Actually I was looking for a free solution so I did some googling and found out that it's possible to block countries or entire continents in Apache's .htaccess. This looked like a very promising solution because my forum is only used in Europe and maybe USA & Canada so I thought I could just block all other countries using GeoIP in .htaccess.
However, my webhoster hasn't installed the GeoIP module for Apache, presumably because they want to sell their own product "Sucuri" which apparently is a CDN similar to Cloudflare but it's a $20/month solution.
Since my webhoster doesn't have installed GeoIP for Apache, all I could block in htaccess is specific IPs or IP ranges but this doesn't seem like a feasible solution because blocking whole continents just using IP lists looks like overload for htaccess because we're probably talking about lots and lots of IP list data that would have to be stored in htaccess, right? And those lists probably have to be maintained and updated which all looks like a huge amount of work for a hobbyist forum.
Isn't there any other solution that doesn't require me to shell out another $20/month? My forum is a hobbyist one and I'm already paying a lot per year for domain, webspace, SSL certificates...
Of course, the conspiracy theorist in me thinks that those bot attacks might even have been ordered by the same people who want to sell me their solutions. I mean, why would random bots from South America hammer my forum with requests? I mean, what's the point?
However, my webhoster hasn't installed the GeoIP module for Apache, presumably because they want to sell their own product "Sucuri" which apparently is a CDN similar to Cloudflare but it's a $20/month solution.
Since my webhoster doesn't have installed GeoIP for Apache, all I could block in htaccess is specific IPs or IP ranges but this doesn't seem like a feasible solution because blocking whole continents just using IP lists looks like overload for htaccess because we're probably talking about lots and lots of IP list data that would have to be stored in htaccess, right? And those lists probably have to be maintained and updated which all looks like a huge amount of work for a hobbyist forum.
Isn't there any other solution that doesn't require me to shell out another $20/month? My forum is a hobbyist one and I'm already paying a lot per year for domain, webspace, SSL certificates...
Of course, the conspiracy theorist in me thinks that those bot attacks might even have been ordered by the same people who want to sell me their solutions. I mean, why would random bots from South America hammer my forum with requests? I mean, what's the point?
Statistics: Posted by andyphp82 — Mon Mar 03, 2025 12:14 pm