aenea

Hi Yannick. Thanks for that. There’s no urgency. I just wanted reassurance that it was on your ToDo list so that I don’t need to put finding an alternative onto mine.

Here is the reply I just got from my host provider (Namesco):

If you are receiving a 500 error when running a plugin through WordPress it suggests that the plugin is timing out because the PHP resources it requires to complete the script are being exhausted. We cannot raise PHP features but I can suggest some things which may help you run the script.

In the Dashboard please try disabling all running plugins apart from the plugin you are referring to, and any sidebar widgets temporarily, and make sure you are currently using a default WordPress theme – then retest.

If that still doesn’t run then, really, that plugin is more suited to a VPS environment where the php memory can be raised by accessing the php.ini file. We do not provide access to that file on the shared platform I’m afraid.

Their suggestion that it is timing out sounds plausible. I had a timeout problem with another plugin (Wordfence) until I adjusted a parameter that controls the size of chunks in which they do their checks.

Can you let me know whether you think you may be able to solve this problem by doing the link checks in batches? Otherwise I will have to look for an alternative method of checking the links.

Any thoughts on this problem (which is still happening)?

I’ve raised a ticket with my host provider to see if they can track down the appropriate error log but, so far, no response.

Since it works on my Test site where there are fewer links, it would seem to be something to do with the volume of links to be tested. Is there some way the checking activity could be broken up into smaller segments of, say, 30 links at a time?

Great. Have implemented the update and submitter email validation now working. Thanks.

I see you have implemented this update at v 3.0.7.2 but note you have put the display name through htmlspecialchars before assigning it to $val. Can you explain the reasoning behind this?

It now means that if a user uses a special char in his or her profile, e.g. aenea & co
then, although that displays ok as ‘aenea & co’, when the user goes to the profile update form, it is rendered as ‘aenea & co’, which could confuse the user.

If htmlspecialchars is not used, however, it displays as ‘aenea & co’ in the form.

I haven’t found any problems by not using htmlspecialchars here but wonder if I am missing something.

Just updated to v5.9.11.2 and checked to see if you had fixed the email validation but, sadly, not. It still allows me to type an invalid address in the Link Submitter Email field. Any chance of a fix?

Putting in a value for the Maximum execution time parameter seems to solve the problem.

I ran phpinfo to inspect the server settings and that reported a max_execution_time of 120. I tried setting the parameter to 80% of that (96), as suggested in your ‘My scans don’t finish’ web page but that didn’t work. Then I tried setting it to 60 (50%) as mentioned in the Wordfence options help file but that still didn’t work.

Next I tried setting it to 30 and, eureka!, it works.

Is that a reasonable value to leave it set at?

Many thanks for your help with this.

1. The scan gets as far as ‘Fetching list of known malware files; and then seems to hang with the following activities never completing@
‘Comparing core WordPress files . . .’
‘Comparing open source themes . . .’
‘Comparing plugins . . .’
‘Scanning for know malware files . . .’

When I looked at it this afternoon, it was still running the scan it started yesterday afternoon.

Having now inspected the scan log, I can see that the last completed scan was on 10 Oct. I have a copy of the log file which I can send you if that would help.

2. No problem with this. API connectivity works OK.

3. No problem with this. All scheduled crons are in the future.

4. I tried exporting the settings, deleting, then re-installing Wordfence and then importing the settings but that doesn’t seem to have fixed the problem. I wonder if there is something in the settings that is a hangover from the original installation when the web site was on the Zeus server.

Any more ideas?

It’s the ‘Link submitter Email’ field that I am using, not the ‘Link Email’.

URL validation works a treat, thanks.

But email validation doesn’t. It accepted the following two incorrectly formatted addresses:

rubishemail
rubbishemail.co.uk

There’s one more step in addition to those you describe – also need to go to Library Settings | Categories and change the Results Order to ‘Order of categories based on included category list’.

And, with that done, it works a treat! Many thanks.

That would be great. When doing that, could you also consider adding verification of the format of the user’s email? At the moment it will accept any old rubbish. (I’m not planning to insist on users logging in before making a link suggestion so some will be typing in their own name and email.)

I would like to able to custom order my categories and, like piperfect, have just discovered that the ‘My Link Order’ plugin is no longer available.

The ‘last update date’ option seems to be available only for links. Is there any way I can custome order my categories (other than prefixing the category names with a numeral corresponding to my prefered sort order)?

Yes, problem is fixed. Thanks.