Bot Attacks
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I’m starting a new thread to give you updates on bot attacks.
Generally speaking, we want some bot traffic. The reason is that it brings search traffic (Google) and other traffic to the site. More traffic brings in more people into the community. If I turn of bots completely, the long term outlook would be bad.
For instance, I had to turn off Applebot because they ignored the rate limits and kept hammering the site. The downside is, we may not be involved in whatever they’re building.
Occasionally, when visiting the site, you may see a message from CloudFlare briefly pop-up. That means we’re under attack and that pop-up is blocking bots good or bad. It also means the site will be pretty snappy.
Dave Jensen, Founder of Axis & Allies .org
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2026-04-28
- Attacks from a data center in France, quite difficult to pinpoint a rule to stop the bot
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would it be possible to look for the 3-4 hours most people are on and have the bots auto block during that period ?
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Thank you for the heads up DJ.
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@barnee The bots are supposedly being auto-blocked but a lot get still get through. I’m working through some solutions. For now, I’m going to keep on “Under Attack Mode” while I’m “away” from the site not working on the problem.
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Wow I just was able to get on again :) Can you create your own Bot Army to attack them :)
The inverse of what I mentioned above, would be too shut all bots down, except for the 3-4 hours of lowest user times.
Idk if you can automate that though. But yea, it’s pretty rough. Maybe have a Bot day once a week where they can nutup and shut them down otherwise.
If people can’t access the site, Bot advertisement isn’t gonna make a difference :)
Just some thoughts
P
lol and now 503 won’t even let me post this. I’d turn those bots off until you find a solution
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@barnee NodeBB got slammed hard so I hard to reboot. The timing of your message is roughly around when that happened.
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@barnee said in Bot Attacks:
If people can’t access the site, Bot advertisement isn’t gonna make a difference :)
Agreed. That’s why I’m going to keep “Under Attack Mode” on. If you see some slowness or traffic spike or don’t see the CloudFlare, you know I’m either working on it or trying something.
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Right Arm
I hope I didn’t come across too negative. I didn’t mean to :(
You’re a smart Guy :) You’ll get it sorted :)
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@barnee Not at all. :-)
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