How to Block IPs with 6G Firewall

This quick post is aimed at users of the 6G Firewall. The latest 6G update removes the IP-address blocking section to improve firewall compatibility and implementation. So now with the IP section removed, you may be asking “how to block an IP address with 6G?” Well good news, this tutorial explains how to do it. Continue reading »

ALL Security is Security Thru Obscurity

[ Stormtroopers Keeping Things Secure. ]

ob·scure adjective 1. not discovered or known about; uncertain. In the purely literal sense, the concept of obscurity applies to every transaction on the Web. The HTTP request knows not, nor could possibly know, the actual response it will receive from the server. There is only expected response. Online nothing is certain until it is. Continue reading »

7G Firewall : Log Blocked Requests

This tutorial explains how to log requests that are blocked by the 7G Firewall. This is useful for testing, debugging, and just keeping an eye on things. Learn how to log requests from Apache mod_rewrite and download my custom 7G logging script. It’s a complete example that shows how to log rewrite requests via PHP. All open source and free :) Continue reading »

7G Firewall

The 7G Firewall is here! 7G is now out of beta and ready for production sites. So you can benefit from the powerful protection of the latest nG Firewall (aka nG Blacklist). The 7G Firewall offers lightweight, server-level protection against a wide range of malicious requests, bad bots, automated attacks, spam, and many other types of threats and nonsense. Continue reading »

Ultimate Comment Blacklist for WordPress: How to Stop Spam Without Plugins

[ WordPress Ultimate Comment Blacklist ]

How do YOU stop comment spam? If you’re like a lot of WordPress users, you just grab another plugin or two and call it good. I mean after all, plugins like Akismet work great at stopping spam. The only downside is that, well, you’re relying on another plugin. And that’s fine for folks who just wanna “get ’er done”, although each active plugin requires additional maintenance and server resources. Continue reading »

Automatic IP Blacklist

Recently a reader going by the name of Rock Star sent me a cool little PHP script that automatically updates your site’s .htaccess with a current list of bad IP addresses. This is useful because it gives you better “real time” protection against attacks and malicious requests. This tutorial shares the code and explains how to implement in two easy steps. Continue reading »

Enable PHP fsockopen with CSF

Recently started some sites with Liquid Web hosting, everything going extremely well all around. There was one hiccup (at least for me) where PHP’s fsockopen was not working. At the time, I was trying to figure out why the Whois Lookup feature used by Blackhole Bad Bots was not working. Initial investigation revealed that fsockopen() external HTTP requests were getting blocked somewhere. Everything else worked, including making the requests via cURL. Continue reading »

Activate WordPress Plugins via the Database

Recently a reader named Chris asked, “how can we turn ON a plugin from the database?” He mentioned reading my previous article, Quickly Disable or Enable All WordPress Plugins via the Database, but for circumstantial slash technical reasons needed to do the opposite and enable a plugin directly via the WordPress database. I thought it was an interesting question that might actually be useful to discuss here at Perishable Press. Continue reading »

404 Fix: Block Nuisance Requests for Non-Existent Files

[ Han Solo shutting up C-3PO in Empire Strikes Back ]

As I’ve written before, blocking nuisance requests can help save you money by cutting down on wasted server resources, memory, and so forth. It also saves you time, as your server access and error logs won’t be full of nuisance request spam. So you will have more resources and time for things that matter, like running your business, helping customers, improving code, etc. So to continue the proud tradition of blocking malicious traffic, this post builds upon previous blocking techniques […] Continue reading »

Blocking the “ReallyLongRequest” Bandit

While browsing server logs, I kept seeing these super long request URIs that begin with “YesThisIsAReallyLongRequest…” and then the request string just keeps going for like 1 kilobyte worth of characters. Not just a few times, but many. In other words, somebody is going around and repeatedly hitting servers with gigantic-size requests. Probably to test server response using other people’s servers. Ummm, yeah kinda malicious. So I did some research and then blocked the “ReallyLongRequest” Bandit. Continue reading »

WP Cron HTTP Auth

Welcome to the official homepage for my free WordPress plugin, WP Cron HTTP Auth. This page explains what the plugin does, how it works, and where to download and get support. The plugin actually is very simple, however, so there is not a lot to explain. If you are looking for plugin documentation, visit WP Cron HTTP Auth at WordPress.org. There you will find installation steps, support forum, translation tools, and more. Continue reading »

WordPress Plugin: Disable WP REST API

Welcome to the official homepage for my free WordPress plugin, Disable WP REST API. This page explains what the plugin does, how it works, how to test the plugin, and why anyone would anyone on earth want to disable the REST API, for crying out loud, all explained on this page. If that sounds like you, you’re in the right place. If you are looking for plugin documentation, visit Disable WP REST API at WordPress.org. There you will find installation […] Continue reading »

Contact Form X

Welcome to the official homepage for my free WordPress plugin, Contact Form X (CFX). This is a more personal look at the plugin, aimed at readers who are familiar with my work. Here you’ll find some screenshots, cool features, and of course some rambling backstory (because there is one). If you are looking for official plugin documentation, visit Contact Form X at WordPress.org. There you will find docs, download, installation steps, support forum, translation tools, and more. Continue reading »

BAM: 5 New WordPress Plugins. Ahh Yeh.

I’ve been super busy this year, cranking out some useful new plugins. Nothing as awesome as Banhammer Pro, but some pretty useful new plugins nonetheless. So I’m launching a total of five new WordPress plugins. The first four basically are utility plugins designed to make WordPress life easier. The 5th and final plugin (for awhile at least), is Contact Form X, which I am now using as the contact form here at Perishable Press. Contact Form X I know what […] Continue reading »

WordPress Plugin: Disable Gutenberg

For those still in the dark, WordPress 5.0 will bring HUGE changes to the post editor. Dubbed Gutenberg, the new WP post editor replaces the entire “classic” post editing screen. So as of WordPress 5.0 and beyond, the “Edit Post” screen will be completely replaced by a giant WYSIWYG content builder called “Gutenberg”. So much more is being replaced than just the content editor. The list of things that are replaced by Gutenberg include the RTE/Visual Editor, Plain Text Editor, […] Continue reading »

WordPress Plugin: Custom Fields for Gutenberg Block Editor

Currently Gutenberg does not display the Custom Fields meta box. Before Gutenberg, in WordPress 4.9 and earlier, the “Edit” screens in the WP Admin Area optionally displayed the Custom Fields meta box. The Custom Fields meta box is employed by millions of sites, themes and plugins. Including my own collection of WordPress plugins, which use custom fields for Posts, Pages, and many Custom Post Types. Basically Custom Fields are a critical part of WordPress functionality, so I wrote a plugin […] Continue reading »

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