Articles tagged as “htaccess” [ page 3 ]

2G Blacklist: Closing the Door on Malicious Attacks

Since posting the Ultimate htaccess Blacklist and then the Ultimate htaccess Blacklist 2, I find myself dealing with a new breed of malicious attacks. It is no longer useful to simply block nefarious user agents because they are frequently faked. Likewise, blocking individual IP addresses is generally a waste of time because the attacks are coming from a decentralized network of zombie machines. Watching my error and access logs very closely, I have ...

Over 150 of the Worst Spammers, Scrapers and Crackers from 2007

Update 2010/07/07: Please visit the 2010 IP Blacklist for more current information. Over the course of each year, I blacklist a considerable number of individual IP addresses. Every day, Perishable Press is hit with countless numbers of spammers, scrapers, crackers and all sorts of other hapless turds. Weekly examinations of my site’s error logs enable me to filter through the ...

Improve Site Performance by Increasing PHP Memory for WordPress

During the recent ASO server debacle, I raced frantically to restore functionality to Perishable Press. Along the way, one of the many tricks that I tried while trying to fix the dreaded “white screen of death” syndrome involved increasing the amount of PHP memory available to WordPress. This fix worked for me, but may not prove effective on every installation of WordPress. If you are unsure as to whether or not you need to increase your PHP memory, consult with your host concerning current available memory 1 and overall ...

WordPress Error Fix(?): Increase PHP Memory for cache.php

This trick isn’t guaranteed to prevent all WordPress-generated PHP memory errors, but it certainly seems to help reduce their overall occurrence. For some reason, after my host upgraded their servers to Apache 1.3.41, I began logging an extremely high number of fatal PHP “memory exhausted” errors resulting from the WordPress cache.php script. Here is an example of the countless errors that are generated: [17-Feb-2008 19:26:38] PHP Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 6233929 bytes) in /home/.../press/wp-includes/cache.php on line 330 [17-Feb-2008 19:30:57] PHP Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 6327989 bytes) in /home/.../press/wp-includes/cache.php on ...

Blacklist Candidate Number 2008-02-10

Welcome to the Perishable Press “Blacklist Candidate” series. In this post, we continue our new tradition of exposing, humiliating and banishing spammers, crackers and other worthless scumbags.. Scumbag number 2008-02-10, “COME ON DOWN!!” — you’re the next baboon to get banished from the site! Like many bloggers, I like to spend a little quality time each week examining my site’s error logs. The data contained in Apache, 404, and even ...

Permalink Evolution: Customize and Optimize Your Dated WordPress Permalinks

How to streamline and maximize the effectiveness of your WordPress URLs by using htaccess to remove extraneous post-date information: years, months, and days.. Recently, there has been much discussion about whether or not to remove the post-date information from WordPress permalinks 1. Way back during the WordPress 1.2/1.5 days, URL post-date inclusion had become very popular, in part due to reports of potential conflicts with post-name-only permalinks. Throw in the ...

Advanced PHP Error Handling via PHP

In my previous articles on PHP error handling, I explain the process whereby PHP error handling may be achieved using htaccess. Handling (logging, reporting) PHP errors via htaccess requires the following: Access/editing privileges for htaccess files A server running PHP via Apache, not CGI (e.g., phpSuExec) 1 Ability to edit/change permissions for files on your server If you are having trouble handling ...

1-Minute Tutorial: Permanent (301) Redirect via PHP or htaccess

Here is an example of one of the most frequently asked PHP/htaccess-related questions I receive here at Perishable Press: How do I redirect a specific page/URL using PHP/htaccess? So common is this inquiry that I have decided to just post a quick, “one-minute” tutorial describing the technique. Permanent (301) Redirect via PHP To permanently redirect a page via PHP, place this code before all other content (i.e., at the very top of the document): Alternately, ...

Comprehensive URL Canonicalization via htaccess for WordPress-Powered Sites

Permalink URL canonicalization is automated via PHP in WordPress 2.3+, however, for those of us running sites on pre-2.3 versions or preferring to deal with rewrites directly via Apache, comprehensive WordPress URL canonicalization via htaccess may seem impossible. While there are several common methods that are partially effective, there has not yet been available a complete, user-friendly solution designed specifically for WordPress. Until now.. In this article, I share my “secret” htaccess URL canonicalization formula. I originally developed this method in July ...

Advanced PHP Error Handling via htaccess

In my previous article on logging PHP errors, How to Enable PHP Error Logging via htaccess, we observed three fundamental aspects of preventing, preserving, and protecting your site’s PHP errors: Prevent public display of PHP errors via htaccess # supress php errors php_flag display_startup_errors off php_flag display_errors off php_flag html_errors off php_value docref_root 0 php_value docref_ext 0 Preserve (log) your site’s PHP errors via htaccess # enable PHP error logging php_flag log_errors on php_value error_log /home/path/public_html/domain/PHP_errors.log Protect your site’s PHP error log via ...

Blacklist Candidate Number 2008-01-02

Come one, come all — today we officially begin a new series of posts here at Perishable Press: the public exposure, humiliation, and banishment of spammers, crackers, and other site attackers. Kicking things off for 2008: blacklist candidate number 2008-01-02! Every Wednesday, I take a little time to investigate my 404 error logs. In addition to spam, crack attacks, and other deliberate mischief, the 404 logs for Perishable Press contain errors due to ...

Optimize WordPress: Pure Code Alternatives for 7 Unnecessary Plugins

In this article, my goal is to help you optimize WordPress by replacing a few common plugins with their correspondingly effective code equivalents. As we all know, WordPress can be a very resource-hungry piece of software, especially when running a million extraneous plugins. Often, many common plugins are designed to perform relatively simple tasks, such as redirect a feed, display a random image, or return a database value. For those of us comfortable with editing PHP and htaccess code, there is no need ...

How to Enable PHP Error Logging via htaccess

In this brief tutorial, I will show Apache users how to suppress PHP errors from visitors and enable PHP error logging via htaccess. Tracking your site’s PHP errors is an excellent way to manage and troubleshoot unexpected issues related to plugins and themes. Even better, monitoring PHP errors behind the scenes via private log is far better than trying to catch them as they appear at random visits. Thanks to the magical powers of htaccess, there is an easy way to ...

A Dramatic Week Here at Perishable Press..

..And we’re back. After an insane week spent shopping for a new host, dealing with some Bad Behavior, and transferring Perishable Press to its new home on a virtual private server (VPS), everything is slowly falling back into place. Along the way, there have been some interesting challenges and many lessons learned. Here are a few of the highlights.. The tide may be turning for A Small Orange I am certainly not alone when I say that shopping for a new hosting provider and transferring websites is one of my least favorite aspects of web development. In my experience, ...

Three Ways to Allow Hotlinking in Specific Directories

After implementing any of the hotlink-prevention techniques described in our previous article, you may find it necessary to disable hotlink-protection for a specific directory. By default, htaccess rules apply to the directory in which it is located, as well as all subdirectories contained therein. There are (at least) three ways to enable selective hotlinking: Place hotlink images in an alternate directory This method works great if your hotlink-protection rules are located in a directory other than the site root. Simply create another directory outside of the directory containing the htaccess rules and place your hotlink-allowed images into ...

Stupid htaccess Trick: Enable File or Directory Access to Your Password-Protected Site

In this brief tutorial, we are going to enable users to access any file or directory of a site that is password-protected via htaccess. There are many reasons for wanting to employ this technique, including: Share public resources from an otherwise private site Enable visitors to access content during site maintenance Testing and formatting of layout and design during development As a webmaster, I have used this technique on several occasions. This trick works great for allowing access to any number of files, directories, and/or combination of both. We will begin with a generalized example, proceed with an explanatory discussion, and wrap things up ...

Creating the Ultimate htaccess Anti-Hotlinking Strategy

When I wrote my article, Stupid htaccess Tricks, a couple of years ago, hotlink-protection via htaccess was becoming very popular. Many webmasters and bloggers were getting tired of wasting bandwidth on hotlinked resources, and therefore turned to the power of htaccess to protect their content. At that time, there were only a couple of different hotlink-protection methods available on the internet, and the functional difference between them was virtually insignificant. All that was necessary for up-and-coming bloggers-slash-site-administrators to eliminate leaking bandwidth and stolen resources was ...

Ultimate htaccess Blacklist 2 (Compressed Version)

In our original htaccess blacklist article, we provide an extensive list of bad user agents. This so-called “Ultimate htaccess Blacklist” works great at blocking many different online villains: spammers, scammers, scrapers, scrappers, rippers, leechers — you name it. Yet, despite its usefulness, there is always room for improvement. For example, as reader Greg suggests, a compressed version of the blacklist would be very useful. In this post, we present a compressed version of our Ultimate htaccess Blacklist that features around 50 new agents. Whereas the original blacklist is approximately 8.6KB in size, ...

How to Verify the Four Major Search Engines

Keeping track of your access and error logs is a critical component of any serious security strategy. Many times, you will see a recorded entry that looks legitimate, such that it may easily be dismissed as genuine Google fare, only to discover upon closer investigation a fraudulent agent. There are many such cloaked or disguised agents crawling around these days, mimicking various search engines to hide beneath the radar. Thus, it is a good idea to implement a procedure for scanning and checking select agents for authenticity. In general, the verification process involves a “forward/reverse” DNS lookup, which is then cross-verified with ...

htaccess Combo Pack: WordPress Permalinks and non-www Redirect

WordPress users employing permalinks via htaccess to optimize their dynamic URLs transform complicated-looking links such as: http://example.com/blog/index.php?page=33 ..into search-engine friendly links such as: http://example.com/blog/post-title/ Every rewritten URL relies on a common set of htaccess rules to transform the links. The htaccess rules for all WordPress permalinks look like this for root WP installations: # BEGIN WordPress RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteRule . /index.php [L] # END WordPress ..and like this for subdirectory WP installations: # BEGIN WordPress RewriteEngine On RewriteBase /subdirectory/ RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteRule . /subdirectory/index.php [L] # END WordPress Unfortunately, although this default htaccess code affects all ...

Eliminate 404 Errors for PHP Functions

Recently, I discussed the suspicious behavior recently observed by the Yahoo! Slurp crawler. As revealed by the site’s closely watched 404-error logs, Yahoo! had been requesting a series of nonexistent resources. Although a majority of the 404 errors were exclusive to the Slurp crawler, there were several instances of requests that were also coming from Google, Live, and even Ask. Initially, these distinct errors were misdiagnosed as existing URLs appended with various JavaScript functions. Here are a few typical examples of these frequently observed log entries: http://perishablepress.com/press/category/websites/feed/function.opendir http://perishablepress.com/press/category/websites/feed/function.array-rand http://perishablepress.com/press/category/websites/feed/function.mkdir http://perishablepress.com/press/category/websites/feed/ref.outcontrol Fortunately, an insightful reader named Bas pointed out ...

Temporary Site Redirect for Visitors during Site Updates

In our article Stupid htaccess Tricks, we present the htaccess code required for redirecting visitors temporarily during periods of site maintenance. Although the article provides everything needed to implement the temporary redirect, I think readers would benefit from a more thorough examination of the process — nothing too serious, just enough to get it right. After discussing temporary redirects via htaccess, I’ll also explain how to accomplish the same thing using only PHP. Temporary Site Redirect via htaccess The Complete Code Without a doubt, many visitors to this article will be looking for ...

Permanently Redirect a Specific IP Request for a Single Page via htaccess

Not the most interesting title, but “oh well”.. Recently, a reader named Alison left a comment requesting help with a particular htaccess trick. She wanted to know how to permanently redirect (301) all requests for a specific page when requested from a specific IP address. In other words, when a visitor coming from 123.456.789 requests the page requested-page.html, the visitor will be redirected to just-for-you.html. All visitors not coming from that specific IP address are not redirected, and thus will see the originally requested page. Further, the redirect must apply only to requested-page.html, such that every visitor — including the ...

Allow Google Reader Access to Hotlink-Protected Images

In our previous article, we explain the process of allowing Feedburner to access your hotlink-protected images. The article details the entire process, which covers the basics of hotlink protection and involves adding several lines of code to your htaccess file. In this article, we skip the detailed explanations and present only the main points. The discussion is very similar for both Feedburner and Google Reader, and may be extrapolated to serve virtually any purpose. If you are using htaccess to protect your images from hotlinking and have yet to ...

Allow Feedburner Access to Hotlink-Protected Images

Recently, we installed and configured the excellent WordPress Feedburner plugin by the venerable Steve Smith 1. The plugin basically redirects our various WordPress-powered content feeds to Feedburner, which then delivers them to subscribers. This method enables us to take advantage of Feedburner’s excellent statistical tools. Further, all of the action happens silently, beneath the surface, and without the subscriber even realizing it. After a few weeks running the plugin with great success, we began hearing reports of broken and missing images messing up our feeds. After some investigating, we realized that our ...