Hey guys, I'm encountering a problem with my WordPress website and would really appreciate some help.
Some of our clients in Hong Kong have reported issues accessing our website. I used a VPN to replicate the issue, and they were right, the website can't be accessed.
We contacted our server providers, and they informed us that everything was fine on their end. They suggested it might be an issue with the "Wordfence" plugin. I disabled the plugin, but the problem persisted. I also checked the WooCommerce country blocking option, but everything seemed fine there as well.
Interestingly, I have another WordPress website (although it's much simpler and not an online store) that can be accessed from Hong Kong. This leads me to believe that the issue might be related to a specific plugin on the first site. Below is a list of plugins currently active on the affected site:
Advanced Custom Fields PRO
Advanced Editor Tools
Ajax add to cart for WooCommerce
Classic Editor
Contact Form 7
Contact Form CFDB7
Converter for Media
Currency Switcher for WooCommerce
Duplicate Page
Easy WP SMTP
FileBird Lite
Loginizer
MouseWheel Smooth Scroll
OR Core
PDF Invoices & Packing Slips for WooCommerce
Product Customer List for WooCommerce
PublishPress Planner
Redirection
The SEO Framework
WooCommerce
WooCommerce Shipping & Tax
WooCommerce Stripe Gateway
Wordfence Security
Define “can’t access”. What happens specifically? I don’t think any of those plugins would be the cause.
Check your CDN to confirm there isn’t a rule that blocks access from Hong Kong. Maybe repoint the DNS directly to your server or bypass the CDN temporarily.
Check the server firewall to confirm Hong Kong is not blocked.
Check your htaccess file for directives that might be blocking traffic from Hong Kong.
Disabling Wordfence won’t necessarily stop the firewall component, WAF. You need to disable Wordfence then comment out / delete references to the waf files that are noted in userini and htaccess. You could use the plugin’s settings to clear any IP blocks and to manually reload the rules.
Check your .htaccess file for any directives that might be blocking traffic from specific regions. Look for any rules related to IP blocking or geographic restrictions.
Also, as already instructed – disabling Wordfence from the plugin dashboard won’t necessarily disable the Web Application Firewall (WAF), as you need to do all the following steps: after disabling Wordfence you must edit your .user.ini and .htaccess files to comment out or delete references to Wordfence WAF files, and use Wordfence settings to clear any IP blocks and manually reload the rules.
Since your other site from the same host is accessible, I really suspect a configuration or plugin issue to be specific to the affected site.
A while back i had to go through a long process that allowed me to host a websites on AWS servers in china. Our client specifically catered to customers in asia and our site was ether inaccessible or the server response was so slow it just timed out. It was a long process, i had to be interviewed and vetted by literal chinese government agents. The whole experience was very uncomfortable but in the end our site is now accessible without issue in asia,