BBQ Firewall – Count Blocked Requests

♦ Posted by Jeff Starr in Security, WordPress

Updated July 18, 2023

BBQ Firewall is built to be powerful, lightweight, fast and flexible. It’s code base is kept super lean, leaving extra functionality out of core while supporting new features via simple addons. For example, this tutorial shows how to use an addon to display the total number of blocked HTTP requests on the plugin settings page. This can help you get a basic idea of the plugin’s effectiveness.

Note: This tutorial works with the free version of BBQ Firewall. The pro version has its own settings page where block counts are displayed for each firewall rule.

How it works

To display of the total number of blocked requests on the BBQ settings screen, download and install the Block Count plugin. Activate and done. Then visit the BBQ settings to view the current blocked count anytime.

Download

Download the free BBQ Block Count plugin:

Download BBQ Block CountVersion 1.1 ( 773 bytes ZIP )

Feedback? Questions? Send them via my contact form.

Usage

To enable the block-count plugin, simply download and unzip the file, bbq-block-count.php. Then install as-is and activate just like any other WordPress plugin. When complete, the plugin path will be /wp-content/plugins/bbq-block-count.php, so the plugin file does not have its own directory.

OR, if you would rather install the plugin file in its own directory, like /wp-content/plugins/bbq-block-count/bbq-block-count.php, that’s fine too. But you will need to add a code snippet to your WordPress site:

function bbq_count_plugin_path($path) {
	
	return 'bbq-block-count/bbq-block-count.php';
	
}
add_filter('bbq_count_plugin_path', 'bbq_count_plugin_path');

The snippet can be added via theme functions.php or simple plugin. Here is a guide that explains either method.