Reducing Apache Load by Handling Direct IP and Fake PHP Probes with Nginx

Hello everyone,I wanted to share a small but useful server hardening improvement that may help others using CWP / Apache / Nginx reverse proxy setups.Recently, I noticed many automated bot requests hitting the server’s default IP page and trying common fake PHP/webshell filenames such as:Apache was blocking many of them, which was good, but the problem was that the requests were still reaching Apache first. On a busy server, this can waste Apache workers and may contribute to errors like:The better approach was to stop these requests earlier at the Nginx level.In my case, the direct IP vhost was controlled by:I added rules inside the existing server block to returnfor fake PHP probes and sensitive hidden files, so they are dropped by Nginx before reaching Apache.Example:After reloading Nginx, tests like these returned an empty reply, which means Nginx blocked them successfully:This is a simple but effective way to reduce useless backend traffic and protect Apache from unnecessary bot noise.Optional extra step: the normal direct IP homepage can also be redirected to the main website by replacing the defaultproxy block with:Of course, always make a backup of the Nginx config file first and test before reloading:This small change helped keep malicious probes away from Apache and made the setup cleaner.Hope this helps someone else running CWP with Nginx + Apache.