“How difficult can it be to set up a small gaming website to share our passion with the world?” I thought to myself. Spoiler alert: Very difficult. Really difficult, even with an IT background.
What was planned as a casual project for the gaming community quickly evolved into a digital survival horror – without any respawn.
Level 1: Building the Site – or: The Final Boss is Time
The plan was simple: build the site, add content, and it’s done. The reality? An epic adventure with more bugs than Cyberpunk at launch. The setup dragged on like a boss fight with 17 phases – and that was before the site even went online.
Level 2: The Hackers Arrive
The site was barely halfway stable when it started: spam, DDoS attacks, proxy games. Our site became a digital garbage dump – before anyone could even visit it. Why us? Good question. Maybe our URL used to be a Russian Bitcoin blog? Maybe we’re just unlucky. Maybe bots just hate gaming sites.
One moment of inattention, and hey presto – everything’s gone. No backup. Just tears. And then, on top of that, an empty server that refused to communicate with the latest Ubuntu. So: move. New server, new hope. Spoiler alert: Hope dies last, but it dies.
Level 3: IP Blocking – Tilting Windmills
The attacks continued on the new server. Sure, the same URL and still WordPress.
“Then we’ll just block the attackers’ IPs!” – we said. And we blocked them. And we blocked them. And we blocked them. Entire countries were locked out. But the bots? They came anyway. With proxies. Like zombies with VPNs.
Level 4: Security Plugins – Placebo for Admins
Of course, we tried plugins. Lots. Some helped a little. Most were like an umbrella in a hurricane. Well-intentioned, but useless.
Fun fact: In 2020, bots accounted for over 40% of global internet traffic. And I’m pretty sure 39% of that visited our site.
Level 5: The Last Attempt – Sucuri
We were close to giving up; hope had long since died. The world will probably never know what two simple gamers do in their free time.
Then, as if by chance, Sucuri came along. And suddenly, hope was back. The web application firewall promised protection, stability, and finally peace in the digital world.
Setting it up? Not entirely trivial, but not rocket science either. You need to know what a DNS server is and how to configure your DNS settings. After that, much of the work is done via the Sucuri interface – pleasantly understandable and almost friendly.
If you want to delve deeper into security, you’ll have to deal with server settings. But hey – everything you learn is guaranteed to help you in the future. Or during the next cyberattack.
Conclusion: It wasn’t easy – but it was instructive.
We definitely want to stick with WordPress, as it’s the fastest and easiest – and therefore only – way for us to run this blog. Even though it cost us a lot of nerves, the effort was worth it. Despite the ever-increasing number of attacks, the site is running stably.
We never thought this effort would be necessary for a small blog, but we also learned a lot about internet security.
Today, the site is running stably. The nasty bots are locked out, the firewall stands like a digital fortress, and I’ve learned more about network security than in any IT course.
So if you want to start your own gaming site: Be prepared. It won’t be easy. But with humor, patience, and a good firewall, you can survive even the toughest attacks.
And remember: Always make a backup. Always.
Finally, we can say that we’ve done absolutely everything to keep the site secure and move on to the fun part.
With that in mind: Thank you, dear attackers, you make us better!
costs
Sucuri Web Application Firewall
20€ / month
Server
15€ / month
extended Monitoring
5€ / month
Server change
free
other costs
a lot of stress and time
skillz
Sucuri
Setting up Sucuri isn’t trivial, but it’s not rocket science either.
You need a basic understanding of what a DNS server is and how to configure your DNS settings.
Everything else is easily handled via the Sucuri interface.
IT security
To configure additional security settings on your own server, you’ll need to delve much deeper into the subject matter.
But everything you learn is guaranteed to help you in the future.
