Wordfence Central Connection Fails If ‘Disable REST API’ Installed

  • Resolved David Adams

    (@tictag)


    1 year, 8 months ago

    I recently added two new websites (Free License) to Wordfence Central, they are both are reporting ‘Connection Issues’. The root cause is that Dave McHale’s Disable REST API plugin is installed. If I deactivate this plugin, connections to Wordfence Central immediately start working again.

    So disable the plugin, right?!

    Well, not so fast … I already have 8 other websites connected to Wordfence Central, all of which have Dave McHale’s Disable REST API plugin installed, and they all work just fine.

    The error being reported in Wordfence Central is:

    We received a non-200 HTTP code when connecting to your site: 401.
    The response was:
    DRA: Only authenticated users can access the REST API.

    Why would Wordfence Central connections work fine for eight websites, but not for these two?

    Could you please help me troubleshoot this?

    Note1: All websites are at the same version of WordPress (v6.1.1) and Wordfence (v7.9.1) plugin, all use Disable REST API (v1.7) and all have the same Wordfence configuration template assigned.

    Note2: I have already tried disconnecting > reconnecting to Wordfence Central, and disconnecting > clear wordfence central info > reconnecting. All works fine then 10-15 minutes later, reports connection error again.

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)
  • Plugin Support wfpeter

    (@wfpeter)

    Hi @tictag, thanks for getting in touch.

    Wordfence Central does require the REST API to connect, so whilst it’s normally safe to disable the XML-RPC route into your site, I’d recommend not disabling the REST API. It is curious then that most of your sites work just fine but two are the problem.

    Unless there’s something in the Disable REST API plugin for adding exceptions that’s allowing Wordfence Central through on the majority of your sites, the difference in behavior between the sites doesn’t seem obvious to me on the information we have. I think it might be an idea to send us two diagnostic reports: 1 from a site experiencing connectivity issues, and 1 from a site that’s working so we can take a look into configuration differences between the two.

    You can send the diagnostic reports to wftest @ wordfence . com. The link to do so appears at the top of the Wordfence > Tools > Diagnostics page. Then click on “Send Report by Email”. Please add your forum username where indicated and respond here after you have sent it.

    NOTE: It should look as follows – Screenshot of Tools > Diagnostic > Send by Email

    If possible, in your response here once you’ve sent them could you indicate which is the non-working site. You can obscure the name slightly like myweb****.com to avoid sharing the domain publicly on the forums.

    Thanks,
    Peter.

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)
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