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How to Allow or Block a Specific IP Address for Your Website on cPanel

Sometimes, you want to block a specific IP address or restrict access to a part of your website to whitelisted IP addresses. Luckily, this is possible with the .htaccess file!

If you want to block a large range of IP addresses, we recommend using the cPanel IP Blocker by searching IP Blocker on cPanel.

You can also password-protect directories, follow our guide here on this.

This guide will work for Plesk website hosting following similar guidelines, but the screenshots are taken using cPanel as the website hosting panel.

Log into cPanel. If you're unsure, take a look at our Logging In To cPanel guide.

Looking for website hosting? Take a look at our cPanel website hosting!

Once logged in, head to Files, and then File Manager.

Navigate to the directory which you want to restrict access to.

Once you've in the correct directory, click + File at the top of the page.

In the file name box, type in .htaccess. Then click Create New File

Once the file has been created, right click on it, and press Edit.

On the popup, click Edit.

You'll see the file open, now we can put in the values we want!

Denying IP addresses or ranges

To set rules for denying a specific IP address, you can use the template below:

Order Allow,Deny
Deny from 185.195.238.255
Allow from all

185.195.238.255 and 185.195.238.254 are example IP addresses, please replace this with the IP address you want to block.

If you want to block additional addresses, you can add them as shown below:

Order Allow,Deny
Deny from 185.195.238.255
Deny from 185.195.238.254
Allow from all

If you want to block a whole range of IP addresses following CIDR notation, you can do so as shown below:

Order Allow,Deny 
Deny from 185.195.238.0/24
Allow from all

185.195.238.0/24 is an example IP address range, please replace this with the IP address range you want to block.

You can also use wildcards for whole octets:

Order Allow,Deny 
Deny from 185.195.*.*
Allow from all

185.195.*.* is an example range. Please replace this with your own.

Allowing IP addresses or ranges

Allowing IP address ranges are very similar to denying them.

To set rules for allowing a specific IP address and denying anything else, you can use the template below:

Order Deny,Allow
Deny from all
Allow from 185.195.238.255

185.195.238.255 and 185.195.238.254 are example IP addresses, please replace this with the IP address you want to allow.

If you want to allow additional addresses, you can add them as shown below:

Order Deny,Allow
Deny from all
Allow from 185.195.238.255
Allow from 185.195.238.254

If you want to allow a whole range of IP addresses following CIDR notation, you can do so as shown below:

Order Deny,Allow
Deny from all
Allow from 185.195.238.0/24

185.195.238.0/24 is an example IP address range, please replace this with the IP address range you want to allow.

You can also use wildcards for whole octets:

Order Deny,Allow
Deny from all
Allow from 185.195.*.*

185.195.*.* is an example range. Please replace this with your own.

Updated on: 18/11/2024

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