Blocking Direct IP Access in Apache

If you are using Name based virtual hosts, you may want to simply block any bots etc that try to access your server by direct IP address. It’s unlikely a real user would try to hit your server by using the actual IP address.

To do this, you can use this Virtual Host config:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName 123.123.123.123
    Redirect 403 /
    ErrorDocument 403 "No"
    DocumentRoot /dev/null/
    UseCanonicalName Off
    UserDir disabled
</VirtualHost>

Of course, please change the IP to the real server IP address(es)

And that’s it, anyone trying to hit the server by IP address will get a simple 403 error.