.htaccess to permanently unblock my IP?

Are you using any sort of security plugin?

Hi, nope, I have tried it with all plugins disabled including wordfence and it still fails.

Ok, in that case I recommend contacting your hosting provider, as whatever security you’re running into must be server-based.

Thanks James, yep tried that and the ISP, neither say they are blocking it. ??

Your hosting provider is separate from your ISP. Your ISP is who provides internet access for you. Your hosting provider is who you pay to host your website.

Yeah I understand that James, sorry I meant to say I have spoke to my ISP and my host provider and both have said their is no blocking occuring.

Hi pugnot,

If I wait a number of hours it becomes unblocked and I can start again..

Are you blocked from accessing your site completely or are you only not able to upload more images during this time? If the latter, is the normal WordPress media uploader still accepting image uploads during that time?

HI, it blocks me completely from accessing the site. I can traceroute to the server and if I use a VPN to change my IP it works fine so its being blocked but I really cant find where.

Is there anyway to set an accepted IP or taking a step back is there any inbuilt ip blocking in wordpress?

Is your site hosted on a shared host or a (virtual) private server?

Does your Internet Access Provider provide IPv6 access? If so, does your Hosting Provider provide IPv6? If so, then add the correct IPv6 address to your timelessweddingimages.com.au DNS settings. Then access your site over IPv6 and see if the same issue occurs. If not, my guess would be that your web host (or web server) is using a fail2ban security filter.

Are you seeing a 403 Access Denied error? If not, would you please quote the error?

Hi, the error is
___
Unable to connect

Firefox can’t establish a connection to the server at https://www.timelessweddingimages.com.au.

The site could be temporarily unavailable or too busy. Try again in a few moments.
If you are unable to load any pages, check your computer’s network connection.
If your computer or network is protected by a firewall or proxy, make sure that Firefox is permitted to access the Web.
_____
the site is blocked for me now as I uploaded 10 files through the lightroom plugin and it blocked now. Takes about 30 seconds to a minute and 9 – 10 files before it locks me out.

That’s really weird. If the server is blocking you, you’ll still be able to connect, it will just return an error.

Not being able to connect to the server is way different than the server refusing a connection or outright blocking you, it usually means the server is either offline or overloaded with other connections.

Are you only able to trigger the issue by uploading multiple files via that specific plugin? If so, is it specifically called “Lightroom Plugin”?

there are two plugins that cause it to occur, both through lightroom.
One is a plugin from shootproof:
https://blog.shootproof.com/new-shootproof-lightroom-plugin/2013/09
The other is one called LR/Blog:
https://www.photographers-toolbox.com/products/lrblog.php

Both after upload only a few files cause my site to be blocked from my IP.
First time for ~20 minutes, then for longer.
Its very much like its seeing this as an attack and blocking me automatically for varying periods depending upon my persistence

How are you sure it’s blocking your IP? As mentioned before, if your IP were blocked, you’d see an Apache error code, like 403. “Firefox can’t establish a connection to the server” literally means it can’t establish a connection with the server. Firefox doesn’t even know if it’s been blocked or not, because it can’t establish a connection with the server.

Do you get the same error if you disable both plugins and attempt to upload multiple files via Media -> Add New in your blog’s Dashboard?

Because, as I mentioned before, as soon as I change my IP through VPN or access the site through my phone or teather my phone to my mac the site still up.
I have tried on 4 computers on the home network, 4 browsers, cleared cache, cleared DNS etc and still an issue.