Wordfence Blocks Admin Access to Own WP Site

  • Hi, I’ve been using the free version of Wordfence for quite some time and have never had issues with it. Then this week when I tried to log in, I was blocked. This message popped up:

    “Your access to this site has been temporarily limited by the site owner
    Your access to this service has been temporarily limited. Please try again in a few minutes. (HTTP response code 503)”

    I’m the only admin on the site. I’ve never had this issue before, and I haven’t added any plugins or changed any settings in the Wordfence plugin recently. The only change is that WordPress rolled out a new update.

    I was able to log in to my FTP server and re-name the Wordfence plugin file to get access to my WP admin, but every time I re-name the Wordfence plugin back to just “Wordfence,” the same error message pops up.

    I’ve cleared every cache on my site. Troubleshooting ideas? TIA!

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Plugin Support wfphil

    (@wfphil)

    Hi @carpebean

    You may have been blocked by the option Immediately block the IP of users who try to sign in as these usernames.

    If you had been blocked by any of the other Brute Force Protection rules then when manually enabling Wordfence again you wouldn’t have been locked out again so you may have been blocked by a custom blocking rule that you have created if it wasn’t the option above. It may be the case that you haven’t triggered that custom rule but instead Wordfence is no longer detecting IP addresses correctly and Wordfence is detecting you and all other visitors, including attackers, as coming from the same IP address.

    You will need to manually disable Wordfence again then install our Wordfence Assistant plugin and press the button Clear all locked out Wordfence IPs, locked out users and advanced blocks.

    https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/wordfence-assistant/

    Now manually enable Wordfence again and see if that fixes it.

    If you are blocked again then you will need to manually disable Wordfence again and in Wordfence Assistant press the button Disable Wordfence Firewall. If you need to do that then you will need to do the following:

    – Disable the option Immediately block the IP of users who try to sign in as these usernames.
    – Set the Enable Rate Limiting and Advanced Blocking switch to ON.
    – Optimize the firewall.
    – Run through the Learning Mode process.

    https://www.wordfence.com/help/firewall/learning-mode/

    Also, check that Wordfence is detecting IP addresses correctly:

    https://www.wordfence.com/help/dashboard/options/#get-ips

    Thread Starter Two Small Potatoes

    (@carpebean)

    Thank you so much for your quick response @wfphil. Per your recommendation, I installed the Wordfence Assistant plugin and followed your directions.

    Worked like a charm! Thank you!

    Carrie @ Two Small Potatoes

    Plugin Support wfphil

    (@wfphil)

    Hi @carpebean

    Thank you for the good news.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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