title: Changes to my .htaccess file made my site very slow. What did I do wrong, and how can I fix?
body: <p>I recently made changes to my .htaccess file as instructed on <a href="http://www.roimarketing.co.nz/articles/what-is-referrer-spam-how-can-you-block-it/" rel="nofollow">http://www.roimarketing.co.nz/articles/what-is-referrer-spam-how-can-you-block-it/</a></p>
  
  <p>I had been having problems with bots crawling my site and making it hard to interpret analytics on it. After adding the code shown in the link above, the site takes a minute+ to load each page where-as before it took barely 5 seconds. What did I do wrong, and how can I fix? Chances are I'm making a rookie mistake I've overlooked.</p>
  
  <p>Website in question: <a href="http://royalelectric.com" rel="nofollow">royalelectric.com</a></p>
  
  <p>I edited the .htaccess file from my /public_html/ directory.</p>
  
  <p>Here was my old .htaccess file: </p>
  
  <pre><code># BEGIN WordPress
  &lt;IfModule mod_rewrite.c&gt;
  RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
  RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
  &lt;/IfModule&gt;
  
  # END WordPress
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Here is my new .htaccess file: </p>
  
  <pre><code>## STOP REFERRER SPAM ##
  RewriteEngine On
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^([^.]+.)*?4webmasters\.org [NC,OR]
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^([^.]+.)*?site1.free-share-buttons\.com [NC,OR]
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^([^.]+.)*?site2.free-share-buttons\.com [NC,OR]
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^([^.]+.)*?site3.free-share-buttons\.com [NC,OR]
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^([^.]+.)*?site4.free-share-buttons\.com [NC,OR]
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^([^.]+.)*?anticrawler\.org [NC,OR]
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^([^.]+.)*?addons\.mozilla\.org [NC,OR]
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^([^.]+.)*?baidu\.com [NC,OR]
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^([^.]+.)*?bestwebsitesawards\.com [NC,OR]
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^([^.]+.)*?best-seo-solution\.com [NC,OR]
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^([^.]+.)*?best-seo-offer\.com [NC,OR]
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^([^.]+.)*?blackhatworth\.com [NC,OR]
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^([^.]+.)*?buttons-for-website\.com [NC,OR]
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^([^.]+.)*?buttons-for-your-website\.com [NC,OR]
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^([^.]+.)*?buy-cheap-online\.info [NC,OR]
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^([^.]+.)*?econom\.co [NC,OR]
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^([^.]+.)*?darodar\.com [NC,OR]
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^([^.]+.)*?sanjosestartups\.com [NC,OR]
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^([^.]+.)*?free-social-buttons\.com [NC,OR]
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^([^.]+.)*?guardlink\.org [NC,OR]
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^([^.]+.)*?event-tracking\.com [NC,OR]
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^([^.]+.)*?domination\.ml [NC,OR]
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^([^.]+.)*?hulfingtonpost\.com [NC,OR]
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^([^.]+.)*?Get-Free-Traffic-Now\.com [NC,OR]
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^([^.]+.)*?googlsucks\.com [NC,OR]
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^([^.]+.)*?free-share-buttons\.com [NC,OR]
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^([^.]+.)*?humanorightswatch\.org [NC,OR]
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^([^.]+.)*?ilovevitaly\.com [NC,OR]
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^([^.]+.)*?7makemoneyonline\.com [NC,OR]
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^([^.]+.)*?o-o-6-o-o\.com [NC,OR]
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^([^.]+.)*?priceg\.com [NC,OR]
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^([^.]+.)*?social-buttons\.com [NC,OR]
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^([^.]+.)*?semalt\.com [NC,OR]
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^([^.]+.)*?smailik\.org [NC,OR]
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^([^.]+.)*?theguardlan\.com [NC,OR]
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^([^.]+.)*?simple-share-buttons\.com [NC]
  RewriteRule .* – [F]
  ## STOP REFERRER SPAM ##
  
  
  # BEGIN WordPress
  &lt;IfModule mod_rewrite.c&gt;
  RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
  RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
  &lt;/IfModule&gt;
  
  # END WordPress
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Any help you can give me here would be greatly appreciated, as I'm sick of dealing with the bots screwing up my analytics but I don't want to sacrifice load times to fix the problem.
  Thanks!</p>