No longer connecting to Mailchimp – was working fine

Just to say that this is still not working for me.

Was working fine, but now this plugin will simply not connect to the API

My site is https://www.staffordshirearts.co.uk (sign up is in the footer, and in the sidebar of any of the post pages)

I think it must be HOSTGATOR that is causing the issue – but with them being such a big hosting company, I am sure this must be affecting lots more people ?

If anyone can shed any light, much appreciated?

Hey webawoowoo,

Thanks for using our plugin and considering an upgrade! It would be wonderful to have you on board!

As for your issue: yes, the outdated CURL version could very well be the culprit here. It’s something that we’ve been running into too much lately, and we’re currently investigating a way to fix it.

Could you please tell me which errors you are seeing at the top of your screen? If it is indeed the CURL version, you should be seeing HTTP errors of some kind. Either a screenshot or copying over the error here would be a massive help. Thank you!

Thanks for feedback – Well up until now the API has just connected fine But I noticed it suddenly saying it is Not Connected

So doesn’t matter which computer I use to login in to WordPress, or how many new API’s from my Mailchimp account I try, I just get the ‘settings saved’ message but still get the grey box saying Not Connected – as shown in the screenshot below.

https://i950.photobucket.com/albums/ad342/admiralanson/MAILCHIMP.jpg

I have even tried using the API from a totally different Mailchimp account/list – and still same issue.

This is also happening on another website I run, which is also hosted with HOSTGATOR.

To clarify, this plugin used to work totally fine on the same website/same host – and only begun to stop working in last week or so

I have raised a technical issue with my host, but they claim they have not changed anything on their servers at their end.

I am not seeing any HTTP errors as such ? Where would these appear ?

I am having exactly same problem.

Used to be working without problem. New API key isn’t working either.

Any solution?

Hey all,

Are you all hosted at GoDaddy or HostGator by any chance?

Nothing in the plugin changed that could cause this kind of behaviour so it seems that one of the big hosts changed something in their server configuration that’s causing this.

Please ask your host to update the CURL version installed on your servers as 7.15 was released well over 6 years ago. It should really be a matter of minutes for them to perform the upgrade, and it will most likely get rid of the errors at once.

Let me know if that’s not fixing it please. The other option is that MailChimp changed something on their servers that’s causing this, I will ping them about it right away!

Hey all,

This is a _very_ hard thing for us to debug since it’s only affecting a very small subset of server configurations. I’m trying to pin it down, but it isn’t easy.

Does anyone of you have command line access to your server by any chance? If so, can you run the following command to see what it gives you?

openssl version

Thanks in advance!

I am Hostgator

And bascially hostgator keep telling me that they haven’t changed anything.

They are refusing as of now to update the cURL – although they said they would consider doing so as part of their general ongoing upgrade programme (but they didn’t offer any indication of timescale.)

Nothing seems to indicate I have been blacklisted/blocked by Mailchimp itself – although not sure how I would know??

This still leaves me without access to my MC4WP sign up using the API method.

If of use in your research – the last sign up I received through the MC4WP form on my site was 11 October – so for me the issue began sometime shortly after this date.

I am guessing a lot of other people affected just haven’t realised yet.

It won’t be until they start to see a drop in sign ups, or happen to open up the plug in settings page and see its no longer connected, will they realise there’s an issue

I realise this issue not caused by your plugin, and I would love to continue to use your plugin as it has served me well up until now, but as of now, for me it’s just incompatable with my Hostgator hosted websites it appears.

So I need to find a temporary solution, as it’s impractical for me to migrate my entire site to a new host as I have a reseller account with Hostgator, and I have dozens of sites under my reseller account.

Please keep this thread updated if you do find a solution. Cheers

openssl version

Not sure if I have ‘command line access to my server’ ???? – but happy to try this if you can explain how I would know and where to use it/type it.

I have Cpanel and WHM access to manage my hosting – and I also have access to my host space via Dreamweaver – so can i use any of these with the openssl version command in any of those ?

Hey all,

I just received word from MailChimp last night and they updated me with a bit more info on this problem.

Basically, if you update the plugin to version 2.3.16 and now see the following error message, it means your IP address is blacklisted by the MailChimp server.

The MailChimp API server returned the following response: 403 Forbidden.

The important part is the 403 Forbidden part. If you see that, there’s really only 2 ways to fix it.

– Change the IP address of your server, here’s how:
— Ask your webhost for a new IP address, one that is not (previously) used by spammers.
— Migrate to another webhost.
– Write to [email protected] and ask them to remove your website’s IP address from the blacklist.

The latest version should show you an error message in all cases, so let me know if it’s another error message you’re getting.

Thanks in advance!

Just to update and stay still not working for me. I have had Hostgatgor look into this, and they have said basically there are two choices – either move my websites to VPS or dedicated hosting account – or find another host.

They do also suggest asking you the plugin developer or going back to Mailchimp and asking them to unblock the IP my site is on (which is a shared server)

But to confirm this issue is as you say Mailchimp blocking certain servers – and of course if you are on a shared server, like my site is, then you stand a risk of another user getting your server blacklisted

here’s the response from my host (Hotgator) if useful to anyone

Hello,

It looks as though the server’s main IP, 192.185.2.19 has been blocked:

[~]# curl -I –interface 192.185.2.19 https://us2.api.mailchimp.com/2.0/
HTTP/1.0 400 Bad Request
Server: AkamaiGHost
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Length: 297
Expires: Mon, 19 Oct 2015 21:00:20 GMT
Date: Mon, 19 Oct 2015 21:00:20 GMT
Connection: close

However, other IPs on the server don’t appear to be affected:

[~]# curl -I –interface 192.185.3.28 https://us2.api.mailchimp.com/2.0/
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: nginx
Content-Type: text/xml; charset=utf-8
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Date: Mon, 19 Oct 2015 21:00:05 GMT
Content-Length: 0
Connection: keep-alive
Set-Cookie: _AVESTA_ENVIRONMENT=prod; path=/

[~]# curl -I –interface 192.185.3.5 https://us2.api.mailchimp.com/2.0/
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: nginx
Content-Type: text/xml; charset=utf-8
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Date: Mon, 19 Oct 2015 21:01:17 GMT
Content-Length: 0
Connection: keep-alive
Set-Cookie: _AVESTA_ENVIRONMENT=prod; path=/

This is relevant because no matter what IP an account is on, it will by default use the server’s main IP to send external requests. Because of this, one possible solution in this case would see to be if the MailChimp plugin can be altered to send from one of the un-blocked IPS. This is also important because it means changing an account IP will not help in this situation, because again outbound traffic by default goes from the main server IP, which appears to be the blocked one.

If you are unable to change the settings for that Mailchimp for WordPress plugin to use any IP other than the main server IP, your only recourse will likely be to consider migration to a VPS or dedicated server. The reason for this being that those type of hosting packages are not shared with other users, and therefore IP reputation will be dependent on the activity of you and your users alone.

You are quite correct that this entails any account on this server will have the same problem, unless the application can be configured to bind to one of the non-blocked IPs. Getting a dedicated IP will not help in a shared hosting context either for this same reason.

So to sum up, the options you have as I see them would be to see if MailChimp can help you send requests from a different non-blocked IP on the server, or else consider migrating to a dedicated or VPS server in which the IP reputation won’t be affected by other users.

If you have any further questions or concerns, please let us know.

Best Regards,

Dale M,
Linux Administrator