Todd Gibson

Yes, exact same problem with trying to contact the developer for me–but with the addition of one more complication. The developer’s site, where support tickets can be created, has an overactive firewall. When I try to access the site, I get a firewall message telling me I’m unable to access the site because my IP range has been blocked. So I can’t access the support system and when I try to leave feedback by comment on the Code Canyon page, the comments get hidden and I receive emails threatening to revoke my license because I am attempting to bypass the support system–which I can’t reach because there’s a firewall keeping me locked out.

I continued to leave comments with helpful information about what I’ve found and where the problem is figuring that since my license is already deactivated because of the error in the plugin what good is the threat to revoke my license? ?? Here’s to hoping the comments get read and the developer fixes the issue. I agree, it’s a very useful plugin and I’ve been happy with how it works.

From the large number of comments that have been left and hidden in the last week, it appears that many more people are aware of the problem and are trying to report it. It would be nice if the developer would at least leave a comment himself acknowledging the situation and providing info about what to do to address it.

I think we’ve found the problem!

WP-Spamshield creates a file called am-integrity-scanner in the mu-plugins directory. This is what is causing both the problem with my login button being disabled and with the license error message. I can see on my site that this file was updated on activation of version 1.9.42 and wasn’t removed when I removed the plugin. By manually deleting this file, my login button problem is fixed.

Interestingly, I tried reverting to version 1.9.41 of the plugin which worked without issue for me. On activation, the plugin created this file again, and the problem returned. I think the author must have made some changes on the backend with his licensing system and when the plugin is activated it’s writing this file incorrectly.

I removed the file and the module and then installed the old version 1.9.2 again (a version from before this file began to be used), and it works again. I have the plugin back–albeit in a form from several years ago.

Unfortunately, that didn’t do the trick for me. I uninstalled the plugin and then reinstalled v 1.9.2 from scratch. And I’m still getting the software piracy warning and am unable to activate the module. And even with this one installed, I don’t have the button enabled. So frustrating!

So you have purchased the plugin and you’re seeing it disabled with a license issue warning too? That’s what happened to me.

That may be it. I noticed this after I updated to WP-Spamshield 1.9.42 from 1.9.41.

Once I noticed the problem, I reverted the update to 1.9.41 and the button came back. But within a day, the plugin updated itself and the problem returned.

In the meantime, I had left a comment on the Code Canyon page about this, assuming it was a bug in the new release of the plugin, and then the author suspended my license. (Nice, right? Try to help out by reporting a bug and getting your license suspended.) Now I can install older versions of the plugin, but it won’t activate so the button remains disabled.

I have deleted the plugin entirely from the site, but that didn’t enable the login. I’ve tried reinstalling WordPress, thinking the plugin may have overwritten something in one of the core WordPress php files, but that didn’t fix it either.

Any suggestions on what else I could try? I do assume this is related to this plugin, but I’m not sure what else to do beyond disabling and deleting it which hasn’t fixed the problem.

Steve, thanks for sticking with me.

I’ve installed twentynineteen and used the Health Check plugin to disable all plugins and use the twentynineteen theme.

On my stage site, the login button is live under this scenario–just as it is with my theme and all plugins enabled. No problems at all there. But on my prod site, even under the scenario of twentynineteen and all plugins disabled, the button is still disabled. Furthermore, on the register and lost your password pages linked from the log in page, the button is disabled as well. These buttons are live on the stage site–both under the clean scenario and with my theme and all plugins.

It’s odd, but something is adding the disabled item to that line of html on my prod site, but not on stage.

Thanks for the quick response, Steve. Unfortunately, that didn’t make a difference. Using the 2014 theme, the button is still disabled. I’m using the same theme on my stage site as I am on the prod site, and I don’t have the disabled button there.

I’ve also tried disabling plugins one by one and nothing seems to fix the issue.

Must be something else, but I can’t figure out what it is….

You are right. It’s the first image that is correct. I’m glad it’s the better of the two cases!

But there’s a second issue here too that you might want to check. I had clicked the button to only update the featured image on posts. I was expecting that this would update only the one featured image for each of my posts. But the module updated all images in all posts–not just the featured image.

I can confirm the same problem. Yesterday I ran the module to update only the featured image for all posts. It took over four hours to run which I thought was odd because it was only about 1500 images. Today I discovered that every image on ten years worth of posts had been updated in what appears to be some random manner. Each post contains many copies of the same image, and its a different image from years prior.

In case it helps, here’s a snippet of html from one of the pages.

<a href="https://oliverands.com/community/content/uploads/2017/12/levine-interior.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-63700" src="https://oliverands.com/community/content/uploads/2013/04/spring08-products-778489.gif" alt="Michael Levine LA" width="400" height="150" /></a>

<a href="https://oliverands.com/community/content/uploads/2017/12/levine-african.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-63701" src="https://oliverands.com/community/content/uploads/2013/04/spring08-products-778489.gif" alt="LA fabric shopping" width="400" height="150" /></a>

<a href="https://oliverands.com/community/content/uploads/2017/12/levine-liberty.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-63702" src="https://oliverands.com/community/content/uploads/2013/04/spring08-products-778489.gif" alt="LA fabric shopping" width="400" height="150" /></a>

Thanks for your followup, and sorry about the incomplete nature of my first post here.

I subsequently did more testing and determined that the plug in works with core bbPress posts. It seems to be an incompatibility with BuddyPress.

The plugin allows uploads of attachments on standard topics, but it does not allow uploads to forums created within groups that have been made using BuddyPress.

See this topic, for example:

https://oliverands.com/community/groups/sew-alongs/forum/topic/gallery-tunic-dress-sew-along/page/4/

It is in a BuddyPress group. The topic allows for posts to have images included if they are hosted offsite and placed using html in posts. But when you try to upload images directly to a post, they do not get attached.

Thanks for making the update! I’ll wait to install until the new version is released.

Can you leave a comment here when you release it and close this out so I get notified? (Since I’m currently using an old version, my WordPress install won’t show me that the new version has been released.)

Thanks so much.