CloudFlare + WordPress admin, Cache issue
Below is my website environment :
- WordPress 3.8.1
- CloudFlare Pro Plan
1. Problem
I’m unable to login WordPress after changing my custom DNS to CloudFlare, below is the error message :
ERROR: Cookies are blocked or not supported by your browser. You must enable cookies to use WordPress
P.S The browser’s cookies are enabled.
Here’s the CloudFlare’s page rule
Custom caching : Cache everything
*.example.com/*
2. Solution – Pro Plan
To solve it, disable the caching for WordPress admin, login and preview pages. Create three more CloudFlare page rules like this :
Custom caching : Bypass cache
*.example.com/wp-admin/*
*.example.com/wp-login.php*
*.example.com/*&preview=true
And turn off all the CloudFlare features like : Rocket Loader, performance, always online, cache and etc, you don’t need CloudFlare to handle your WordPress admin functions.
In summary, there are total four page rules :
*.example.com/wp-admin/* //disabled everything
*.example.com/wp-login.php* //disabled everything
*.example.com/*&preview=true //disabled everything
*.example.com/* //enabled any features you want
3. Solution – Free Plan
For CloudFlare free plan, there is only one page rule, try define the following page rule pattern :
*.example.com/wp-*
Note
I’m using CloudFlare’s pro plan, unable to test in a free plan environment, let me know if the above page rule is working.
I’m using CloudFlare’s pro plan, unable to test in a free plan environment, let me know if the above page rule is working.
References
About Author
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You may want to make a mention that the ORDER that the rules appear in, from top to bottom, also factor into the rules effectiveness. If you have a cache everything rule above the /wp-admin/ and the wp-login.php, the wp-admin/wp-login.php will still be cached.
Thanks man your tip helped me to sort all that rules.
thanks, I didn’t know
Isn’t it better to just switch Cloudflare to “Development Mode” when you need to work on the site? By the way as for your suggestion to turn off Cloudflare Rocket Loader, performance, always online, cache, etc. I have to tell you Google PageSpeed Insights says otherwise!
Thanks for the info 🙂 God Bless.
I just recently set up page rules in Cloudflare to cache everything. And After I migrated to a new host and tested on logging in to my wordpress admin page. I noticed the admin bar appearing at the top when I tried to access my sites on other devices. Is this due to the cache everything which I set in the page rules? Or something was broken during the migration that caused this issue. Now I am trying on your solution for free plan to see if I can bypass cache wp-*. Hope it works.
Yes it working in free plan , i checked
I solve my problem
Thanx
I was using cache everything, but was missing the * on the end of the wp-login.php rules! It resulted in cookies not getting set properly 🙁
So every load of the link would come up with “Your password reset link appears to be invalid.”
Now it’s resolved by modifying my bypass cache rule to be: https://*.mysite.org/wp-login.php*
Thank you, there is three rules for free now. wp- is very handy.
Awesome work! i was wondering why i couldn’t log in. And found disabling caching worked. Now that I can put in these rules it helps. Thanks! Also, I have the free plan on a couple domains and see that it works there too.
I found that when I used the pages rules you suggest, and for the last rule, I chose Cache Everything, that regular visitors to my site see the wordpress admin bar (very embarrassing!). But if I change the last rule to Aggressive Caching, it solves that problem, but now I think CloudFlare is not actually caching the pages (so if my host goes down, then so does the site). Any ideas?
Hi,
the problem is that cloudflare doesn’t know if a user is logged or not, while cacihng. This mean, if it cache a page from a logged user, the admin bar will show up for everyone!
If you “aggressive cache” the page, the admin bar is still loaded, just the relevant javascript is not. So the bar is present, but hidden. This could be a potential security breach.
To really solve the problem, you need a plugin like “Sunny” that, among other features, complitely disable the admin bar on the front-end. Quite aggressive, but safer. (Don’t forget to purge the cache after enabling the plugin!)
This was perhaps a lifesaver for me – Including the comment by David which mentions the order. THANK YOU!!!!!!
Yup. I also tried once for my blog. CloudFlare is very unstable.
Mk Yong, since you had changed to CouldFlare, the website is very unstable. I am in China and it reports DNS failure. Now I have to change to other proxies. I think most people from China will suffer from this issue. Could you please fix it?
I noticed China traffic is drop tremendously, can you send me more information, like screenshot and your request IP via above “contact us” form or send to this email directly “mkyong2002[at]yahoo.com. Thanks.
Yesterday was such a bad day that I found mkyong.com was unavailable.And this morning it is so sweet! Thanks!