WARNING: Breaks Multi-Site; No Support

  • I hesitate to leave negative reviews for anything, but I felt compelled to in this case to forewarn other admins considering Wordfence for multi-site installations. Note that Wordfence claims specifically on their site and docs that they are compatible with WordPress multi-site installations.

    After installing Wordfence exactly as instructed, it broke all pages on our multi-site installation (404 errors). We managed to recover from that by restoring our .htaccess file. We then followed all instructions exactly to remove Wordfence, which resulted in http 500 errors and an incomplete uninstall. (The plug-in appears without a checkbox to remove it, etc.)

    I don’t mind errors if there’s support to resolve them, but support from Wordfence has been non-existent. We opened two tickets regarding the above issues that remain unanswered (it’s been eight days for one ticket and three days for another). Still no response.

    If you’re considering Wordfence for multi-sites, proceed with caution. Wordfence may break your installation and you may not receive any support despite repeated requests.

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

  • Hi tissa10x,
    Sorry to hear you had problems installing Wordfence. This is not something that would typically happen when installing Wordfence in a WordPress multisite. We do test with Multisite before every release.

    It sounds like something went wrong when you tried to Optimize the Firewall. That is the only instance in which we write to the .htaccess. We prompt you to download a backup of your .htaccess before you proceed, just in case a situation like yours should occur.

    I’m not sure which instructions you followed to remove Wordfence. If you set Wordfence to delete tables on deactivation and then deactivate the plugin, it will be completely uninstalled.

    As for support, we do have paid staff working here in the forums on www.ads-software.com. I’m sorry you didn’t get the help you expected in this case, but please keep in mind that it’s a free product. I see that you got a reply to one of your threads now, so please continue this discussion there if you still want our help. Thanks!

    Thread Starter condition cavu

    (@tissa10x)

    I suspect the only reason I finally received a response to one of my tickets is because I left this review.

    That it’s a free product is hardly justification for the lack of support, especially when we fully intended to purchase your premium version prior to our support experience.

    Just for the record, we followed the instructions to remove Wordfence precisely as you mentioned. Also, we did not try to optimize the firewall, but left it in learning mode.

    We’ve since moved on to another security product that supports multi-site out of the box. Thanks for your response nonetheless.

    yes, agree. And we were about to buy into the Premium version. I am glad we did not.

    Sorry you both weren’t happy with Wordfence free. I have to say though I think it’s pretty great that we have a free version and free support! Everyone can try it out and decide for themselves without spending a penny. Best of luck with your sites and have a great day!

    Thread Starter condition cavu

    (@tissa10x)

    I agree it’s great you have a free version, and we fully intended to purchase Premium. What’s not so great is when the free version breaks something major and there’s no timely free support.

    In our case it broke our entire multi-site, and we couldn’t get a timely response (in over one week for one ticket). We finally fixed it on our own, but it left us doubtful about how compatible Wordfence is with WordPress multi-sites.

    Yes tissa10x, I understand that this is what happened in your case and I’m sorry about that. Thanks for your feedback and good luck with your sites!

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
  • The topic ‘WARNING: Breaks Multi-Site; No Support’ is closed to new replies.