SUPPORT FORUMS. — On the 29th ult., after a prolonged struggle with bureaucracy, the WP fail2ban Support Forums, beloved of their users and a source of much mutual assistance. Survived by the Manual, Life With WP fail2ban, and an email address.

No flowers. All enquiries by email.

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I’m moving the support forums to new hosting and blocking access from UK IPs. This will be done as soon as possible - weeks, not months. This keeps the forum open globally without forcing surveillance‑style age checks on everyone. If Ofcom insist geoblocking isn’t enough, I’ll close the forums. Life is too short for bureaucracy.

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A summary of steps to take and things you should be aware of before upgrading to v6.

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In WP fail2ban 5.4.0, an issue arose where the syslog tag changed to WordPress (capital W, capital P), causing existing fail2ban filters to stop working.

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Background

In September I had no intention of creating v5.4 at all; v6.0 was nearly ready for public Beta testing and I was 100% focused on that.

Then in October and seemingly out of nowhere, the WP vs. WPE drama started. For a while it looked like anything with "WP" in the name was at risk, so I paused work on v6.0 and started building v5.4 - just in case.

Although it turned out that an emergency release wasn't needed, the WordPress environment is now fundamentally and permanently different.

The changes in v5.4 directly address the new reality. <Read more>

• Update Freemius library.

• Event log by IP. Premium only
• Improve IP Tools (IP Summary). Premium only
• Add zoom functionality to graphs. Premium only
• Update MaxMind & Freemius libraries.

• Ignore IP List (h/t Kyle Reid). Premium only
• Update Freemius library.

• Fix database initialisation for new installs. Premium only

• Dashboard.
• Quick-start Settings.
• Honeypot. Premium only
• Geolocation: Premium only
  • Add support for Cloudflare.
  • Add blocking with 451 error.
• fail2ban: Improve filters:
  • Merge rules for performance.
  • Add tags to enhance action capabilities.
• syslog: Change defaults:
  • Now uses LOG_AUTHPRIV by default; see WP_FAIL2BAN_USE_LOG_AUTH.
  • LOG_USER is mapped to LOG_AUTHPRIV; see WP_FAIL2BAN_USE_LOG_USER.
  • Pingbacks and Trackbacks: Improve filtering and blocking.
  • WAF: change default facility to LOG_AUTH. Premium only
  • Update Freemius library.

Please read the notes before upgrading.