Firewall question

Hello @kevs23,

It is recommended that you optimize the firewall. By doing this, you’re assuring that the firewall loads before any other (potentially malicious) code. There is a guide to this process here to make it easier. In most cases, optimization is accomplished by just clicking through the short procedure.

If you’re using SiteGround as a host, there will be additional steps.

To answer your question — you are certainly better off by just having Wordfence installed, however, by optimizing the firewall, you’re gaining a greater level of protection.

Let me know if you have any issues.

-Scott

Scott, thanks I’m hosted with Godaddy.

Firewall though has downsides to it right?

@kevs23, no problem!

If optimized properly, you will be better protected and shouldn’t notice much difference as far as a performance downside. By having the firewall in it’s current state you would notice any downsides you would likely otherwise see. I believe having the firewall optimized is beneficial.

Feel free to let me know if you run into anything.

-Scott

Scott, thanks I have no idea what that means. I know that Firewalls on my Mac OS have caused chaos, also I think with email software.

Does this prevent people from seeing my website? Downside? Upside?

And it’s a quick walk through to implement? And easy to disable if change mind?

@kevs23,

Here is a great write up of what to expect from Wordfence as far as protection and upside. For the majority of users it is hassle free and free of any downsides! It simply protects and alerts you of anything you should be aware of.

It only prevents people from seeing your site if they are trying to do something wrong (infect your website or log in using a brute force method) or if you manually block a suspicious visitor/IP address.

As you can see on the Optimizing The Firewall documentation page, both enabling the optimization and removing the optimization is easy, as it just takes a few clicks in most cases.

Being that you’re on GoDaddy, if you decide to go ahead and optimize the firewall, you can just follow the Firewall Optimization Setup.

-Scott

SCOTT, thanks, good info.

“Click to download backups of .htaccess and/or .user.ini if you are prompted to do “,

This is right now too stomach turning to deal with… I thought just a quick few cliks?

I thought the default Wordfence just handles everything without all this extra word and learning curve.

@kevs23,

In regards to downloading the files, Wordfence recommends downloading the .htaccess and/or .user.ini files incase you need to use them for a backup. If you do go through the optimization process, download the files when prompted and save them on your computer, just in case of an issue.

The default Wordfence offers very good protection. However, to tighten things up to cover you the best, there is just a little configuration that needs done to optimize the firewall. So if you don’t feel comfortable optimizing, and you aren’t currently experiencing any issues, you can leave it as-is and you’ll still be protected more so than you would be not having the plugin installed. It is just recommended to have the firewall optimized to give the highest amount of protection.

Just ask if you need anything!

-Scott

Hi @kevs23

Since we haven’t heard from you for a while I’m going to go ahead and resolve this thread. If you have any other questions or concerns, don’t hesitate to open a new one.

Thanks.