Stop bots

Hiya

Im the owner of a local community blog in Bristol,UK www.ashtonvale.info and i've noticed recently weve had a surge in bots , of which ive banned from the forum and put in measures to stop them coming in. But i was wondering if there was a way of banning these bots from my website full stop, I've got over 1000 unique views this april and i've noticed that by looking at AWstats its telling me that most of my traffic comes from the US, although its a local UK site which should have nothing to do with the US. So is there anyway to block US traffic and only let UK traffic in? I know there is the long lengthy way of finding all the IP's of the bots and range banning 1 by 1 but is it possible to block them automaticly ?

 

There's no way to "automatically deny" access to bots based upon IP or from a country outside your locale.

There are other solutions that cover portions.

IP solutions (with ranges freely available) may become quite complicated and extensive.

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Some basic solutions based on "refer" and commonly used and abused User Agent names will stop many of these.

Another option is white-listing in which you deny access to all, and then only allow access from specific IP ranges (your own countries IP's) or User Agents of your designation only.

In any event, none of the options are simple, rather most are time intensive.
Nor do they allow copy and paste solutions.

 

You can make it harder for people to register bots for example by using a CAPTCHA (prevents automatic registration). Barriers to registration, such as requiring a verified email address, and requiring an admin to activate new accounts, can slow down and discourage bot users. And if you are very diligent about deleting spam IMMEDIATELY, and banning accounts and IP ranges IMMEDIATELY, you will find you have less of a problem in the end. People will target your board with bots if they sense that you can get away with it. Staying on top of the admin work will make your admin work less time-consuming in the end.