Every access to your site originates from a specific IP address. However, not all traffic to your site is wanted or even appropriate. It can therefore make sense to prevent certain IP addresses from accessing your website completely.
IP blocking settings
Follow these steps to create a blacklist or a whitelist:
Go to the Settings tab from your Box overview
Navigate to the submenu Security on the left
Select the option IP blocking
Choose the type of list you want to create or edit from the drop-down menu.
Click on the plus symbol to the right
Enter the IP addresses you want to either block or allow and click on Apply to save your changes.
IP blocking via a blacklist
Blacklists are much more complex to maintain than whitelists and are used to allow access to the website to all IPs except those entered into the list.
IP blocking via a whitelist
Whitelists are far more common. When a whitelist is activated, all IP addresses, except those entered in the list, are denied access to the server.
This kind of limitation is particularly useful for WordPress installations still in development and for websites only used internally within a company. If you’re building an employee portal for a company, for example, only employees from that company should be able to access the site. A whitelist gives you the option to control access rights accordingly.
How to block a range of IP addresses
You may occasionally need to put a whole range of IP addresses, so-called subnets, on a list. These subnets are written in a particular way. This network calculator helps you calculate the correct IP subnet and generate the corresponding notation for the IP lists.
Simply enter the first and last IP address of the subnet and then enter the address of the network including the CIDR suffix.