There may be times you need to block an IP address (or addresses) to prevent malicious behavior from bots, spammers, or others.

Identifying IP Addresses To Block in MyKinsta

One example of an IP address you may need to block is one that’s making a lot of uncached requests to your site in a short amount of time. Uncached requests can lead to excessive resource usage and cause issues for your site.

To view the top IP addresses that are visiting your site, you can use MyKinsta’s analytics dashboard. Log in to MyKinsta and go to WordPress Sites > sitename > Analytics > Geo & IP. Under the Top client IPs section, look for any IP addresses that are making more requests than other IPs by a factor of 5-10x or more. These are usually the IP addresses you want to investigate further.

You can use a reputation checker like CleanTalk or Spamhaus to see if the IP address has been identified as a bot, spammer, or other malicious IP address. Even if the IP address isn’t listed, it isn’t a guarantee that it’s legitimate. The IP address may not yet be identified and listed in their database as malicious. If the IP address is making a request that is causing your site to return an error or go down, blocking the IP address as a troubleshooting step is worth a try.

Blocking an IP Address in MyKinsta

To block an IP address or range of IP addresses in MyKinsta, you can use the IP Deny tool.

The IP Deny tool is a powerful feature and, if used incorrectly, could block a legitimate service or individual. If you have questions about a certain IP address, please open a chat with our Support team.

In MyKinsta, go to WordPress Sites > Your Site > IP Deny and click the Add IP Addresses button.

Begin adding IP addresses to the IP Deny tool in MyKinsta.
Begin adding IP addresses to the IP Deny tool in MyKinsta.

In the Add IP Addresses to Deny modal/pop-up that appears, you can add IPV4 addresses, IPV6 addresses, and CIDR (Classless Inter-Domain Routing) IP address ranges to the block list. With CIDR ranges, you can block a sequential range of IP addresses (e.g. 127.0.0.1 to 127.0.0.255). To generate a valid CIDR range, we recommend using a tool like IPAddressGuide.com.

Here are a few examples of IP addresses you can block:

  • IPV4 Address – 103.5.140.141
  • IPV6 Address – 2001:0db8:0a0b:12f0:0000:0000:0000:0001
  • CIDR Range – 128.0.0.1/32

Once you’ve added the IP address(es) to block, click the Add IP Addresses button.

Add an IP address to deny in MyKinsta.
Add an IP address to deny in MyKinsta.

The IP address and any others you’ve added will now be shown on the IP deny list. On this same page, you can Edit (edit/pencil icon) or Delete (delete/trash can icon) any IP address or range.