Troubleshooting

Most VMP Security issues are covered by a more specific troubleshooting article: Firewall Troubleshooting, Scan Troubleshooting, or Blocking Troubleshooting. This article collects general troubleshooting that does not fit into one of those, plus the steps to take before opening a support ticket.

In This Article

• First steps
• Admin dashboard issues
• Performance issues
• Contacting support
• Known issues

First steps

Before chasing a specific symptom, run the four checks that catch most one-off issues:

1. Update. Make sure VMP Security itself is at the latest version. A surprising number of “the plugin is broken” reports are issues that were fixed two releases ago.
2. Open Diagnostics. Open VMP Security → Tools → Diagnostics. Anything red or yellow on that page is a clue. Note especially the WP-Cron section, the Connectivity section, and the Background workers section.
3. Clear caches. OPcache, WordPress object cache, and any page cache plugin. Configuration changes that “do not take effect” are often just cached.
4. Check for plugin/theme conflicts. Temporarily switch to a default theme (Twenty Twenty-Five or similar) and disable other plugins. If the issue goes away, the cause is a conflict; see the Plugin / Theme Conflicts article.

Admin dashboard issues

VMP Security menu does not appear

If the menu is missing for an administrator, the most likely cause is a role or capability filter from another plugin removing the menu. Check by switching to a different administrator account; if the menu is there, something is filtering for the original user. As a quick test, deactivate plugins one at a time until the menu reappears.

Pages take a long time to load

The plugin’s admin pages query a lot of data. On large sites, the queries can be slow. If specific admin pages are slow, the most common causes:

• Live Traffic. Long retention with no sampling makes the table large. Reduce retention or enable sampling.
• Audit log. Same shape as Live Traffic. Reduce retention.
• Findings list. Tens of thousands of historical findings. Filter to recent or open status, or archive resolved findings.

The Database section of Diagnostics shows row counts for each plugin table; oversized tables are usually the smoking gun.

Settings revert to defaults after saving

Almost always a database write issue: the WordPress options table cannot accept the new value. Common causes are a corrupted options table, a database disk that is full, or a security plugin (yes, sometimes another security plugin) intercepting writes to wp_options. The first thing to check is whether the database has room to write — if free space is small, no plugin can save settings reliably.

Performance issues

VMP Security adds work to each request, but the per-request overhead should be invisible on a healthy site. If you notice the site is slower after enabling VMP Security than before:

• Profile. Use Query Monitor or a server-side profiler to see where time is being spent. The firewall’s evaluation should be sub-millisecond on most hosts; if it is much more than that, something is wrong with the rule storage or the evaluation path.
• Check the storage engine. The MySQLi storage engine adds database load relative to file storage. If the database is already a bottleneck, switching back to file storage removes that contribution.
• Disable Live Traffic. Each request writes a Live Traffic row. On very high-traffic sites, this can become a bottleneck. Sampling, reduced retention, or full disable resolves it.
• Disable advanced scan options. Heavy scan options add load while a scan is running. The Performance section of the Scan Options page has knobs to reduce that.

Contacting support

When you do open a ticket, providing the following up front makes the back-and-forth far shorter:

• Plugin diagnostics. Click Send to Support on the Diagnostics page; the diagnostics URL will be associated with your ticket automatically.
• What you expected to happen. Specific is better than general. “The scan should produce findings” is less useful than “the scan should report a finding for the modified file at wp-content/themes/our-theme/functions.php.”
• What actually happened. The exact behavior, including any error messages or log entries.
• What you have already tried. Cuts off back-and-forth on steps you have already done.
• When the issue started. Recent change (a plugin update, a hosting change, a configuration edit) is usually the cause. If you can correlate the issue with a specific event, mention it.

Known issues

Issues affecting more than one customer are tracked publicly on the support knowledge base, organized by symptom. Before opening a new ticket, search the knowledge base for the symptom you are seeing — if there is an existing entry, it usually includes a workaround or an expected fix date.

For issues that affect a specific WordPress version, PHP version, or hosting environment, the entry will say so explicitly. The Compatibility article also documents long-running interactions that may never be “fixed” per se, but have known workarounds.