Question
Wordpress on 16.04 One-Click connectivity issue
- Posted on October 25, 2016
- WordPressDigitalOcean 1-Click Apps MarketplaceUbuntu 16.04
Asked by Ben Abbott
The following issue does not exist in the WordPress on 14.04 One-Click app, only 16.04 One-Click app
Creating a new WordPress site with the 16.04 One-Click app option works flawlessly, but the WordPress News widget has “An error has occurred…” and if I try to connect to the website via Android WordPress app, it fails.
However, setting up WordPress via the 14.04 One-Click app does not have this issue. The WordPress News widget indeed shows the latest news, and the Android WordPress app connects without issue.
Aside from having to update the copy of WordPress on Ubuntu 14.04 (which takes 2 seconds and still works afterwards), something is wrong (or different) on the 16.04 version and I do not know how to fix it.
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To use WordPress mobile app, xml-rpc should be enabled.
It could be that, xml-rpc is blocked by default on 16.04, which is not bad. It’s recommend to keep it blocked because it’s common way to attack WordPress installation.
You can learn more about it and how to block it when needed in How to block XML-RPC.
I’m not sure is it disabled by default but we can try to enable it.
- sudo a2disconf block-xmlrpc
You can check do you have needed dependencies.
- sudo apt-get install php-xml php-xmlrpc
Install it if asked to do so.
Make sure you restart Apache after this:
- sudo systemctl restart apache2
Try again to use mobile app.
I’m not absolutely sure that One-Click is using this method to block xml-rpc, but chances are very high. If it still doesn’t work, read linked tutorial and make sure you don’t have any of it
Just to note, this is not recommended to keep it enabled if you don’t use it, because of xml-rpc attacks. But it could be needed for some plug-ins and mobile app so if you need it, enable it. :)
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This is actually a security feature in the new one-click. WordPress is a common target for xml-rpc based brute-force attacks. This is something that our customers frequently have trouble with since it’s trivial to take down an unsecured WordPress instance.
To prevent this, fail2ban is set up by default. If you enter the wrong username or password over xml-rpc, you will be blocked from access for 5 minutes.
Wait five minutes, then try again with the correct username/password. It should work fine. :)