Spam blocking in htaccess

[Rickf1985]

Ok, the domains are all in place and I have let things settle in for a couple days and I am still getting notices of excess CPU usage in the resource monitor. I have not gotten any notifications from Kualo but I want to be proactive here. Here is what they sent me before in reference to me adding the wiki to litespeed.

Hello Richard,

Thank you for reaching out. We understand the importance of keeping your site's resource usage within the plan limits to ensure it runs smoothly. Rest assured, we are committed to helping you achieve the best performance for your website.

Your hosting plan is powered by the LiteSpeed web server, which is known for being the fastest web server on the market. To fully take advantage of the improved performance and speed that LiteSpeed offers, it's essential to configure MediaWiki to work seamlessly with LiteSpeed.

I've taken the liberty to enable LiteSpeed cache for your account. You can access this feature by navigating to your cPanel and going to "Software" and then "LiteSpeed Cache." To integrate it with your MediaWiki installation, you can follow the instructions provided here: LiteSpeed Cache for MediaWiki Installation Guide.

By enabling LiteSpeed cache and configuring it to work with MediaWiki, you'll significantly enhance the performance and speed of your website, making it more efficient and responsive, and ultimately reducing the chances of hitting resource limits, as an optimized site demands less CPU and memory from the server.

For any additional optimization we recommend the following article https://my.kualo.com/knowledgebase/2_sh ... bsite.html

If you encounter any challenges or have questions during the configuration process, please don't hesitate to reach out, we're here to help you.

Best regards,

Edgar

There is just too much going on there for me at this point, I am not ready for that yet. With that said I do see it is calling for an update to 3.3.11 and I do want to stay on top of the updates. I also need to learn how to do this myself. Can you give me a quick pointer on how to do it. I have read the php directions but they leave a few gaps that kind of assume that you are familiar with this kind of work. Like delete all of your files in the online folder except the mentioned files. Well, that is great. But where do I find those files that I am supposed to delete? And they tend to mix and match files and folders it seems. There is one they tell you to delete from your home directory but it is a folder and it is also a file, so which one?

[Administrator]

Damn, wrote a long reply, hit the wrong button and its all gone

Lightspeed I have no experience of, but to prevent any problems do not activate it globally but only on your wiki (caching external to phpBB has been known to cause issues and it offers no real world advantage)

Now updating phpBB. this is the way I do it.

1) Download the Changed Files package and unzip it on your desktop

2) There you will find three folders and a number of zip files. Find the relevant zip (in this case 3.3.10 to 3.3.11) and discard the others

3) unzip that into the folder that contains the other three, so you will have something like this

screenshot_201.jpg

4) edit any of the changed files that you (or the previous owner) has changed, in your case overall_header.html has the links added under the header image and maybe the banner code, but as that file is not amongst the ones you have just downloaded there is nothing to do)

5) Disable your board in the ACP

6) Back up the database in ACP>Maintenance>Backup>select all>submit (that saves the current configuration just in case of problems)

7) open your FTP and go to public_html and delete the vendor directory

8) Upload the files you have prepared to public_html overwriting when prompted

9) got to https://g838.org/install click the update tab and follow the prompts and the database will update.

10 Assuming that there are no errors, delete the install directory from public_html and check the board is working correctly

11) re enable the board to that everyone can access it.

It sounds complex the first time, but if you walk yourself through it without actually deleting or uploading anything you will soon get the idea. To be honest, it will probably take less time than it did for me to type this.

Three further points

1) You will have to see what files are in your custom style directory as they may need to be updated as well

2) You might want to save all of the files from public_html onto your computer first, just incase you delete the wrong thing

3) Instead of having the extra links etc hard coded into overall_header.html I can make a small extension that adds them without any further editing if you would like me to

I hope it all makes sense

[Rickf1985]

I spent the ENTIRE day today fighting with my internet provider about my cell phone service which I was stupid enough to have them provide. 8 1/2 hours!!!! I finally called Verizon Mobile and in 15 minutes had a new plan set up, new sim cars will be here tomorrow in the mail. DONE!!!! Had to pay the internet provider the balance on the phones to have them unlocked but they are now mine!

[Administrator]

I feel your pain. I hate trying to get anything done with phone companies.

Another point, did you remember to add the 7G htaccess to the wiki directory?

[Rickf1985]

I FINALLY, just this morning, got the phone situation straightened out!!!! I did not put the 7G in but I did find the htaccess file in there and it is already in there. I will get back to that once I get caught back up outside. I am leaving in a week and a half to pick up another old military vehicle and I have got to have the garage ready for it when I get back!!! I also need to practice on that update.

[Administrator]

Just take your time and shout if you need any help or advice

[Rickf1985]

I created a separate htaccess file in the wiki folder and added the 7g to that to see if it stops the excess use problem. They have not said anything to me about it and they closed the ticket I had open referencing it. I guess they are not too worried about it. I DID point out to them that I mentioned to them several time before signing up that I had this issue with the previous host and I wanted to make sure it did not happen here and I took the plan they recommended. They said they increased one of my limits and not to worry about it. I don't see any increases on the sidebar in the CP and I still get the notice if I clik on resource use. We will see if this does anything.

[Administrator]

TBH If Kualo are not concerned at the traffic I would think that there is not a lot to worry about. Yes, keep an eye on things but don't obsess about it.

Your pervious host's infrastructure sounds like it wasn't up to the job

[Rickf1985]

Well, I want to be proactive and get this under control before it get out of control, again. I mentioned to them that I understand that they closed the last ticket and probably are not worried about it but I just want to know where the problem is coming from so I can try to address it. They gave me this information in a reply this morning. New bots also.

Upon further checking, we can see the following processes, which are causing this high CPU usage:
lsphp:/home/g83800/public_html/viewtopic.php lsphp:/home/g83800/public_html/memberlist.php
We also checked the access logs, and it seems the following processes are due to high requests coming from another bad bot called SeekportBot. We have gone ahead and blocked this bot in your .htaccess file.
For additional security and filtering legitimate requests, we highly recommend you consider using Cloudflare CDN. Their mitigation strategies block bots without impacting real users. You can also create custom firewall rules to block these bots.
If there's anything else we can assist you with, please don't hesitate to let us know.

Kind regards,

Scarlett

[Administrator]

add Seekport to the 7G file in the same way we added the others, that will help

lsphp:/home/g83800/public_html/viewtopic.php lsphp:/home/g83800/public_html/memberlist.php

any bot trying to access that page will be getting the log in page (assuming that bots do not have permission to view memberlist, you can check in the ACP)

I know nothing about CloudFlare so you will have to check on phpBB for any hits and tips to make sure its configured correctly for a dynamic board. (I know their caching can cause issues)