Using wordpress through a proxy server

Feb 18, 2008 in Wordpress

Where the web server hosting the WordPress site is located behind a proxy server, the WordPress admin and user may experience technical problems. Symptoms include:

- very slow loading of the dashboard
- askimet not working

These can be resolved by first setting proxy credentials in wp-includes/class-snoopy.php and then editing the akismet_http_post function in wp-content/plugins/askimet/askimet.php along the lines suggested at:

http://comox.textdrive.com/pipermail/wp-trac/2006-August/003435.html

Where your proxy server requires authentication you will need to provide this in askimet.php using the line:

$http_request .= 'Proxy-Authorization: ' . 'Basic ' . base64_encode _
('username:password')."\r\n";

remembering to substitute in your actual username and password.

The new akismet_http_post function should therefore be:


function akismet_http_post($request, $host, $path, $port = 80) { _
 global $wp_version;

// $http_request  = "POST $path HTTP/1.0\r\n";
// $http_request .= "Host: $host\r\n";
 $http_request  = "POST http://$host$path HTTP/1.0\r\n";
 $http_request .= "Host: http://$host\r\n";

$http_request .= "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded; _
charset=" . get_option('blog_charset') . "\r\n";
 $http_request .= "Content-Length: " . strlen($request) . "\r\n";
$http_request .= 'Proxy-Authorization: ' . 'Basic ' . base64_encode_
 'username:password')."\r\n";

 $http_request .= "User-Agent: WordPress/$wp_version | Akismet/2.0\r\n";
 $http_request .= "\r\n";
 $http_request .= $request;

 $response = '';
// if( false != ( $fs = @fsockopen($host, $port, $errno, $errstr, 10) ) ) {
 if( false !== ( $fs = @fsockopen('your_proxy_address', your_proxy_port, _
$errno, $errstr, 10) ) ) {

  fwrite($fs, $http_request);

  while ( !feof($fs) )
   $response .= fgets($fs, 1160); // One TCP-IP packet
  fclose($fs);
  $response = explode("\r\n\r\n", $response, 2);
 }
 return $response;
}

2 Replies

Mandy
Mar 11th, 2010 at 7:42 am

Hi Dr Alan,

Thank you so much for this, I was able to hack the akismet code and get it to work behind our firewall (using our proxy) thank you so much!

Cheers,
Mandy
Curtis
Aug 6th, 2010 at 7:59 pm

Thanks for posting this code. I am running WordPress 3.0 and Akismet v2.2.9. I was curious if you may have a code update that would work with this? The server that hosts our site is not directly connected to the Internet.

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