DJ Allyn

There was one plugin that I found and discarded: “Ban Hammer“. (https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/ban-hammer/) This was a plugin I remember installing back in 2011 in response to a HUGE number of Russian spam accounts. Unfortunately, neither the plugin nor the site got any updates since 2012 when I stopped supporting it.

The site owner has been operating this site all this time on software from 2011-2012.

Aside from tired version of Askimet, the rest of the plugins were theme-based.

(I’ve put them into functions.php now, and retain only Askimet in the plugins)

So, as far as plugins that could have possibly created and written to an .htaccess file, Ban Hammer is the only plugin I found.

I do not know the history between 2012 and two days ago, but I do know that 99.9 percent of it was unmanaged. The owner *might* have explored at sometime in the past, but I kinda doubt it.

I hope this helps for future issues.

I’m just glad that I found what was causing the immediate issue. Hopefully, you might find out what might cause it to occur in the first place. I’m sure I’m not the only person to have run across this.

Thanks!

Thanks!

I found the problem. I opened up an .htaccess file and found the following code in there:

ErrorDocument 403 “Denied”
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} POST
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^https://(.*)?domain\.com [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/wp-login\.php(.*)$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/wp-admin$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ – [F]
</IfModule>

The last time that file was written to was on 3/14/2016. So apparently, this problem has been going on for a while.

I have no idea of:

a) who created the .htaccess file in the first place. When I set all of this up ten years ago, I had no need for an .htaccess file. I haven’t worked on the site since 2012, so perhaps someone else felt the need…

b) who added this particular code or for what reason.

It’s kind of a strange thing to use on a blog where 500+ people are registered.

Oh well, I deleted the .htaccess file altogether and it is all working happily now.

Thanks for your help.

Hi Jackie, thanks for your response.

The only thing I am able to do from the sidebar login is to log into the site with my correct credentials. (it is the ONLY place I can log in at that works) But yes, you can’t register or login from either the sidebar or the actual wp-login page.

It’s a shared server account at Hosting Matters. I’m not the site owner, I’m the guy who set this whole shebang up about ten years ago. Now I’ve been asked back to check into this.

It’s a linux server. There isn’t a firewall, and no Cloudfare. Database size? I have NO idea other than it currently has 3,000 long-winded political screeds and 50,000+ comments. (again, not my circus, not my monkeys — I’m just the guy who set it up for them) ??

@adrianamoni: Yes, I am working with a child theme, but what you suggested does not stop the cropping from happening.

I have since done a work-around by allowing the image to be cropped, then renaming my original-sized image and replaced the cropped image inside the folder.

As you can see, it works fine:

https://djallyn.org

@andrew Nevins: You are correct. Each time the theme gets updated, we would lose all of our changes unless we did one of two things — use a child theme, or simply rename the theme itself.

The later would be good if you have substantially changed the theme enough that it is really no longer what you started with. In my case, I chose not to modify TwentyThirteen like I did with TwentyTen, so except for a few minor tweaks, it is essentially remaining as TwentyThirteen.

For me, the issue is pretty much resolved — I got my header image to display the way I want it displayed. But I never was able to change the size that the cropper tool used.

Thanks though!

I just tried that. It still wants me to crop the image at 230px high. I just need to find a way to change the size of the theme croping tool.

Yes I am esmi.

@andrew Nevins Forgive me, and I don’t mean to be rude, but my issue is pretty much the same issue that this thread was started on. Starting a new thread would be counterproductive since it would require someone to post the answers in more than one spot.

But I did manage to find a work around by finding and replacing the cropped image with the original image and changing the min-height to my required 288px.

See? One thread, and I got the answer I needed with no help from you. Next time, if I have a question that needs an answer, and nobody else has asked it, THEN I will create my own thread.

I am trying to use an image that is 1600 wide and 288 high. My problem is that when I use the image uploader in the header section of the theme, it still tries to crop my image to 230 high. Is there any way to override that? Like change its cropping dimension to a different height?

I’ve already tried @differentcharacter example to change the min-height to 288 but that doesn’t seem to work.

I am still having problems with using this plugin.

I have my WP site on Dreamhost. I’ve entered the keys, and can see and select the bucket I want to backup my site to. I’ve configured the backup page for all files and database, on a daily schedule with the minimum backup retention. I waited two days, and NOTHING shows up in my bucket. I then click the “Backup ASAP” button and got the message:

“You have an ad-hoc backup scheduled for today at 08:31 pm. Do not hit refresh on the backups page. You may continue using your site per usual, the backup will run behind the scenes.”

Groovy. I think all is swell, and come back the next day and… ZILCH. Nothing in the bucket.

What is wrong, or what am I doing wrong?

Oh never mind. (bangs head…)

@xdaseinz: I would be happy to being on your beta release list.

Who is we… in the grand scheme of all many millions of Wp users?

I’m guessing it is still a substantial number — but then that would only be a subjective guess.

Sure, menus might be a replacement for new users going forward, but for a lot of us who have had WP sites operating for the better part of a decade, this makes for more work in the short term.

Perhaps I missed the memo where this was actually going to happen. I was blindsided by it myself, as I am sure that many people will be blindsided when they upgrade to 3.5 and discover that a large part of their sidebar has disappeared, and even the access to the links on their back end has been taken away.

You are probably right, that in the long run this is a better way to go. I guess my main argument here is not having enough of a word before hand.

Judging by the shortcode, you don’t have the paid version.

@capitalismclown

Triplanetary answered your entire question above.

The code comes from the WP code, not your theme code. You can override that code if you go to your comments.php file in your theme and replacing the following:

<?php comment_form(); ?>

With this:

<?php comment_form( array('comment_field' => '<p class="comment-form-comment">' . '<textarea id="comment" name="comment" cols="45" rows="8" aria-required="true"></textarea></p>') ); ?>