7 years, 3 months ago by Anonymous User 15521305.

@crudhunter

Thanks for your input. Yeah, you are right that no need to remove it in the plugin folder, just press the browser Back button.But I didn’t think about it. Thank you!

Does Switching to a PHP 7.0.10 create headache changes to my site?

In a normal WordPress environment with “normal” plugins. No it runs fine.
Some plugins might produce errors under things like E_STRICT because they have not tested PHP7 but it still runs. Haven’t seen anything fail yet.

PHP5 is seriously old at this time anyway, so developing with PHP7 is the right thing to do.

I have no real live sites running less than 7.1 at this time.. WordPress runs just fine on it.

PHP7 also has other advantages. For example it is seriously faster than PHP5, plus it has built-in/born-in Zend opcode caching.

Of no consequence in a development environment, of course, but an improvement for production sites.

@crudhunter

I have switched php version from 5.6.2.5 to 7.0.10 in WAMP. Now it works! Thanks for help!

Why I get this error when I run php version 5.6.2.5? Does Worldfence requires newer version than that?

• This reply was modified 7 years, 3 months ago by Anonymous User 15521305.

Now I have another problem. Scan never completes, stuck. This plugin is hard to use.

On the PHP version.

No, WordFence does not require higher than the PHP5 version.
A minimum version requirement is what you get, if something (like WordFence or WordPress) uses functionality that was never developed in PHP of lower versions. Like written in code that earlier versions do not support. Like when they started supporting Classes, or when Namespaces was introduced. If some code uses Namespaces, then obviously it cannot run on a PHP version so old, that it does not know what a Namespace is. Hence a “minimum version” requirement. ??

In either case, it is NEVER valid for a PHP interpreter to crash. It can return errors, if it does not support a function of if your code it is interpreting has bugs, but is should NEVER, EVER crash. NEVER.. When the PHP interpreter out-right crashes, you have by definition found a bug in the PHP interpreter itself.

But PHP is not a single entity.. It is the PHP interpreter plus a long list of PHP modules of varying qualities, each of which are enabled or disabled for various reasons, made by different people, and can crash for each their own buggy reasons.. Supporting Phar archives, MB strings, various conversions modules, …, …..

Do a PHP info (run PHP -info, call phpinfo(), or you can call it by just clicking the “Click to view your system’s configuration in a new window” link at the bottom of WordFence Diagnostics page. See all the PHP modules you have enabled.

So, many PHP5 versions work just fine, IF you have the right modules installed, and that particular versions is not buggy. ??
Similarly for all PHP 7. PHP 7.0.22 does not work, PHP 7.1.8/9 does.
but But if one of the PHP versions fail, like in your case, time to try moving up. ??

You should open a new issue with your failing scans issue.
This particular forum topic has already been marked as “Resolved”, and scanning is a separate thing.