If VaultPress is having trouble connecting to your site, there are a few things to check:
Install & Register the VaultPress plugin
If the plugin hasn’t been installed and registered we can’t back up your site! Follow the instructions here to get everything set up properly.
Make Sure Your Site is Publicly Available
Please disable any “Under Construction” plugins, and ensure that your site is publicly accessible. VaultPress cannot back up private sites that are not accessible to the public.
Check Your Site URL
Please confirm that you’ve set your Site URL (at VaultPress dashboard → Settings) to the address that your site ultimately redirects to. For example, if http://www.yourgroovydomain.com redirects to http://yourgroovydomain.com, then you should set your Site URL to http://yourgroovydomain.com.
Check that Your Site’s SSL Certificate is Valid
If your site has an SSL certificate (i.e. the site address starts with HTTPS instead of HTTP), there could be an issue with the certificate for your site. You can check that by entering your site address on SSL Shopper. If all is well, you’ll see a list of green checkmarks. If you see any warning messages, then it’s a sign that there’s an issue with your SSL certificate, and you should pass that on to your hosting provider for investigation.
Allow VaultPress IP Ranges to Prevent Blocking
Allowlist our IP full range with your hosting provider or any firewall you might be using. By allowlisting our IP ranges, you are telling the server to accept connections from VaultPress.com, so we can create backups of your site.
Note: If your host requires a port number, they should allowlist requests to ports 80, 21, and 22, or 443 for requests over HTTP.
Reverse Proxy/Load Balancer/Caching Server Issues
Note: VaultPress 1.9.7 and above are better able to detect this scenario. Before using the snippets below, please try resetting VaultPress on our server. You can do that by visiting the VaultPress settings page inside the WP Admin dashboard, clicking the DELETE ALL SETTINGS button, and then registering the plugin again. If that doesn’t work, you may need to add the code below.
As a security measure, VaultPress uses an internal firewall that only accepts incoming connections from the VaultPress IP ranges. Several proxies, load balancers, or caching servers (like Cloudflare, Varnish, LiteSpeed, and Incapsula) can interfere with this firewall. These servers often provide the IP address associated with incoming requests in the X-FORWARDED-FOR header. You’ll need to re-configure your web server so that this header is used to set the remote address variable ($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']) in PHP. Your host is in the best position to assist with this step.
If you can’t modify your server configuration, you can try addressing this issue at the PHP level by adding these lines to your wp-config.php file, right after the opening <?php line:
if ( !empty( $_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR'] ) ) {
$forwarded_ips = explode( ',', $_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR'] );
$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] = $forwarded_ips[0];
unset( $forwarded_ips );
}Varnish Specific Troubleshooting
If adding the above code mentioned in the previous section to your wp-config.php file doesn’t work, we recommend adding the following in your Varnish configuration as a next step:
if (req.http.x-forwarded-for) { set req.http.X-Forwarded-For = req.http.X-Forwarded-For + ", " +
client.ip;
} else {
set req.http.X-Forwarded-For = client.ip;
}Sucuri Specific Troubleshooting
If the reverse proxy code above did not fix the VaultPress connection issue, and you are using Sucuri CloudProxy, we recommend adding the following modified code to your wp-config.php file:
if ( !empty( $_SERVER['HTTP_X_SUCURI_CLIENTIP'] ) ) {
$forwarded_ips = explode( ',', $_SERVER['HTTP_X_SUCURI_CLIENTIP'] );
$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] = $forwarded_ips[0];
unset( $forwarded_ips );
}Incapsula Specific Troubleshooting
If the reverse proxy code above did not fix the VaultPress connection issue, and you are using the Incapsula Security CDN, we recommend adding the following modified code to your wp-config.php file:
if ( !empty( $_SERVER['HTTP_INCAP_CLIENT_IP'] ) ) {
$forwarded_ips = explode( ',', $_SERVER['HTTP_INCAP_CLIENT_IP'] );
$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] = $forwarded_ips[0];
unset( $forwarded_ips );
}Cloudflare-Specific Troubleshooting
If the reverse proxy code above did not fix the VaultPress connection issue, and you are using Cloudflare, we recommend adding the following modified code to your wp-config.php file:
if ( !empty( $_SERVER['HTTP_CF_CONNECTING_IP'] ) ) {
$forwarded_ips = explode( ',', $_SERVER['HTTP_CF_CONNECTING_IP'] );
$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] = $forwarded_ips[0];
unset( $forwarded_ips );
}Error: 400:403:Forbidden
This error likely means your site is down, or your host is blocking our attempts to connect. If your site is functional, please reach out to your host and have them allowlist our full IP range.
Still unable to connect?
Contact support, and we’ll be happy to help you out! If you can add FTP, SFTP, or SSH credentials for your site before you contact us, this will help us troubleshoot further on our end.