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Wordfence "The changes have not yet taken effect" Error Message Print

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If you run the Wordfence firewall on your websites you may have come across the following error message when installing the plugin:

"The changes have not yet taken effect. If you are using LiteSpeed or IIS as your web server or CGI/FastCGI interface, you may need to wait a few minutes for the changes to take effect since the configuration files are sometimes cached. You also may need to select a different server configuration in order to complete this step, but wait for a few minutes before trying. You can try refreshing this page."

This is due to us running the Cloudlinux operating system on our Shared and Reseller servers, which doesn't support custom php.ini files. As well as running Cloudlinux, we also use mod_lsapi as the PHP handler so any custom PHP settings need to be entered in your .htaccess file.

So to fix the Wordfence error message, simply open up your .htaccess file for your Wordpress site (this will be located in the same directory as your wp-config.php file) and add the following code on a new line:

php_value auto_prepend_file '/home/cpanel_username/public_html/wordfence-waf.php'

If you then save the changes to the .htaccess file and reload the page then you will find the error has been fixed. Please note that if you have got Wordpress installed in a sub-directory then you should alter the file path above accordingly.


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