Walkthrough · Intermediate · 10 minutes
How to Block Unwanted Visitors by IP
How to turn a persistent pest away at the perimeter, with clear eyes about what the tool cannot do, without the guessing — the steps in order, the snag ahead of time, and the tip our support team repeats daily.
The short answer
One line covers it: turn a persistent pest away at the perimeter, with clear eyes about what the tool cannot do — a intermediate-level job of roughly 10 minutes.
Below are the precise steps, the classic stumble, and one tip from the support desk. Wherever the platform already does a step for you, the guide says so rather than handing you a machine's chores.
By the Hosting & Domains team · Reviewed 18 August 2026
Intermediate
Experience required
5
Stages, start to finish
Free
Support included
Proven
On the platform itself
No prior knowledge assumed — a hosting account, a browser and 10 minutes of attention is the whole entry requirement. Every instruction runs on our platform exactly as printed, and carries over to any standard cPanel host.
First rule: read the snag section before you start, not afterwards. It was distilled from the tickets of everyone who tried the other order.
The whole job in one view
Set out end to end, the route is: find the offenders in the logs, enter them in ip blocker, widen to a range when one address is not enough, know where the tool stops and prune the list from time to time.
Every stage is a few minutes of unhurried clicking — the total depends mostly on how well you already know the control panel. The detailed instructions are further down; read the whole path once before you begin.
Where it comes off, and how to stay on
Blocking your own dynamic IP halfway through a test. The rule does exactly what it says, your home connection is refused, and 'the site is down' translates as 'down for me, by my own hand'. Read the address before you save the rule.
It earns a section of its own because it is no obscure edge case — it is the single commonest reason this task reaches a support queue. Knowing it in advance turns the whole job from risky into routine.
What we tell every customer
Against form spam, give up chasing addresses altogether. Honeypots and validation work better than blocking, because spammers rotate addresses far faster than anybody can copy them into a list.
A minute spent now repays itself every time this job comes round again — and like almost every hosting job, come round it will.
The steps already done before you arrive
Steps that never deserved your time are taken out: certificates issue and reissue themselves, the installer handles application setup, the daily copy absorbs the what-ifs, and per-site settings live in a panel rather than a configuration file. The guide covers the remainder — the part that is actually about your site.
Stopped mid-guide at an awkward hour? That is exactly what round-the-clock support is for — say which step you are on and we take it from there.
The hosting these steps were tested on
Tutorials written against imaginary hosting go stale fast. Ours are written against the real thing: the same panel, installer and defaults waiting in your account.
A copy is taken daily on every plan, and putting a file or a database back is one click in the panel rather than a support ticket.
- Every step checked exactly as published
- The snag named before it arrives
- The dull steps taken out of your way
- People reachable at any hour you stall
Why Hosting & Domains
Standard on every plan
Works exactly as printed
Every step is proven on the platform we run — none of the 'your host may vary' hedging.
The dull parts automated
SSL, backups and installs look after themselves here, leaving the guide to cover only what is genuinely yours.
Honest about how big it is
Turn a persistent pest away at the perimeter, with clear eyes about what the tool cannot do is a intermediate-level job — set aside 10 minutes, with the platform-absorbed steps marked.
5 steps, nothing padded
Each stage is a few minutes of steady clicking, and the fiddly moments are labelled fiddly.
Every undo written out
Any step that could bite is marked, together with the exact way to wind it back.
Jargon never charges you
Every term is defined on the spot or linked to the jargon buster — nothing assumes prior knowledge.
Quick Start
Order placed to site online
- 1
Find the offenders in the logs
Access logs show the recurring patterns, whether scraping runs, form-spam surges or brute-force streaks, with each source address printed beside them.
- 2
Enter them in IP Blocker
cPanel's IP Blocker turns away individual addresses or whole ranges. It is precisely the right instrument for a stubborn pest arriving reliably from one place.
- 3
Widen to a range when one address is not enough
Abusers move about within their provider's allocation. A CIDR range fences off the neighbourhood when the same pest keeps returning as its own neighbour.
- 4
Know where the tool stops
Distributed attacks sail past IP lists entirely, since that territory belongs to server-level protection and DDoS mitigation. The blocker handles pests, not campaigns.
- 5
Prune the list from time to time
IP allocations get recycled, so last year's abuser becomes this year's genuine reader. A blocklist that only grows will eventually turn away somebody you wanted.
Built In
Fitted to every plan
- Free SSL on every plan, reissued before the old one lapses
- LiteSpeed caching in the server itself rather than bolted on by plugin
- WebP image optimisation built in, at no extra charge
- Mailboxes that answer at the name you hold
- The name's first year included when you order annually
- Your existing site brought across by our engineers, at no charge
- Upgrades applied in place, with no migration when you change plan
- 99.9% uptime as the target, watched around the clock
- cPanel, which is what most of the industry already runs
- DDoS filtering absorbed at the network edge
Frequently Asked
The questions that come up most
One IP keeps hammering my login page — should I block it?
Block it, but fix the category as well. Login attempt limits plus two-factor make the attack pointless from every address on earth. Blocking one attacker soothes a symptom; hardening dismisses the whole class.
Can a whole country be blocked?
It can, with IP ranges in .htaccess or a firewall, and the trade-offs bite. VPNs walk straight past, allocations shift constantly, and legitimate users get caught, yourself included the first time you travel. Keep geo-blocking for genuinely regional services facing real abuse.
Where does the hardware physically sit?
The platform runs from a London datacentre with redundant power, cooling and several upstream carriers, with server-level caching in front that keeps cached pages quick for visitors anywhere. For most sites how the platform is built — NVMe disks, LiteSpeed, restrained account density per machine — counts for far more than where it sits.
Is there a safe place to try changes?
Yes — plans with staging let you copy the live site, work on the copy, then publish it once it behaves. That turns 'hope the update works' into 'know it works' before a single customer meets it.
Keep reading
How to Start a Blog on Your Domain
Publish on ground you own, structured so the effort compounds — beginner level, about an afternoon.
How to Secure WordPress
Shut the doors WordPress attackers actually use — intermediate level, about an hour of setup.
DNS (Domain Name System) (Glossary)
A single term without the jargon: what it means, why it counts, and where it catches people out.
WooCommerce Hosting
Store-ready hosting with Redis caching and headroom held back for checkout traffic.
WordPress Hosting
WordPress looked after for you — LiteSpeed caching, staging copies and a daily backup.
Changing hosts? Run through our checklist first.
A plain order of work for a move nobody visiting will notice: which files go over first, how to carry the mail across without losing a message, when exactly to repoint DNS, and the two mistakes behind nearly every outage we are asked to rescue.
Do it properly this time.
Free SSL, a free migration, renewals billed at the original rate, and people on support around the clock. That is the whole of it.
View WooCommerce Hosting plans