Wasn't sure whether to stick this specifically in Xenforo (which I use) or put it out as a general question. I've noticed a huge spike in guests and tonight they're all "viewing latest content" and nothing else, every miniute on a new IP, all within a range like 54.36.150.* (resolves to OVH France). Adding like 100-200 on-line guests.
Clearly not an actual user, and it happened last night on 54.36.149.* IPs which I blocked and in that case they were looking at threads too.
I've banned IPs using a wildcard as per above but this is going to possibly cause collateral damage to legitimate users, although I am not a French forum, and don't have any French users as such - but still, wildcards are by their nature indiscriminate.
First question, what the hell is this, some bot, scraper etc? Google has a number of forum hits on various places talking about it and it seems to be bad news, though nothing dated that recent so I thought I would ask again. Second question, is wildcard banning likely to be a bad idea (is this "whack a mole" and I might as well not bother?).
And lastly is there a better way to ban, maybe via resolving the host to include a.ahrefs.com which it comes up as and if so how do I go about this in a way that doesn't cripple the server, is this a htaccess job? Or is there a plugin for XF 1.5.x to handle screening out bots? They're not registering so none of my anti-spammer plugins even get used here.
Clearly not an actual user, and it happened last night on 54.36.149.* IPs which I blocked and in that case they were looking at threads too.
I've banned IPs using a wildcard as per above but this is going to possibly cause collateral damage to legitimate users, although I am not a French forum, and don't have any French users as such - but still, wildcards are by their nature indiscriminate.
First question, what the hell is this, some bot, scraper etc? Google has a number of forum hits on various places talking about it and it seems to be bad news, though nothing dated that recent so I thought I would ask again. Second question, is wildcard banning likely to be a bad idea (is this "whack a mole" and I might as well not bother?).
And lastly is there a better way to ban, maybe via resolving the host to include a.ahrefs.com which it comes up as and if so how do I go about this in a way that doesn't cripple the server, is this a htaccess job? Or is there a plugin for XF 1.5.x to handle screening out bots? They're not registering so none of my anti-spammer plugins even get used here.