Combine with Ninjafirewall?

  • Resolved dawnw777

    (@dawnw777)


    8 years, 6 months ago

    Hi,

    I have several wordpress sites, two of which are coming under fairly heavy attack recently. I’d been using wordfence on all sites, though I noticed that it appears to be a memory hog.

    Having spent two days with my hosting company trying to sort various things out – apache had to be recompiled as I use nginx as a reverse proxy (on a vps) and for some reason wordfence was not always finding the right IP addresses – I decided it was time to look at aternatives.

    So, on one domain I have now added ninjafirewall. I wanted to combine it with something else, if possible. I have seen (I forget where) that it is possible to use both ninjafirewall and bulletproof security together.

    I was sure it was a question I’d find answered in previous posts, but I can’t see anything in the past year.

    So, is there any point in using these two together?
    Do you know of any ‘how to’ pages that show the ideal setting if they are used together? Are any features duplicated – and therefore best left turned off in one or other plugin?

    Thanks for any advice you can offer.

    https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/bulletproof-security/

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)
  • Plugin Author AITpro

    (@aitpro)

    I’ve never heard of the ninjafirewall plugin before. I checked our forum and do not see any forum topics about that plugin. So my guess would be BPS and the ninjafirewall plugin work together without any issues. Since I have no information about the ninjafirewall plugin and have never tested it before I cannot tell you what does and does not work, what that plugin does or does not do or anything else about that plugin. I will look for the ninjafirewall plugin, install and test it to see what it does.

    Plugin Author AITpro

    (@aitpro)

    Unfortunately, I cannot test the NinjaFirewall plugin. I installed it on a Local Development XAMPP server and I see this error message: “Plugin could not be activated because it triggered a fatal error. NinjaFirewall is not compatible with Windows.” The NinjaFirewall incorrectly thinks my XAMPP server is a Windows server. Oh well.

    Plugin Author AITpro

    (@aitpro)

    Ok I was able to comment out this NinjaFirewall plugin code below to allow me to install and test the plugin.

    //if ( PATH_SEPARATOR == ';' ) {
	//	exit( __('NinjaFirewall is not compatible with Windows.', 'ninjafirewall') );
	//}

    The setup steps added htaccess code in the root htaccess file, which you then need to copy and paste into BPS Root Custom Code in this text box: CUSTOM CODE TOP PHP/PHP.INI HANDLER/CACHE CODE, save it and activate BPS Root folder BulletProof Mode. If you choose any additional NinjaFirewall option settings that create htaccess code then you will need to copy that new htaccess code to BPS Custom Code.

    Overall as far as I can tell everything should work fine without any issues. So the only thing you need to handle is copying NinjaFirewall htaccess code to BPS Custom Code. Looks like it has some decent features. I did not really test any of them, but they look ok to me.

    Thread Starter dawnw777

    (@dawnw777)

    Okay, thanks.
    Actually, I used this firewall plugin a year (maybe two years) ago, as I found a lot of tests featuring it which were very impressive, comparing it with other free and some premium products. Yesterday I was looking at https://www.owasp.org/index.php/OWASP_Wordpress_Security_Implementation_Guideline and saw that they seem to recommend it too.

    I’ll have a look at combining the plugins today and see how it goes.

    Oh yes, I know it doesn’t work with windows, only linux. Luckily, I use the latter!

    Thanks for your advice.

    Thread Starter dawnw777

    (@dawnw777)

    Oh, one possibly silly question;

    In a couple of cases, I have wordpress installed in its own folder. When that’s the case, the htaccess from the wordpress folder is copied to the domain root. Which htaccess would bps work with? The one in root, I assume?

    Plugin Author AITpro

    (@aitpro)

    For WordPress Giving WordPress Its Own Directory (GWIOD) sites, WordPress creates an htaccess file in the site root folder and BPS creates an htaccess file in the WordPress installation folder.

    /public_html/.htaccess – site root htaccess file.
    /public_html/wordpress-installation-folder/.htaccess – BPS root htaccess file.

    The BPS root htaccess file applies its htaccess security rules to the parent folder: /wordpress-installation-folder/ and all child folders below the parent folder. If you want to manually copy BPS htaccess security code to the site root htaccess file then be aware that htaccess files are hierarchical/recursive and htaccess security rules will be applied in/to the /public_html/ folder (typically the hosting account root folder) and all child folders below the /public_html/ folder (all of your folders under your hosting account). See these forum topic links below for more detailed information about GWIOD sites and htaccess file hierarchy.

    https://forum.ait-pro.com/forums/topic/htaccess-files-for-multiple-website-domains/
    https://forum.ait-pro.com/forums/topic/portfolio/

    Plugin Author AITpro

    (@aitpro)

    Did this answer all of your questions? If so, please resolve this thread. If not, please post any additional questions you may have. Thanks.

    Thread Start Date: 8-24-2016
    Current Date: 8-25-2016

    Thread Starter dawnw777

    (@dawnw777)

    Well, I’m sure your reply answered all my questions. The only problem is I’m buggered if I know what it all means! I need a dictionary to look up ‘recursive’ and see what it means…

    However, the first domain I changed from wordfence to ninjafirewall and bulletproof hasn’t fallen over yet, so whatever I did was okay.

    I’m now working on the next, and that’s the one that’s GWIOD. I have a question about that one but I’ll post it anew as it’s not related to this. I’ll say this is closed, so thank you. I’ll get a dictionary tomorrow…!

    Plugin Author AITpro

    (@aitpro)

    Ha ha ha on getting out a dictionary to look stuff up. Fortunately and unfortunately it is always best to use the accurate widely known technical terms for things. ie calling something “banana” when everyone is calling it “grape” does not work out so well. ?? In laymans terms, recursive in this particular usage means that an htaccess file in a parent folder (/public_html/) under a hosting account will apply its htaccess security rules to all child folders (/public_html/some-folder/, /public_html/another-folder/) below that parent folder.

    We still receive emails when a forum thread is resolved. So yeah if you have more questions related to this specific thread topic then post them.

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)
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