Banhammer – Monitor Site Traffic, Block Bad Users and Bots

Banhammer: Protect your site against enemy hordes!

Banhammer gives you full control over who and what may access your site. Visit the Armory to monitor traffic and review suspicious visitors. If you find some user or bot that is causing problems, you can ban them with a click. Or, if you just want to keep an eye on someone, you can flag them with a warning. Any banned users will be denied access to your site, until you restore access via the Tower. Check out the video and screenshots to get a better idea of how it works.

Important: Not yet compatible with WP Multisite!

Core Features

• Ban or Warn any WP user or IP address
• Restore access to any banned targets
• Monitor site traffic in the Armory
• Monitor logged users in the Admin Area
• Monitor all visitors on the front-end
• Manage banned targets in the Tower
• Complete Ajax-powered navigation
• Useful tools like jump, sort, search
• Complete documentation via Help tab
• Automatically clear logged data
• Sound effects for Ban, Warn, et al
• NEW: manually block any IP address

Options Galore

• Optionally ignore logged-in users
• Optionally protect Login Page and Admin Area
• Customize the banned response and status code
• Display banned message or redirect the request
• Choose the interval to clear logged data
• One-click restore plugin default options
• All collected data may be deleted easily

More Features

• Easy to use
• Clean code
• Fast and secure
• Built with WP API
• Lightweight and flexible
• Regularly updated and “future proof”
• Works great with any WordPress theme
• Comprehensive search of all logged data
• Works great with other WordPress plugins
• Works with or without Gutenberg Block Editor
• Focused on usability, performance, and security

Banhammer is perfect for site owners, admins, and developers who want to keep an eye on traffic and block any unwanted visitors. It is a simple, flexible, and powerful security solution. Perfect for the best WordPress sites.

For complete documentation, visit the Help tab on any Banhammer screen.

+ Banhammer Pro now available »

Privacy

User Data: Banhammer collects user data to “do its thing”. The collected data is temporary and automatically deleted every day, or at whatever time interval is specified in the plugin settings. The only time that any data is “remembered” is when you ban something. For each person/thing that you ban, the plugin stores either the IP address OR the username (never both). At any time, all saved data may be deleted permanently via the plugin settings and Armory Tools.

Cookies: Banhammer does not set any cookies for regular visitors, but does set a few simple cookies for admin-level users. These simple cookies enable dope effects and interactivity in the Armory and Tower UI. But no cookies are set or used for any other visitor/user or purpose.

Services: Banhammer uses a free lookup service for GeoIP information. This happens only for admin-level users when they are viewing data in the Armory or Tower. No other third-party services are used by this plugin.

Banhammer is developed and maintained by Jeff Starr, 15-year WordPress developer and book author.

Support development

I develop and maintain this free plugin with love for the WordPress community. To show support, you can make a donation or purchase one of my books:

• The Tao of WordPress
• Digging into WordPress
• .htaccess made easy
• WordPress Themes In Depth
• Wizard’s SQL Recipes for WordPress

And/or purchase one of my premium WordPress plugins:

• BBQ Pro – Super fast WordPress firewall
• Blackhole Pro – Automatically block bad bots
• Banhammer Pro – Monitor traffic and ban the bad guys
• GA Google Analytics Pro – Connect WordPress to Google Analytics
• Simple Ajax Chat Pro – Unlimited chat rooms
• USP Pro – Unlimited front-end forms

Links, tweets and likes also appreciated. Thank you! 🙂