Not very sure if this is the right place to post such a thread (I’m still not that familiar with the forum yet), but… I’m posting anyway. Seems to be okay, judging after what kind of topics are posted here. Looks like a general discussions section, idk.
Anyway, no time to waste, so here’s the problem. I am currently an Administrator on a gaming community, and we’re pretty much running into trouble since the last year due to some very annoying bots.
The forum is running on IPB and these bots, in 2015, were pretty much spamming us with posts and topics. We have since found a way to prevent them from posting, although I can’t remember exactly what we did.
However, it would seem that a new problem showed up now. The thing is that, especially during night time, lots of bots access the forum (over 80, may not sound SO MUCH, but it does affect us in a very visible way), and the forum starts lagging a lot. We experience extremely long loading times, which is pretty much unacceptable and browsing the community is a nightmare during these periods. It starts in the evening most of the time (this is especially bad during weekends due to the number of actual people visiting us), until some time before the morning.
Is there a way to block the bots from accessing the forum? I realize this may not be the most suitable place for such questions, but I thought that there may be some people who are more knowledgeable than some of us in some respects and can lend a hand in a way or another.