Has anyone used the SiteGround Country Block feature on their forum?

[DigNap15]

Has anyone used the new SiteGround Country Block Feature?

My forum is aimed at one country (my own) with a few other related countries.

But I get lots of attack attempts and new member applications from countries that are not my target market and that 99% of them will never be useful members

So I was very pleased to find that Siteground added a Country Block Feature late last year (I only just found it.)

I am keen to try it - it should reduce my unwanted traffic by A LOT

What do you think?

 

[Empire]

I used to have SiteGround and no I do not even have that option anymore, and at the time that I did have SiteGround I never used that option anyway

I end up blocking via .htaccess

 

[Arantor]

I actually suspect it’ll be better than using htaccess because doing it in htaccess tends to be static lists of IPs, while Siteground can update it as time goes on and IP blocks change hands.

 

[Empire]

I actually suspect it’ll be better than using htaccess because doing it in htaccess tends to be static lists of IPs, while Siteground can update it as time goes on and IP blocks change hands.

Yeah, it's true, got to add each IP manually, it's a pain in the butt - Another option is to block the country via htaccess and it's less messy, however, that's not a good idea since no one from that country can't join unless they use VPN.

Easy option that I do now, I block that user via IPB leave htaccess clean and use the forum software

 

[Arantor]

htaccess is vastly more efficient than the software though.

 

[DigNap15]

I have just started using the Siteground Country blocker feature
I get the feeling that I am getting less attacks on my forum from people that think I will have a wordpress site.
And less people from countries that I think will not be good members

I'll report back in a few weeks with more results

 

[DigNap15]

htaccess is vastly more efficient than the software though.

I have heard that Google does not like large htaccess files (that was only a rumour)

 

[Arantor]

Since Google never sees the htaccess file, how could it possibly know?

All it can possibly see is if you have a truly monster file that somehow slows your site down (by which it’ll see the slowness not the file itself) but that’s inevitably a product of banning many many (thousands) IP addresses individually and not using blocks of addresses in bans.

And inevitably, if your site is slow for that reason, it’s probably slow for other reasons too like plugins you don’t need.