Better WP Security – White Screen of Death, Completely White Website, wp-config.php

[Branndon]

I had just installed this, and was going through the configuration. The page about not having .htaccess in wp-admin is the last page I was on, I created a blank .htaccess file, and uploaded it to wp-admin, then the site went completely white. Nothing even in the source of the page. I’ve renamed the .htaccess in the admin folder to a backup, and that didn’t help.

I’ve also reverted the stock htaccess back to stock, that didn’t help, so I put the one generated by your software back. I’m not sure where to go from here.

[AITpro Admin]

Not sure why you would manually create a blank wp-admin .htaccess file?

The BPS setup and removal steps are: http://forum.ait-pro.com/forums/topic/read-me-first-free/
1. Activate Root and wp-admin BulletProof Modes on the Security Modes page.
2. Go to the Login Security page and choose your Login Security options and click the Save Options buttons.
3. Setup complete.

BPS removal steps:
1. Deactivate Root and wp-admin BulletProof Modes on the Security Modes page.
2. Deactivate and delete BPS on the WP Plugins page.

Unable to login into your website:
1. Use FTP or your Web Host Control Panel File Manager and delete the .htaccess file in your website root folder and the .htaccess file in your wp-admin folder.
2. Log into your website and click the Activate BulletProof Modes buttons.

[Branndon]

Because it said I didn’t have one, and there was no “generate one for me” button that I saw for the wp-admin folder. How should I have done this?

I can’t remove it from your advice because I can’t get in anywhere, the domain is doctorlookup.info

[Branndon]

This error might not be related to the plugin. I’ll report back either way.

[AITpro Admin]

This is what I see when I look at the history of indexed pages for this site.  There are 18 pages indexed using this search:
site:doctorlookup.info
A description for this result is not available because of this site’s robots.txt.
The site appears to have had problems for quite a while. It appears at the surface that the robots.txt file is blocking google and all other bots. A blank white page like I am seeing usually means the wp-config.php file has blank space at the top of the wp-config.php file.

[Branndon]

Thanks for looking in to it, that’s great. You didn’t look at who.is though, and I don’t blame you. It’s a brand new site, and was turned off from search engine tracking via the wordpress option. I’ve just launched it over this last weekend, and Google hasn’t come back yet. I’ll check for blank space in the files. It seems to be a PHP or memory limit with my server. I’ve put a ticket in. Thanks again for the support.

[Branndon]

The PHP error was due to me troubleshooting a fix. My website still returns a status code of 200, so it appears to be loading, but everything is blank. Is there any way at the database level to undo changes by BPS? Can you recommend good trouble shooting techniques for this problem? I’m not sure if it’s a database type error, or more of an .htaccess error

[Branndon]

I’ve traced it down to line 308 of wp-settings. do_action( 'init' );
Everything loads up to here, but after this line, the file stops reading. If I put die(“1”); on line 307, I see the output in my browser, but if I put it on 309, I don’t see anything. I did change my user ID through your plugin, could that be causing problems? Is there anything in side the ‘init’ action that you could be hooking into?

EDIT
commenting out this line let me back in. I’ll troubleshoot from here, but I assume something from BPS is calling the action ‘init’ and that’s causing the hangup.

[AITpro Admin]

BPS creates a few Database tables, but they are stand alone and used only by BPS and cannot cause this type of problem.  If you delete the /bulletproof-security plugin folder and the 2 .htaccess files (root .htaccess file and wp-admin .htaccess file) and the problem is still occurring then the problem is not being caused by BPS.

At this point you will need to look at your Server’s Log files to see what errors are being logged.  If you want to post the errors then I will tell you what is wrong with the site.

[AITpro Admin]

I did change my user ID through your plugin, could that be causing problems? 
LOL this happens occaisonally – You are talking about the Better WP Security (BWPS) plugin and not the BulletProof Security (BPS) plugin.
BPS does not have an option to change the user ID and Better WP Security does.  We do not troubleshoot that plugin since it is frankly just a mess.  So I guess post in the Better WP Security plugin Support forum on WordPress.org, but the plugin author does not respond to questions and he states that he does not answer questions in his plugin Support forum.

[AITpro Admin]

From what I do know about that plugin is yes you will need to manually delete all Database tables that the Better WP Security has created and delete the /better-wp-security plugin folder.  Better WP Security also modifies your wp-config.php file so you will need to get a new wp-config.php and replace your existing modified wp-config.php file and add your Database connection info:  username, password, DB name…

[Branndon]

I know about the confusion. I had theirs installed first, changed a few settings, then disabled it and installed yours. Then while messing with the htaccess settings in yours, that’s when it went white. I am a plugin dev myself, and pride myself on good support, but yours is top notch! I’m off to work on my database.

[AITpro Admin]

Yep, we have tested the Better WP Security plugin in the past and it has wrecked a couple of test sites so we are well aware that even after removing Better WP Security it can still take a website down until you completely manually strip everything out of the DB that this plugin does and all the other file level changes that this plugin makes.  Installing the Better WP Security plugin is kind of like handling a deadly snake – use with extreme caution this thing can bite you.  ha ha ha.

Your Server log should hopefully tell you where the problem is occuring, but if the site is totally failing the Server log won’t be much good of course. 😉

[Branndon]

The blank white page is due to some error in wp-cron. I’ve added this line to my wp-config.php define('DISABLE_WP_CRON', 'true');and everything works fine now. Now I have to find an alternative cron manager.

[AITpro Admin]

IMPORTANT NOTE:  for BPS Pro users and all other website owners.  Do not use this above.  What is recommended instead is complete removal of the Better WP Security plugin from your website. If you disable the standard/normal WordPress Cron function then all plugins that use WP Crons on your website will no longer work correctly and WordPress itself may not work correctly either.

The white screen of death is a very common problem with the Better WP Security plugin and typically this is caused by the Better WP Security plugin altering the wp-config.php file. The range of alteration/modification problems to the wp-config.php file are:
Blank space added inappropriately in the wp-config.php file
A blank wp-config.php file added to the website.
Unsuccessful write to the wp-config.php file damages the wp-config.php file
wp-config.php missing Constants or other necessary code
wp-config.php file corruption

If you decide you want to keep using the Better WP Security plugin anyway then the first thing to check if you get the White Screen of Death and you have the Better WP Security plugin installed is the wp-config.php file. Manually enter in the Constants and other code that Better WP Security adds/changes in the wp-config.php file.
Additional important Note:  Due to the way the Login security feature works in Better WP Security your Website/Server can be exploited and is vulnerable to DoS/DDoS attacks by very easily overloading your Website/Server with login requests.
Symptoms are:  intermittent White Screen of Death, intermittent 500 Internal Server errors, website will not load, website is down.
Recommended action:  Do not use Better WP Security login security.

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