Collision of Plesk security and Wordpress' XML-RPC.php

[Dirk Riehle]

Hi,

tl;dr wp.com can't connect to my site because access to a particular feature, XML-RPC.php is blocked by some Plesk security rule. (That's at least what I'm guessing.) What to do?

I'm new to Plesk (Onyx 17.8.11). It comes with my hoster and seems to be a great piece of software.

I migrated my old Wordpress blogs to WP under Plesk. Works fine so far except for Jetpack and connecting to wordpress.com.

In more detail: When I try to connect my (own hosted) Wordpress blog on Linux under Plesk to Twitter, I get the following error message:

500 status code for "POST /sites/3355508/publicize-connections/new"

This message is issued by wordpress.com, which manages some Jetpack features like sharing to social sites, and as far as I can tell it means that wordpress.com cannot connect to my wordpress site through XML-RPC.php

Access to XML-RPC is often blocked for security reasons (it could be abuse in DDoS attacs, if I believe the web).

I would like to know which of the security modules I installed based on Plesk Advisor blocks the access to XML-RPC and how to switch it off. I uninstalled the Wordpress Toolkit but this didn't help. I could start uninstalling all other security measures but prefer not to if someone can give me a more precise answer.

A more general solution would also be welcome.

Thanks!

 

[custer]

Hi Dirk,

1. Install WordPress Toolkit.
2. Find the required instance and open Security menu for this instance.
3. Find the "Turn off XML-RPC pingbacks" option in the list and click Revert next to it.

Note that location and name of Security menu depends on which Plesk version you're using. Let me know if you have more questions. Hope this helps.

 

[Dirk Riehle]

Thank you for your help.

After (1) upgrading from Plesk Web Admin to Plesk Web Pro I found the option to revert "deactivate XML-RPC" (or something like it, sadly I only get a German interface, not an English one).

However, it doesn't do anything. wordpress.com still can't connect to the site. wp.com says the site is unreachable and the attempt to connect to social sites fails with the aforementioned error message.

Any other thoughts?