WordPress 6.6.2 and older?

  • Resolved sajay

    (@sajay)


    1 month, 2 weeks ago

    The site works fine. My issue is I’m getting high bandwidth usage from someone (bot?) opening “/-” ( ie westprincechamber.com/- ). With postname for the permalink that url opens the about page on that site and so far this month (we are now the October 15th) I’ve received 2 million hits on that URL. My solution for now was to change the permalinks to Plain so that URL returns a 404 error.

    I’ve noticed the same issue on other sites I manage but not to this extent yet.

    Has anyone else noticed this and have a fix for it?

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

  • Hi there,

    I am really sorry to hear about that. It sounds like you’re dealing with unwanted traffic or bots targeting the “/*” URL. Changing the permalinks to Plain is a good temporary solution, but it’s not ideal for long-term SEO.

    To address this, you can try the following steps:

    1. Block the URL using .htaccess: Add this code to your .htaccess file to block requests to the “/*” URL:
     RewriteEngine On
     RewriteRule ^-$ - [F,L]

    This will return a 403 Forbidden error for that specific URL.

    1. Use a security plugin: A plugin like Wordfence or Sucuri can help block malicious bots and rate-limit requests.
    2. Enable a firewall: Consider a web application firewall (WAF) like Cloudflare to filter out bad traffic.

    Hopefully, one of these solutions will help reduce the bandwidth usage.

    Thread Starter sajay

    (@sajay)

    Thanks. I’ve added that code to the htaccess file and it appears to be working.

    Moderator James Huff

    (@macmanx)

    If you want to go back to your prefered permalinks, these two plugins might help:

    Thread Starter sajay

    (@sajay)

    Thanks! I’ll give them a try.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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