Block a Website for Everyone But You
* 11/19/2008 — 16 Comments *
Quick little .htaccess trick today for ya’ll. This snippet will redirect any visitor who is not at at one of the provided IP addresses. You can use as many or as few as you would like. This is just a very quick way to block access to a site for, say, everyone but you. Or, everyone but you and a few select co-workers or clients.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_HOST} !^71\.225\.113\.171
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_HOST} !^71\.185\.239\.212
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_HOST} !^69\.253\.223\.254
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/comingsoon\.html$
RewriteRule .* /comingsoon.html [R=302,L]Thanks for Brian Phillips for sending me this little trick a while back. Definitely useful! An alternative is password protecting the site, which can also be done with .htaccess.
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Cool tip brian and chris, the password one is truly useful too, espesh when developing a site for a client.
I use this technique to keep people from snooping around certain directories on my websites. Keep in mind that it only works if you have a static IP though.
Awesome. thx for the trick. i'll use it in some client stuff in the future i'm sure.
My old trick was keeping it on a thumb drive, or not putting it online
that keeps the site safe. ha.
You can also do
Order Deny,Allow
Deny from all
Allow from 71.225.113.171 71.185.239.212 69.253.223.254
to lock down a whole site.
Thanks for this trick. Question though, how secure is this just by itself? I was under the impression validating by IP isnt very reliable as IP addresses can be spoofed. Am I mistaken?
Cool tip guys, this will come in handy very soon
cheers
That's nice but I think doing it in php is a lot easier.
<?php
$ip = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
if($ip != '823.23.23.122') {
header("Location: underconstruction.html");
exit;
}
?>
Cool, thanks for sharing that technique as well Paul.
Right Drew, you wouldn't want to use this to secure a site. But its a handy way to redirect everyone to a coming soon or under construction page while you are working / testing on the server.
This is awesome, Thanx Chris
Great tip, thanks!
Does anyone have a link to a good tutorial on .htaccess or PHP URL rewriting? I am trying to clean up the URL's on some of my sites.
Thanks.
… that's nice but not everyone uses PHP do they….? If you'd said "If you're using PHP…." it would have sounded less arrogant.
I find it much easier to check for a custom cookie that I can set. I just wrote a blog post about my method.
http://notso.silent-e.com/2008/11/24/how-i-block-...
(e)
Nice trick.
How about the opposite.. allow any IP except for 1.