End of WP BruteForce Plugin!

[Genesis]

Last night was quite eventful for my WordPress sites when we were having a permissions problem in cPanel, so how frustrating was it this afternoon when after having fixed everything perfectly, my one WordPress decided to block my IP!!!! That was the first time EVER in my almost decade of using WordPress that i was blocked from /wp-admin.

The WordPress site was not a biggie for me, as I only use it for experimenting with. It is a very old blog. But it was an interesting lesson to see how I could wrangle myself out of the problem. First I tried to use a VPN and woe behold this clever BruteForce Plugin instinctively blocked that IP too. By now I got to cPanel and checked through the plugins, and then discovered there was no WordFence but I still had the very old BruteForce Plugin in it that had been deprecated ages ago.

It then became easy. First I tried to rename the BruteForce Plugin with the cPanel File Manager, but for some or other reason I was unable to rename the file. I then deleted it. That solved the problem. Following which I promptly installed the WordFence security plugin, but before I did it, made sure that if this should ever happen again, that I would know my way out.

With WordFence the "out" is to either rename/delete the plugin in cpanel. Other possibility is to respond to the WordFence e-mail that is sent to one's e-mail when the IP is blocked. I'll probably delete it instead. Another lesson learned. :drinks:

 

[Yozora]

Last night was quite eventful for my WordPress sites when we were having a permissions problem in cPanel, so how frustrating was it this afternoon when after having fixed everything perfectly, my one WordPress decided to block my IP!!!! That was the first time EVER in my almost decade of using WordPress that i was blocked from /wp-admin.

The WordPress site was not a biggie for me, as I only use it for experimenting with. It is a very old blog. But it was an interesting lesson to see how I could wrangle myself out of the problem. First I tried to use a VPN and woe behold this clever BruteForce Plugin instinctively blocked that IP too. By now I got to cPanel and checked through the plugins, and then discovered there was no WordFence but I still had the very old BruteForce Plugin in it that had been deprecated ages ago.

It then became easy. First I tried to rename the BruteForce Plugin with the cPanel File Manager, but for some or other reason I was unable to rename the file. I then deleted it. That solved the problem. Following which I promptly installed the WordFence security plugin, but before I did it, made sure that if this should ever happen again, that I would know my way out.

With WordFence the "out" is to either rename/delete the plugin in cpanel. Other possibility is to respond to the WordFence e-mail that is sent to one's e-mail when the IP is blocked. I'll probably delete it instead. Another lesson learned. :drinks:

This happened to me too about a year ago and was super frustrating. It's definitely useful to know what to do if a WordPress plugin makes your site inaccessible, as it's happened to me a few times with different plugins. The trick I use is to zip up the plugin's folder, then delete the original folder. That way the plugin is easy to restore if needed & I don't need to rename the folder or copy/paste the original name somewhere if I forget. Of course I always either unzip or delete the archive file soon afterwards, depending what is needed, just in case having a zip file of the plugin presents a security risk, but all and all, I've found cPanel's ability to make zip archives from folders & files super useful!