All In One WP Security’s extensive feature set means there are more ways for things to go wrong than with simpler plugins. Here are the issues that come up most often and how to resolve them.
Locked Out of WordPress Admin
AIOS’s login lockdown can catch legitimate users — especially if multiple people share a login or if you have browser password auto-fill trying old credentials.
Quick fix: Wait out the lockout period (default 60 minutes). To unlock immediately: connect via SFTP, open your database with phpMyAdmin or a tool like TablePlus, find the wp_aios_lockout table, and delete the row for your IP address.
Preventing future lockouts: Add your IP to the AIOS whitelist — go to AIOS → Brute Force → Login Whitelist IP Addresses. If your office has a dynamic IP, consider increasing the lockout threshold to 10 attempts rather than 5.
Contact Form or Plugin AJAX Requests Being Blocked
AIOS’s firewall rules sometimes block legitimate AJAX requests from contact forms, WooCommerce, or other plugins. Symptoms: form submission fails silently, spinning loader that never completes, or a 403 error in browser DevTools.
Fix: Go to AIOS → Firewall and disable the 5G/6G Blacklist temporarily. Test the form. If it works, the 5G/6G rules are the cause. Re-enable them and check the AIOS whitelist settings to add an exception for the form’s submission URL or the specific blocked parameter.
WooCommerce Checkout Not Working
WooCommerce’s checkout uses AJAX calls that AIOS can sometimes interfere with, particularly the 5G firewall rules or comment spam prevention.
Fix: Temporarily disable AIOS’s Comment Spam prevention and the Advanced Character String Filter in Firewall settings. Test checkout. If it works, identify which specific rule is blocking WooCommerce’s checkout AJAX by re-enabling rules one at a time.
Website Broken After Enabling Firewall Rules
Some AIOS firewall rules add .htaccess directives that can conflict with your theme or other plugins. If the site breaks immediately after enabling a firewall rule:
Fix: Connect via FTP, download your .htaccess file, and remove the AIOS firewall rules block. AIOS marks its rules clearly with comments like “# BEGIN All In One WP Security”. Remove everything between those markers. Save and re-upload. Re-enable AIOS rules one at a time to find the problematic one.
Database Backup Emails Not Arriving
AIOS can schedule database backups sent via email. If these are not arriving, the issue is almost always WordPress’s email delivery, not AIOS itself.
Fix: Install WP Mail SMTP and configure a proper SMTP provider. WordPress’s default PHP mail() is unreliable and often gets filtered as spam. Once SMTP is configured, AIOS backup emails will arrive reliably.
Frequently Asked Questions
AIOS says my WordPress version is exposed. How do I hide it?
Go to AIOS → WordPress Generator Meta Info and enable “Remove WP Generator Meta Info.” This removes the <meta name=”generator” content=”WordPress X.X.X”> tag from your page source. Also check your RSS feed — WordPress includes the version in feeds by default. AIOS has a separate option to remove it from feeds. Note that your WordPress version can still be detected by other means, so keeping WordPress updated matters more than hiding the version.
The AIOS security score dropped after I updated WordPress. Is this normal?
Sometimes, yes. WordPress updates can reset certain .htaccess configurations or file permissions that AIOS had configured. After major WordPress updates, check the AIOS dashboard for any settings showing as unconfigured and re-apply them. This is an intermittent limitation of .htaccess-based security configuration.
Can I use AIOS on a multisite WordPress installation?
AIOS has multisite support, but with limitations. Some features apply at the network level, others at individual site level. The login lockdown and brute force protection work per-site. Firewall rules apply at the network level through the main .htaccess file. Check the AIOS documentation for the current multisite feature matrix — some features are unavailable in multisite configurations.