Plugin / Blackhole for Bad Bots

Jeff Starr

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

I recently recorded a video tutorial series for Lynda.com on how to secure WordPress sites. That’s a good place to learn more about the best techniques and WP plugins for protecting your site against threats.
Blackhole uses its own “smart bot technology” that only blocks bots if they have demonstrated bad behavior. Firewalls typically are “static” and block requests based on a predefined set of patterns. That means that firewalls sometimes block legitimate visitors. Blackhole never blocks regular visitors, and only it blocks bots that disobey your site’s robots.txt rules. So the rate of false positives is close to zero.
In order for the plugin to add the trigger link to your pages, your theme must include the template tag, wp_footer(). This is a recommended tag for all WordPress themes, so your theme should include it. If not, you can either add it yourself or contact the theme developer and ask for help. Here is more information about wp_footer(). Once the footer tag is included, the plugin will be able to add the trigger link to your pages.
No. Never. All the major search engine bots are whitelisted and will never be blocked. Unless you remove them from the whitelist setting, which is not recommended.
Impossible because the plugin never blocks by user agent. It only blocks by IP address. No other criteria are used to block anything.
Not possible with the free version, but the Pro version includes an easy way to add bots manually (via the Bad Bot Log).
Visit the plugin settings and add to the list.
Visit the plugin settings and click the button.
Not possible with the free version, but can do with the Pro version.
Visit the plugin settings and click the button.
Yes. Visit Perishable Press to download a PHP-based version that does not require WordPress.
Yes, the Pro version is available at Plugin Planet.
Not yet, but it’s on the to-do list.
Your server IP address, your local (home) IP address, Securi Sitecheck IP address, WP Rocket IP addresses.
Yes, you can add the following code anywhere in your theme template:
You can use partial names or full names, depending on how specific you would like to be with blocking. If you look at the default whitelisted bot strings, you will see that they are just portions of the full user agent. So for example you can block all bots that include the string “whateverbot” by including that string in the whitelist setting. It makes it easier to block bots, but you have to be careful about false positives.
By default, WordPress will automatically serve a hidden, “virtual” robots.txt file to anything that requests it. Once you add your own “real” robots.txt file, WordPress will stop generating the virtual one. So when it comes to WordPress and robots.txt, real trumps virtual. Blackhole Pro requires that you add some rules to an actual robots.txt file, but it does not create/add any robots rules or the robots.txt file for you. Check out the plugin’s Help tab for more infos.
Check out the section on “Caching Plugins” in the plugin documentation
Yes! As explained in the “Uninstalling” section in the plugin documentation, when Blackhole is uninstalled via the Plugins screen, it removes everything from the database. After uninstalling, don’t forget to remove the blackhole rules from your robots.txt file. Then there will be zero trace of the plugin on your site.
Yes, check out BBQ: Block Bad Queries for super-fast WordPress firewall security. I also have a video course on WordPress security with more plugin recommendations and lots of tips and tricks.
Send any questions or feedback via my contact form

Ratings

4.9
76 reviews

Rating breakdown

Details Information

Version

2.7

First Released

17 Feb, 2016

Total Downloads

140,389

Wordpress Version

4.1 or higher

Tested up to:

5.3

Require PHP Version:

5.6.20 or higher

Tags

Contributors

Languages

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