Every GUDHOST site sits behind our bot protection and a web application firewall. They stop password-guessing attacks, known bad networks, floods of fake traffic and common hacking attempts before they reach WordPress. Most visitors never notice them.
The "verifying you're not a robot" page
Sometimes a visitor sees a short check page before your site loads, such as "please wait while we verify you're not a robot". This happens when a request looks automated, comes from a network previously used for attacks, or arrives while the site is under attack. The check normally completes on its own, and a visitor who passes isn't asked again for a while.
If someone gets stuck on the check page or keeps seeing it, ask them to use a normal browser window with JavaScript enabled and to turn off any VPN. If that doesn't help, contact support.
Blocked forms and tools
- A 403 right after submitting a form or saving something can mean the firewall thought the submission looked like an attack.
- A 401 or 403 for an outside service, such as an SEO crawler, uptime monitor or integration, can mean our bot protection flagged its traffic. Many popular crawlers are already allowed.
- If you have custom code that sends POST requests to your site, make sure each request includes a
Content-Lengthheader. Requests without one can be blocked.
Getting something unblocked
Contact support and we'll check whether our protection is involved and, where it's safe, allow the request. Please include:
- The page address and what you were doing
- The date and time it happened
- The IP address of the affected visitor or service (you can find yours at ipinfo.io/ip)
- For an outside service, its name
We don't switch the protection off for a site, but we can make exceptions for specific legitimate traffic.