API Key not accepted

Hey, I have contacted the Benchmark Email company directly and they pointed me to resources within this community, I tried adding this PHP script to my website, but it returned no value for some reason <?php // Settings $service = ‘ https://api.benchmarkemail.com/1.0/’ ;; $api_key = ‘0518dfcd-a8bb-4018-af1e-32f4120d81bd’; $timeout = 30; ini_set( ‘default_socket_timeout’, $timeout ); // Load WP require( ‘wp-load.php’ ); require( ‘wp-includes/class-IXR.php’ ); // Try Connection $client = new IXR_Client( $service, false, 443, $timeout ); $args = array( ‘listGet’, $api_key, ”, 1, 100, ‘name’, ‘asc’ ); call_user_func_array( array( $client, ‘query’ ), $args ); // Output print_r( $client->getResponse() ); ?> My API Key is 0518dfcd-a8bb-4018-af1e-32f4120d81bd and I keep getting a red cross next to it when I enter it into my plugin – there is no error message displayed. Cheers for your time Aiden https://wordpress.org/plugins/benchmark-email-lite/ Hi Aiden, Sorry to hear about your troubles! I just installed a fresh copy of WordPress 4.3.1 on my Mac using MAMP 3.4. Then I installed Benchmark Email Lite 2.5 and applied your API key and got a green checkmark meaning my system accepted your API. Thus I would, if you haven’t done so already, deactivate all other plugins as well as temporarily switch back to the default theme (e.g., Twenty Fifteen) and try again. Then report back your findings here. Sincerely, Randy Sandberg P.S., As for the PHP coding question, I’ll let Sean answer that. 🙂 Hi Aiden, I tested your API key on my local sandbox machine and it worked just fine running the Benchmark Email Lite plugin on the latest WordPress.org version and a MAMP server environment. So we know your API key is good. The unit test code you provided should output something, but that depends on where they had you put it within WordPress. It appears it’s meant to go as a separate file in your WordPress root folder that you navigate to directly, such as http://mysite.com/test-benchmark.php Now, as to your server, there could be a number of possible culprits. Could you start by telling me more about your site?: – Who you use for hosting, or your website URL we can check on – What versions of things like WP and PHP you run – If there is a history of any security workarounds you had to do to get other plugins or WP core features to work, particularly areas which communicate outbound from the site. Hey Randy, Appreciate the reply, tried that and it didn’t work for me, I used the default Twenty Thirteen theme though not Twenty Fifteen. Hi Aiden, Okay, hmm, so your WordPress site is up to date and you have no active plugins other than ours and your theme is the default Twenty Thirteen (???) theme and you still cannot get your API key to be accepted, right? If so, please be as detailed as possible about your hosting environment as well as WordPress, Benchmark Email Lite, your browser, etcetera with versions and anything you can think of to give us. Plus, of course, your exact Steps to reproduce the issue so I can hopefully reproduce it as well. Once I can, then I can get Sean to fix it. P.S., Just in case the issue has to do with a slow connection, try bumping up your Connection Timeout (go to BenchmarkEmail > Settings) to 60 or at least something higher than 10 seconds and see if that allows your API key to be accepted. By the way, I am a Software Test Engineer — not a coder! — so I have no idea what your code references are above but, for our purposes here, please remove it for now so we can focus on getting your API key working. Thanks in advance and once again sorry for your troubles. Oh, and of course, once your API key is working and that part of our testing is done you’ll want to get a new API key so no one else can use it!!! Hey Randy, So my website is hosted with a website called Wealthy Affiliate – unsure as to their exact server address but I’ve had very few problems with it, my website has only been down once in the nearly 7 months I have been with them and that was only for about 5 minutes. I did disable all plugins and revert my theme to the default theme and still the API didn’t work. When I first installed the Becnhmark email, I went to my account page and got an API key (after a bit of googling how to) then I went and inserted it into the settings page, and turned the timeout setting to 30 seconds (not knowing why) then no green tick or red X displayed next to the box so I proceeded to click “save changes” then a red X appeared next to it. That’s about it. The browser I am using is the latest version of Google chrome Version 46.0.2490.86 (64-bit) on a Macbook pro, the version of WP I am using is the latest V 4.3.1. ANy other info you need? ALso how do I get a new API key? I was told to do that by the Benchmark support email crew, but when I click “generate new API key” it just gives me the same one every time. Hi Aiden, Hmm, I think Sean is going to have to look into this. I am not quite sure what’s going on. My only guess would be, for some reason, your host is blocking Benchmark Email Lite’s ability to talk to Benchmark Email’s API server. But that is a total guess! As for finding your API key, on our Settings page, right above the API key fields, there a link titled “log in to Benchmark Email to get your API key”, that when clicked, will take to in a new window to Benchmark Email’s API key generator. Where, as you stated, all one usually has to do is click “generate your API key” and a new key will be generated. If not, which is very odd, you most certainly will want to talk again with Benchmark Email support. Hey Randy, Thanks I’ll email them now and let them know I cannot generate a new API key, perhaps this is the problem? P.S., Do me a favor if you can, do what I did to setup a WordPress site on your Mac using MAMP and see if you can get your API key working there. At least then we’ll have a delta between your Mac and your host to consider. 😉 Find MAMP here https://www.mamp.info/en/downloads/ . Downloading it now, what is MAMP? Is it like a PHP server but for wordpress sites? MAMP (My Apache – MySQL – PHP) is a really cool self-contained and free way to run WordPress, or any other PHP powered app, on one’s computer (they have both a Mac and a Windows version). Go here https://www.mamp.info/en/ and click on Learn More to learn more! 🙂 Thanks Randy, I’ll get back to you once I have done this! Perfect! 🙂 There we go Randy, it worked on my localhost server which is weird, it must be a problem with my server, should I contact the owners? Or Are there workarounds? If I should contact them what information should I give them in order to get this resolved? So at this point it does appear to be a host related issue. I am not myself familiar with Wealthy Affiliate, but I am happy to speak with their technician if it comes to that. Let’s have you go ahead and open a support ticket with them on your behalf and see what they might provide us. Please provide them with the unit test code (the PHP code you opened this thread with) so they can reproduce the issue in their environment. Ultimately, the problem could be that they do not have certain PHP modules installed that support XML-RPC communications. It’s also possible they have some WordPress security hardening configurations that cripple outbound communications from the web nodes. Let’s put this on their radar and see if they have any insights on that. If we aren’t able to get anywhere with them in a timely manner, I can come up with more unit test code for us to better trace the problem, where it prints to the screen line by line what it’s doing and where the problem(s) come up. Another thing that might help is to temporarily set your WP_DEBUG line in your wp-config.php file to true (default is false). Doing that will enable PHP notices, warnings, and errors to print on the screen. It’s possible you may get a tun of messages on your site and have to disable it quickly (depends on theme and plugins enabled), but if it’s relatively clean that could point out the issue for us. If the server guys can reproduce the problem with that unit test code, then can see the error(s) in the PHP error log even without WP_DEBUG turned on. Again, if all that fails we can make a better test file of our own to track it down. Excellent news! That means we’ve been able to isolate the issue to your host/install/setup of WordPress. Is it possible to install/setup a temporary fresh install of WordPress at your host? Just to rule out that it’s not something wonky with your current install. Either way, by all means, please do let your host know what’s going on. Sometimes, for example, security protocols can block traffic to and or from our plugin. So, they’ll know best! Oh, and Sean can let you know what ports and other such things need to be open. Hey Randy, So I contacted the helpdesk and they said “This means the plugin requires regular outgoing connections to their remote servers for functioning which is not allowed here in WA.” I’m assuming it’s a security protocol or something, is there a workaround you guys can do or am I going to have to look for another service? If this won’t work, is there still a way to implement this within my wordpress page without the use of a plugin? That’s sad to hear they won’t let plugins that need to communicate with web services function. Security is always a balance with convenience, and it’s key to make decisions that weigh the balance out well. So without PHP being able to reach out, you’re left with having the user’s browser do it with JavaScript. Benchmark Email does offer an ability to create sign up forms hosted on their servers that use JS and they give you copy/paste code to toss in. It’s not as designer friendly or functional, but that might suit your needs for the interim. This is the first we’ve heard of PHP being totally blocked from outbound communications. If we were to come across that more often, we could develop a JS version of the BMEL plugin’s sign up form feature that fits just as well within the design theme but offers that single function. Of course the rest of the plugin (sending campaigns from WP, viewing email statistics from WP, etc) would remain offline. @aiden123 When you say “WA”, what are you referring to? Hey Sean, Man if you could create the JS version of BMEL that’d be fantastic! Surely I’m not an abnormality aka only one this is happening to so it might be worth you while making one just incase there are more or so people have the option? The support team weren’t very supportive lol, they just told me what I posted and were pretty black and white about it but never revealed their reasons why, I assume it’s for security as there is money exchanging hands within the website via commissions, so perhaps it’s so people can’t hack into their payment system and steal all the money, there’d be over to $1 million going through the website monthly. but who knows? @justin Greer WA = Wealthy Affiliate, it is an affiliate marketing “university” where they train you in internet marking and how to create a blog etc and earn money from it. It is a fantastic resource with 400,000+ members. Check it out here if you’re interested? Hey Justin, WA = Wealthy Affiliate, it’s an affiliate marketing “university” where they teach you how to generate income from your blog via affiliate sales. Hi, I have the same problem ad aiden here with WA hosting and cannot use the plugin on my site. Is there a way to create the JS version of BMEL? Thanks Hi stojsa1, Benchmark Email does offer an ability to create sign up forms hosted on their servers that use JS and they give you copy/paste code to toss in. It’s not as designer friendly or functional as the WP plugin can provide, but that might suit your needs for the interim. Go here and click “Signup Forms” to watch the video: http://www.benchmarkemail.com/resources/video-tutorials Hi Sean, Thank you for your prompt reply. All the best! Hi Guys, loo...