I wish I could remember who recommend or told me about the Wordfence WordPress Plugin! I have been using it for a while now and I really like it. In fact, I REALLY like it now that I received a very bad email from the plugin!
Huh? What does that mean? Well, I just received the following email:
This alert was generated by Wordfence on “I Need Help With WordPress” at Monday 4th of February 2013 at 09:34:02 PM
A user with IP address 109.120.137.55 has been locked out from the signing in or using the password recovery form for the following reason: Exceeded the maximum number of login failures which is: 20
User IP: 109.120.137.55
User hostname: 109.120.137.55.addr.datapoint.ru
So it looks like someone was trying to break down the doors here at I Need Help With WordPress! Wordfence has stopped them in their tracks!
According to their home page, “Wordfence scans your site for viruses, malware, trojans, malicious links, protects your site against scrapers, aggressive robots, fake Googlebots, protects against brute force attacks and much much more.”
The folks at Wordfence have 4-tiers of support ranging from Free (i.e., their Starter Package) to Pro 10 (covers 10 sites with a slew of features!)
Check them out over at http://www.wordfence.com or from within your WordPress Dashboard under Plugins / Add New / and search for “Wordfence.”
Want some more info on WordPress Security – check out WPSecurityHelp.com for information on keeping your site safer than it probably is already!
Hey Paul,
Glad you’re using the Wordfence plugin. It’s rocks and helps keep the malicious hackers at bay.
Looking forward to seeing you this weekend in Atlanta.
Thanks! I knew it was a good thing – this was the first time I got bona fide and visible results!
It’ll be good to see you too! 馃檪
I agree with you that Wordfence is a great plugin, but I would just like to add a note here, for everyone’s future reference.
One of the ways that Wordfence protects is by “scrambling” files in the database. You will not see any problem with everyday use on your website. The only precaution is if you are trying to move your website, to another hosting, for example. This “scrambling” will cause no end of problems if left in place for the move. Ask me how I know.
Just deactivate and delete the plugin first. Move your site. reinstall Wordfence. 1 week of headaches for yourself solved.I had 2 programmers and a hosting help center working on this before we figured this out.
I hoped I saved someone a headache down the road.
Thanks, Mary Ann! Great comment and advice!
Anytime you move your site, you should disable ALL your plugins and empty any cache files that might be resident. It is not worth the effort to copy over the cached files to the new host. It is possible that there may be an initial slowdown, but that will be quickly rectified within a short time.
You Rock!