How to Remove the Robot.txt File from a WordPress Website
WordPress is a very popular content management system (CMS). It is a free and open-source platform that can be used to build websites. Because of its popularity, it is very common for spammers to target WordPress sites with useless automated traffic. One way this is done is by placing a file named robot.txt on the web server. When a visitor tries to access a page on your site, they will see a message that looks like this:
“403 Forbidden: You don’t have permission to access /favicon.ico on this site.
It is recommended that you remove the robot.txt file from your site. However, if you choose to keep it, you should ensure that the permissions are set so that only you can access it, and nobody else can. You can do this by changing the permissions of the file so that only you can read and write to it.
WordPress stores all of its configuration settings in a file named wp-config.php. This file can be found inside of the WordPress directory on the server. You can use FTP and log in as root to edit the file. Once you have edited it, close the file and download the latest version of WordPress from the site. You can also use the command line to restart the web server if needed.
As you can see above, there is also a cache.php file that is frequently left on web servers by mistake. This is a simple caching script that prevents WordPress from having to download the same content more than once. While it is not bad in theory, in practice it can cause performance issues if it is left on a site for too long. Because of this, you should remove it. You can do this by simply going to your website’s Settings page, clicking the Trash icon, and deleting the cache.php file.
Additional Remarks
If you want to learn more about how to secure a WordPress site, you should read WordPress Security Guide by Oster Mills. This detailed guide covers everything from basic settings to more advanced techniques such as installing Composer and using OWASP web application scanners.
WordPress can be very useful for small businesses and bloggers who want to create a simple, clean-looking website without having to install and configure a complex CMS. One advantage is that WordPress is very popular and there are a lot of tutorials and support available online, which makes it easier for beginners to get up and running quickly.