As we mentioned while using WordPress 2.8.3, our site was attacked in an attempt to hack into our WP-Admin folder. Thankfully WordPress has found the bug and released a security patch in WordPress 2.8.4, but this attack made us take extra security measures with our site. We have limited access to our wp-admin folder by using .htaccess and assigning specific IPs that can access it. Before some hacker kept resetting our password and that was because they could see our wp-admin folder and see the login bar. Now no one but WPBeginner Editors can see our admin panel. In this article, we will show you how you can limit wp-admin folder access by IP address using .htaccess file.
First you need to open your .htaccess file located in your /wp-admin/ folder, and make a backup.
Note: Do not edit your Root .htaccess file, don’t paste these codes in there. It must be /wp-admin/.htaccess if you don’t see that file then create a blank file, name it .htaccess in your wp-admin folder.
Then paste the following code:
AuthUserFile /dev/null AuthGroupFile /dev/null AuthName "WordPress Admin Access Control" AuthType Basic <LIMIT GET> order deny,allow deny from all # whitelist Syed's IP address allow from xx.xx.xx.xxx # whitelist David's IP address allow from xx.xx.xx.xxx # whitelist Amanda's IP address allow from xx.xx.xx.xxx # whitelist Muhammad's IP address allow from xx.xx.xx.xxx # whitelist Work IP address allow from xx.xx.xx.xxx </LIMIT>
Paste your IP Address and upload the file.
Now if you have more than one IP make sure you list them there. For example, Work, Home, Vacation IP, if you ever use it. Each time you want to visit your wp-admin panel from another location, you would have to add an extra IP address. That is the only downside to this hack, but this will keep your wp-admin folder safe.
You have to enable
module authz_groupfile
“sudo a2enmod authz_groupfile”
and restart apache
Not working for me. Code restricting admin to get access even I put the ip in a whitelist.
After this line, you must put a condition for permission to allow php files to prevent conflicts:
allow from all
I tried the .htaccess password protection method.
It works, but I tried it on a site with Woocommerce, but then my customers weren’t able to log in.
Just saying that because it seems no one has mentioned that it doesn’t work with sites that need customers to log in !
Hello, thank you for the tutorial. Unfortunately, I have not been able to make this .htaccess file to work correctly because it is denying access to the only IP address I included, my own… I am certain I copied your code exactly and I typed my IP correctly. The .htaccess file was saved under: /wp-admin/.htaccess
Am I missing something? Thanks
I must add that I am working on a localhost installation.
Hi Miguel,
Instead of your IP address, try adding 127.0.0.1
That’s your localhost IP address. If adding the IP alone doesn’t work, then add the following line before the above code:
Require localhow to block the access to wp admin???
Hi Guys,
I have blocked the wp-admin with .htaccess as mentioned in this article. But i am having one problem that my admin-ajax file is also being restricted on public site.
My wordpress theme uses much of admin ajax functionality and that I have put the IP limitation access on wp-admin folder so its not accessible for all IP’s.
Does anyone find the solution for this ? If so please share .
Thanks in advance
Emaan
Hi, This seems really a helpful one. Maybe you could help me. Instead of whitelisting an IP can we allow access for specific countries in .htaccess file? Hoping you can help me. Thank you very much.
Thanks! This was the only solution that worked for me after trying so many
Hi, This does work. I checked and am “forbidden” to login on any other computer. I can’t even see the login panel. However, I am still getting about 24 failed log in attempts per day from all different IP addresses. Any ideas how there getting around this? It’s some kind of brute force attack? Thanks, Scott.
Yes quite possibly. Make sure your .htaccess password is a difficult one.
Thanks. Your site has been very helpful. If you have moment maybe you could answer one more question. I followed your tutorials — and they worked. I blocked access to my admin folder with htaccess and added a password on top of that. I tested and even if people were to break the password, which they haven’t, they wouldn’t have access to the folder from any IP address except mine. However, I’m still getting about 12 failed logins per day. Any ideas what is happening and where to go to fix it? I was hacked once, but cleared the files out of my uploads folder.
NVM: This page answered my question for now. Great info
https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/11-vital-tips-and-hacks-to-protect-your-wordpress-admin-area/
And how to allow access to only wordpress adminitrator ?What code i will write without any ip ? I just need to know a generic function that get admin related info.Becuse i have to restrict my plugin uploads from other user.And Whoever using this plugin i have to get its admin info to restrict contents from other and allow only to admin of website.
Many Many thanks sir, I have test this on my localhost system it works very well.
I tried this (after previously successfully password protecting my wp-admin directory and fixing the redirect error per your other article), but then I get a pop-up asking for a user name and password for the “WordPress Admin Access Control”. What user name and password am I supposed to be using for this new pop-up? Neither the wordpress admin logon nor the wp-admin directory logon work for it.
Thanks!
Oh, I believe I figured out the problem; seems to work as long as I make sure to have the added code at the very beginning.
I have a big problem
I did what you said about creating the .htaccess and putting in the code snippet. It didn’t work so I deleted the .htaccess file and now I can’t login to my dashboard! It’s just a white screen
Please help!!!
Thanks
That’s a fairly unlikely outcome. You deleted the .htaccess file in your /wp-admin/ folder correct?
All I did was create the file in my wp-admin folder and when it didn’t work I deleted it from the wp-admin folder. I’m not sure what happened but, after a crazy rabbit trail and many shots in the dark, I was able to correct the problem by adding to the top of my login.php file. I still don’t know what went wrong or why what I did fixed it…. but at least its fixed. I may try this again when I’m feeling brave.
it erased the code snippet
it was supposed to say “…by adding “” to the top…”
less than sign ? ob_start(); ? greater than sign
First I did not manage to make your password protect work
https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-password-protect-your-wordpress-admin-wp-admin-directory
at least this one works.
It is interesting, that I wp-admin page gets into an infinite redirect when I enter a wrong IP address, not my one.
The infinite redirect seems to be hence an authorization problem.
Hi WPB, I don’t think it will be working in Pakistan because every time we reset or turn of our DSL modem so the IP address automatically changes. if any other tip please reply me.
Thanks
You should look at our tip for password protecting the wp-admin directory.
yes it can be done on https, it’s just .htaccess
Can this be done on https sites? I can’t get it to work.
hi, how to make .htaccess with dynamic ip (non static ip)
my ip is always change xxx.xxx.xxx.12 xxx.xxx.xxx.453 xxx.xxx.xxx.076
please help…
Then this solution is not for you.
You can harden your wordpress install via .htaccess whitelisting even if you have a dynamic IP address. You can whitelist a range of IP addresses using a /24 or /16 range. While this allows more access than if you always knew the IP you wanted to allow, it still prohibits access from almost the entire internet.
Just add /24 to the end of the allow from line to allow the whole class C subnet (256 IPs), or add /16 to allow the whole 65,536 range. i.e.
allow from xxx.xxx.xxx.0/24
will allow access to IP addresses from xxx.xxx.xxx.0 – xxx.xxx.xxx.255. and
allow from xxx.xxx.0.0/16
will allow access from IP addresses from xxx.xxx.0.0 – xxx.xxx.255.255
You say not to do the root site’s .htaccess file…why is that? Because you just want to limit access to the /wp-admin folder?
So…if I wanted to have a WordPress site hosted externally but used as an internal company resource so that only people using IPs of our company could access it…if I edited the root folder’s .htaccess folder to only allow IPs from our domain…that would work the same way your /wp-admin fix is, but for the entire site, correct?
Yes Kyle, the reason why we said do not put this code in the root file because then it will limit your site access to only these IP as well. But if you are trying to make a site just for your company’s staff can access it only from work, then you would want to put the .htaccess file in the root folder.
Fantastic…thank you for the quick reply!
Why just limit GETs? You might want to limit POSTs as well!
Nice tip. I will be doing this.
Can I limit access based on other criterias? Like I need only my laptop to access a particular folder.. I could access it from anywhere so it would be difficult to specify an IP as my internet access would be based on DHCP. Is there a unique identifier for every machine or something like that that can be used as a criteria?