Permanent Block List

The permanent block list was recently added to cater for the following:

– auto blocking of comment spammers – see the SPAM Prevention >> Comment SPAM IP Monitoring tab. You can enable auto blocking of comment spammer IPs based on minimum spam comments they produce.

– spammers who register for wordpress accounts and are manually blocked by the administrator – See the User Registration>>Manual Approval tab. If the manual approval checkbox is selected, this tab will list those users pending approval and you can block selected IP addresses permanently.

In future releases the permanent block list will also serve as a general IP blocking list similar to the blacklist but the difference is that the blacklist uses only .htaccess directives to block IPs whereas the permanent block list works at the PHP level independent of .htaccess.
In other words the permanent block list will be an alternative to the blacklist and will cater for people who don’t have an Apache style server installation.

Hi wpsolutions,

Many thanks for your reply. Based on what you wrote it appears, there are several opportunities for improvement here.

You say we are having two separate list of IPs to block. The one we can maintain manually using Blacklist Manager and operates on .htaccess level, and the other one which is a sort of auto-filled, based on Comment SPAM IP Monitoring and User Registration>>Manual Approval, and operates on php level, and it appears that manual entry to the latter one is/will not be possible. Hence, by definition the two list will be necessarily different. I do not think this is a wise solution. What if someone changes ISP and the new one has a different environment than the previous one. For example, currently I have a list of some 200 IPs which I maintain in Blacklist Manager based on my daily review if traffic and spotted hostile access attempts.
How could I add all of them to the Permanent Block List if I moved to a new ISP having no Apache style server installation?

I believe a better solution would look like this: We could have a ‘default’ list, accessible and maintainable by Blacklist Manager, providing us with the possibility to enter Date and Reason of blocking IPs. This list could also be ‘auto-fed’ by Comment SPAM IP Monitoring and User Registration>>Manual Approval, autofilling Date and Reason, latter should be editable by Admin. This list could be used for PHP level blocking if .htaccess is not available.

Apart from the above it appears that the connection between blocking an IP in User Registration>>Manual Approval and the Permanent Block List does not exist or work currently. I just clicked on Block IP in Manual Approval. Result: the item is still there in ‘Pending’ status, and my Permanent Blocked IP Addresses list is still empty.

Many thanks for reading it. Cheers, Janos