Performance options reset by host

Update on this – 123-reg don’t think the host is doing anything .. they are currently investigating. I will update this once I get their response (they have to wait until tomorrow because it seems to be resetting only the next day)

123-reg have now replicated the problem but are sure they are not doing anything.

I can see other people on this forum are also reporting the same issue .. so it looks like a Wordfence issue not a host one

Hi @singingcyclist,
I can verify that this is an issue with the host. It affects sites on Heart and Reg-123 hosting. The host is automatically setting Wordfence options to values that stop the scan after 3 minutes. Most scans take a little bit longer than that, which means that scans will not currently work on those hosts. I’ve tried reaching out to Heart but have not heard back from them. If you chat with their support, feel free to give them my email [email protected] as I’ll be happy to chat with them about it.

thank you so much. I have an open support ticket with them so will pass this on

123-reg have now escalated this to their systems teams so I am hoping they will contact you

123-reg now admit that they are changing the settings. They say that they have got settings that will work for me and allow the scans to run successfully. I am now waiting for them to tell me what these are

Hi @singingcyclist!
Thanks for the update. I haven’t heard from them but hopefully they’ll sort it for you. They’re welcome to contact me anytime to get more information.

thanks – I may need to contact you myself to get advice re settings if I can’t get it from them as this affects a lot of my sites and I need to get the scans running again. But I will keep you posted. Thanks for the help

Hi there – I hope you can help me .. I will paste below what I have finally got back from 123-reg… they are basically saying that I need to move to VPS instead of shared hosting. This seems mad to me as all my sites are really simple sites. Please could you suggest to me some Wordfence options that I could set to allow scans to run successfully on shared hosting packages such as mine at 123-reg. One thing that bothers me slightly is that before the latest update to Wordfence, I was able to run scans successfully on all my sites simply by setting max scan length to 0 and max length for each scan stage to 20. Is there a reason why this no longer works? I am hoping there might be one or 2 other settings I can fiddle with to make it work OK. None of them are ecommerce sites and they all have regular backups stored off-site, they just need a basic scan.

here;s the reply from 123-reg:
The settings that work are the ones that are set by default after you try to change them, the ones that are currently set in the Wordfence scan settings.
I have logged in to your WordPress website and run a scan myself. It has worked, however it was interrupted after 3 minutes.
I’m afraid that your website needs more time to complete the full scan. In this case, I would recommend a different hosting solution than a shared hosting package.
A shared hosting environment implies limitations to be put in place as the scripts that run on your website, if they use too much resources, can affect not only your website, but the rest of the websites on the same server.
When the test finished, Wordfence advised that the peak PHP memory usage was 73 MB. This is too much for a single script that runs on a shared hosting.
As such, I would recommend a VPS. This is a self managed service where you have full control over the server and we do not apply limits to it, you will be the one setting the limits: https://www.123-reg.co.uk/vps-hosting/

singingcyclist,
The reason the scan stops after 3 minutes is because your host has set Wordfence to stop scanning after 3 minutes. We haven’t changed anything that would cause this and several customers with Heart/123-reg have confirmed that Heart/123-reg support admits that they are intentionally setting Wordfence options like this.

You don’t need a VPS to run Wordfence. Wordfence runs on more than 2 million sites out there and many on entry level hosting accounts. It would appear that Heart/123-reg have more severe restrictions on their hosting accounts than most other hosts do. So optionally, you might want to consider changing to a different host instead of buying a VPS.

yes I agree

I can’t move hosts at the moment as it involves too many sites .. what I’d like to do is to set other Wordfence options to make the scan really quick .. I only need a basic scan and I doubt it takes much longer than 3 minutes anyway.

Can you suggest some Wordfence options I can set that will greatly reduce the amount of time it takes?

Hi again,
Basic scans can complete within 3 minutes on some sites, but a more normal time would be somewhere around 10-15 minutes. How long the scan runs will not only depend on which scan options are enabled but also how fast your server is and how many files you have. Therefore I can’t tell you what will work on your site. You’d have to experiment.

The problem is that your host resets the settings automatically so even if you managed to perform a scan once with some settings, you’d have to change the settings every day before you run a scan because they’ve been reset by your host.

The settings I’ve seen from customers that Heart seem to be setting are

Time limit that a scan can run in seconds 180
Maximum execution time for each scan stage 180

To get a “basic” scan to complete on normal shared hosting these options should be

Time limit that a scan can run in seconds 0
Maximum execution time for each scan stage 15

You could opt to only run “limited” scans instead of basic scans. Limited scan should complete within 3 minutes. But it might still not work if “Maximum execution time for each scan stage” is set to 180 because that’s too long. And limited scan does not scan the files in your system, so it provides very limited detection capabilities. If you can get limited scans to work, that might still be an option though as you’d then still have benefit from the Wordfence Firewall and all blocking features, even if the Wordfence scan isn’t doing as much as it could.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 1 month ago by wfasa.

I have asked 123-reg to contact you at [email protected]

Hi there – sadly I think this is the final word from 123-reg to me. I will post my last 2 ticket updates below. I’d be grateful for your thoughts. I look after about 25 very basic websites hosted with them and I simple need an automatic regular scanner that can let me know of major problems. I go in and check the sites regularly myself for plugin updates etc, just need to be alerted if there’s a hack. None of the sites merit more powerful hosting environments.. although I will think about each one individually as it approaches renewal. For the moment I am trying out other scanners.
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Charlotte
28.10.2018. 09:52

Ok, I see. And I understand what you are saying about the time limit and server/overload etc. But Wordfence are very keen to try and find a solution to that and would like to discuss it with you. Could you possibly email [email protected] and discuss it?

Support Agent
Danny
30.10.2018. 07:20

Hi Charlotte,
I can understand your frustration, however the scan settings will not be changed to run longer.
Please try to understand that as long as you are on a shared hosting environment, there are limitations in place so all the website on the platform can run.
As such, if you need more resources for all the plugins of your website to work as you want them to, please consider switching to a different hosting solution.

Regards,
Danny
123 Reg

Hi @singingcyclist!
Heart have reached out to me now so I’ll be chatting with them to see if we can find a solution. If I have any updates later on, I’ll let you know!