How to get the Jetpack Plugin to Work with Namecheap Hosting

For the longest time I had issues with getting the Jetpack plugin to work with my website as most of you are probably experiencing.  I found a few solutions online regarding editing the htcaccess file, but no matter what I did I wasn’t able to figure out what was going on.  Finally I just decided to contact my host, Namecheap, and see if they could resolve my issue.

Some of the things I stumbled upon while trying to figure out my issue was to make sure I had a WordPress account.  If you do then that’s great, if not you can create the account here without having to set up a blog.  Once I had my account set up, I linked my self-hosted website within my WordPress Profile.  The issue I was facing now was that the Stats page wasn’t working and it kept asking me for my username and password  which I made sure was correct when entering, but kept getting denied access.  On this blog the Jetpack plugin was installed and was ready to connect to WordPress.  Yet every time I clicked the “Connect to WordPress.com” button within the Jetpack plugin I was prompted with this fabulous message.

site_inacccessible error 🙁

The site_inaccessible error messages is a very common error that you’ll receiving when trying to connect the Jetpack plugin.  One of the first things I came across while researching this issue was to check to make sure the xmlrpc.php file was view-able/accessible.  On your blog you can go to yourwebsite.com/xmlrpc.php to check if it is accessible.  You should get the following message:

XML-RPC server accepts POST requests only.

Note: Make sure that it is all on the first line on the html page.  If it is not that this could be the reason for your problem and you can search Google regarding this issue.

Now here comes the new problem that I was facing.  When I first set up my blog I was able to view this file without problems, but then one day it just stopped working and was receiving a 403 Forbidden Error.  I also ran in to an issue when using the WordPress mobile app on my phone where I was able to view or create new posts.  I found out that the xmlrpc.php file is important if you want to access your blog through WordPress, whether online or through the mobile app.  The reason it could be disabled is that there were/are some security issues with this file, but I believe for the most part that they have been worked out.  Well I had no idea what changed or what was going on so I decided to contact my host, Namecheap, and live chat with customer support.  After a few minutes and Namecheap’s great customer service I was able to get my issue resolved.  The reason why I was receiving the 403 Forbidden Error was because my host blocked it for security reasons.  I’m on shared hosting and from my understanding it is normal for them to have some restrictions when under a shared hosting plan.  So they whitelisted my domain and I was able to properly view the xmlrpc.php message again.

While I was on chat I decided to see if they could also fix my Jetpack issue as I was still not able to get it to connect the plugin to WordPress and kept receiving the dreaded site_inaccessible error.  Again, Namecheap was able to get it fixed and it happens to also be due to some security settings where they blocked it.  So once again they added my domain to the whitelist and I was finally able to connect to Jetpack.  Moral of the story here is to contact your web hosting provider to see if they can diagnose the issue.  All the .htcaccess settings in the world won’t be able to fix your problems if your host has decided to restrict some server side communications in order to protect your domain.

TLDR: Contact Namecheap to have them whitelist your domain to get the Jetpack plugin to work.

If your are looking for web hosting I would recommend Namecheap.com