Category: Apps

Find wp-admin url – iThemes Security / Solid Security

April 26, 2024

Quick way to find the wp-admin login slug on WordPress sites with iThemes Security or Solid Security installed:

wp option pluck itsec-storage hide-backend slug

1	wp option pluck itsec-storage hide-backend slug

If the sub-name changes then try:

wp option get itsec-storage | grep slug

1	wp option get itsec-storage \| grep slug

WordPress External Cron

May 10, 2021

For low traffic WordPress sites, the internal cron will not run on a reliable schedule resulting in missed jobs. For high traffic sites the internal cron can result in excessive cron runs. The solution is to disable the internal cron and setup an external cronjob at the operating system level. To disable the internal cron add the following to wp-config.php: For the external cron you can use curl or wget, but my preference is wp-cli like this: On a Plesk server this might look like:

WordPress Admin Dashboard Slow Due To WordFence

August 6, 2019

Recently worked a WordPress site where the admin dashboard was taking a minute or more to load. Tracked the problem to the “Updates Needed” section in the “WordFence” block displayed on the dashboard. The Updates Needed section calls the WordPress “wp_version_check()” function. This function, as part of building the data sent to wordpress.org with the update version check, calls the WordPress “count_users()” function. The “count_users()” function runs a query like this:

SELECT COUNT(NULLIF(`meta_value` LIKE ?, false)), 
   COUNT(NULLIF(`meta_value` LIKE ?, false)), 
   COUNT(NULLIF(`meta_value` LIKE ?, false)), 
   COUNT(NULLIF(`meta_value` LIKE ?, false)), 
   COUNT(NULLIF(`meta_value` LIKE ?, false)), 
   COUNT(NULLIF(`meta_value` LIKE ?, false)), 
   COUNT(NULLIF(`meta_value` LIKE ?, false)), 
   COUNT(NULLIF(`meta_value` LIKE ?, false)), 
   COUNT(NULLIF(`meta_value` LIKE ?, false)), 
   COUNT(NULLIF(`meta_value` = ?, false)), 
   COUNT(*) 
FROM wp_usermeta INNER JOIN wp_users ON user_id = ID 
WHERE meta_key = ?

SELECT COUNT(NULLIF(`meta_value` LIKE ?, false)),

COUNT(NULLIF(`meta_value` LIKE ?, false)),

COUNT(NULLIF(`meta_value` = ?, false)),

COUNT(*)

FROM wp_usermeta INNER JOIN wp_users ON user_id = ID

WHERE meta_key = ?

The number of “COUNT(NULLIF” columns depends on the number of user groups. For a site with a small number of users and groups this query is not a problem. But for a site with over 100K users this query took over 100 seconds to run. To fix the problem, we used “wp-cli” to disable the “Updates Needed” section in WordFence:

wp db query "update wp_wfConfig set val = 0 where name = 'notification_updatesNeeded';"

1	wp db query "update wp_wfConfig set val = 0 where name = 'notification_updatesNeeded';"

Now the admin dashboard loads with no delay. This is a great example of the types of problems

WordFence / CloudFront – Automatically Update Trusted Proxies

August 3, 2019

If you are using WordPress with CloudFront and WordFence then some extra configuration is required. WordFence does blocking based on IP address but it will fail to determine the correct IP address when you have CloudFront and an Elastic Load Balancer in front of the site. The work around is to setup a cronjob that updates the list of trusted proxies in WordFence. Login to WordPress admin and to to WordFence -> All Options. Under “How does Wordfence get IPs” select “Use the X-Forwarded-For HTTP header”. Click “Save Changes” Add a cronjob using the script shown below to update the list of trusted proxies. Here’s a simple script for the cronjob:

#!/bin/bash

# get the list of proxies from AWS
IPS=`curl -s http://d7uri8nf7uskq.cloudfront.net/tools/list-cloudfront-ips | jq -r '.[][]'`

# use wp-cli to update WordFence config in database
cd httpdocs
wp db query "UPDATE wp_wfconfig SET val = '$IPS' WHERE name = 'howGetIPs_trusted_proxies';"

# remove the WordFence config cache so the new IPs will be read on next page load
rm wp-content/wflogs/config-synced.php

#!/bin/bash

# get the list of proxies from AWS

IPS=`curl -s http://d7uri8nf7uskq.cloudfront.net/tools/list-cloudfront-ips | jq -r '.[][]'`

# use wp-cli to update WordFence config in database

cd httpdocs

wp db query "UPDATE wp_wfconfig SET val = '$IPS' WHERE name = 'howGetIPs_trusted_proxies';"

# remove the WordFence config cache so the new IPs will be read on next page load

rm wp-content/wflogs/config-synced.php

GlusterFS Cluster with CentOS on RackSpace Cloud

November 28, 2013

We want to build a high-availability storage cluster based on GlusterFS using RackSpace Cloud Servers on CentOS. Also we want to use RackSpace Cloud Networks to provide private networks for replication and cluster access. Finally we want to use RackSpace Cloud Block Storage with LVM and XFS to simplify future expansion. This article is based on a previous article we published on the same topic for Ubuntu: GlusterFS Cluster With Ubuntu On RackSpace Cloud As shown in the diagram, we’ll have two Cloud Networks, one for replication between the servers and one for access by clients to the storage. The next diagrams shows the filesystem layers – local, CBS, LVM, XFS and finally GlusterFS. Part 1 – Server Setup 1. Create servers and networks – Login to your RackSpace Cloud account and create two server following these guidelines: Make sure you choose a Next Gen region for the servers. For