Bot Traffic Shield – Block Bad Bots and Stop AI Bots Crawlers vs UpdraftPlus

In the age of AI, your valuable website content is a prime target for data crawlers from large tech companies. Bot Traffic Shield is your first line of defense against content theft and unauthorized scraping. This lightweight yet powerful plugin identifies and blocks a wide range of AI bots and data scrapers before they can access and harvest your content, protecting your intellectual property while reducing unnecessary server load. 🛡️ Why You Need Bot Traffic Shield Protect Your Content – Stop AI companies from training their models on your hard work Reduce Server Load – Block unwanted traffic that wastes your bandwidth and resources SEO-Safe Blocking – 35+ legitimate search engines and social media indexers are automatically whitelisted and will NEVER be blocked Granular Control – Enable or disable protection against each AI provider individually (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Apple, ByteDance, and more) Real-Time Analytics – Beautiful interactive charts showing blocked traffic trends and bot breakdowns Take Control – Decide exactly who can and cannot access your valuable content ✨ Key Features Interactive Analytics Dashboard (NEW in v1.0.5) * Real-time Chart.js powered trend graphs and doughnut charts * Switchable timeframes: 7-day, 14-day, and 30-day views * KPI summary cards showing total blocks, today’s blocks, active rules, and top scraper * Bot traffic breakdown showing which AI crawlers hit your site the most Granular AI Crawler Toggles (NEW in v1.0.5) * Individual on/off switches for each AI provider * Covers OpenAI (GPTBot, ChatGPT-User), Anthropic (ClaudeBot), Google (Gemini/Extended), Perplexity, Meta (FacebookBot), Apple (Applebot-Extended), ByteDance (Bytespider), Common Crawl, Cohere, Amazon, Diffbot, You.com, and more * Select All / Deselect All bulk actions for quick configuration * Each toggle shows provider name, description, and exact User-Agent strings SEO Safety & Search Engine Whitelist (NEW in v1.0.5) * 35+ whitelisted search engines and social media indexers that are NEVER blocked * Includes Googlebot, Bingbot, DuckDuckBot, Baiduspider, YandexBot, Twitterbot, LinkedInBot, Facebook, WhatsApp, Slack, Discord, and more * Explicit Allow: / rules added to robots.txt for all whitelisted bots * Developer-friendly btsld_search_engine_whitelist filter hook for custom additions * Standard Applebot (Siri/Spotlight) is whitelisted while Applebot-Extended (AI training) remains blockable Real-Time Bot Blocking * Actively blocks bots by their User-Agent on every page request * Immediate protection with zero configuration needed * Returns proper 403 Forbidden headers with no-cache directives Comprehensive Default Blocklist * Pre-configured list of 15+ AI crawler groups covering 20+ User-Agent signatures * Includes GPTBot, ChatGPT-User, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended, PerplexityBot, Bytespider, FacebookBot, Meta-ExternalAgent, Applebot-Extended, CCBot, Amazonbot, and more * Regularly updated with new bot signatures in each plugin version Advanced Logging & Analytics * Track every blocked bot attempt with detailed logs * View bot name, IP address, user agent, and timestamp * Pagination system – Browse through logs easily (20 entries per page) * Daily aggregated statistics powering the dashboard charts * Running statistics showing total and daily blocked requests CSV Export Capability * Export your block logs to CSV format with UTF-8 BOM for Excel compatibility * Filter exports by date range (7 days, 14 days, 30 days, or all time) * Includes timestamp, date, bot name, IP address, and full User-Agent robots.txt Integration * Automatically adds Disallow rules for blocked AI bots * Automatically adds Allow rules for whitelisted search engines * Provides dual-layer protection for both compliant and aggressive bots Admin Toolbar Widget * Real-time “Blocked Today” counter in the WordPress admin bar * Quick-access dropdown links to Dashboard, AI Rules, Activity Log, and Settings * Lifetime blocked count display Fully Customizable * Add your own custom User-Agent strings to block * Simple textarea interface – one bot per line * Enable/disable logging with a single toggle * Master on/off switch for all blocking features Modern, Intuitive Interface * Beautiful 4-tab admin dashboard: Analytics, AI Rules, Settings, Activity Log * Interactive Chart.js visualizations with smooth animations * Card-based KPI metrics grid * Modern toggle switches and responsive grid layouts * Mobile-responsive admin panel * No learning curve – start protecting immediately Lightweight & Performance-Optimized * Minimal impact on site speed * Efficient code that runs before page load * O(1) daily stats lookup for admin bar (no log iteration) * No external API calls on frontend * 60-day automatic stats pruning to keep database lean 🎯 Who Is This Plugin For? Content Creators – Protect your articles, tutorials, and creative work Bloggers – Keep your unique content from being scraped News Sites – Prevent unauthorized content aggregation E-commerce – Protect product descriptions and pricing data Publishers – Safeguard premium content from AI training datasets Any WordPress Site – That values their content and server resources 🚀 How It Works Install and activate the plugin Bot Traffic Shield immediately starts blocking known AI bots Visit the Dashboard & Charts tab to monitor blocked traffic visually Fine-tune protection in the AI Crawler Rules tab by toggling individual providers Check the Activity Log tab for detailed block records Export logs for analysis or record-keeping No complicated setup. No API keys. No subscriptions. 🔒 Privacy & Security All data stays on your server No external services or third-party dependencies on frontend GDPR compliant – you control all logged data Logs can be cleared at any time with a single click Chart.js loaded locally for WordPress.org compliance 📊 Perfect For ✅ Reducing bandwidth costs ✅ Protecting original content from AI training ✅ Improving server performance ✅ Maintaining competitive advantage ✅ Monitoring AI scraper activity with visual charts ✅ Preventing unauthorized data harvesting Stop letting AI companies profit from your hard work. Install Bot Traffic Shield and take back control of your content today! Privacy Policy Bot Traffic Shield logs the following information when a bot is blocked (if logging is enabled): * User-Agent string * IP address * Request timestamp * Bot identifier All data is stored locally in your WordPress database. No information is sent to external servers. You can disable logging or clear logs at any time from the plugin settings. Daily statistics are automatically pruned after 60 days to minimize database usage. Support For support, feature requests, or bug reports: * Visit our website: https://monarchwp.com/ * Email: [email protected] Credits Developed by MonarchWP

The UpdraftPlus Backup & Migration Plugin is trusted by the WordPress community to backup, restore and migrate their WordPress websites. UpdraftPlus is actively installed on more than 3 million websites around the world. Backup with UpdraftPlus UpdraftPlus is the world’s highest ranking and most popular scheduled backup and migration plugin. Backup to your preferred storage location and restore in just three clicks. Backup to Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3 (or compatible), Rackspace Cloud, FTP, DreamObjects, Openstack Swift or email. The paid version also allows you to backup to Microsoft OneDrive, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Backblaze B2, SFTP, SCP, pCloud, WebDAV or UpdraftVault, our integrated storage option for UpdraftPlus. Backup manually or schedule to run every 2, 4, 8 or 12 hours, daily, weekly, monthly or fortnightly. Restore with UpdraftPlus Your WordPress website is vulnerable. Your site may get hacked. Something could go wrong with an update or your server could crash. You might need to reverse a change made or a mistake caused by human error. Whatever the reason, you can restore your WordPress website in just a few clicks with UpdraftPlus. Choose which components to restore (e.g. plugins, themes, database etc.), click again to restore, then click again to return to the main screen. Migrate with UpdraftPlus It’s easy to migrate your WordPress website to another web host, server or domain with this free version of UpdraftPlus. To migrate, simply download your database, plugins, themes etc. from the source site, then upload them into your destination site. When migrating, a built-in search-and-replace engine identifies old strings and replaces these to reflect the new location. UpdraftPlus saves you time and reduces the risk of broken links or missing files associated with manual migrations. Why UpdraftPlus? Writing a reliable backup and migration plugin that ‘just works’ consistently across millions of different WordPress deployments is hard. UpdraftPlus is relied upon to do exactly that. We’re trusted and actively deployed on more websites around the world than any other WordPress backup and migration plugin. UpdraftPlus: Backs up, migrates and restores Offers a huge number of remote storage locations Allows you to schedule backups, so you can ‘set and forget’ Is comprehensive and easy to use Is proven to work on over 3 million sites. UpdraftPlus Premium The free version of UpdraftPlus will back up and migrate your website perfectly well. However if you need more features and options you can purchase our Premium version. Backup and Migrate with UpdraftPlus Premium, and: Get automatic backups before updates. Restore the very latest version if a WordPress or plugin update breaks your site. Backup Incrementally. Changes are added to the master, saving server resources vs repeatedly backing up in full. Get more remote storage options including Microsoft OneDrive, SFTP, Microsoft Azure, WebDAV, Google Cloud, SCP, Backblaze and pCloud. Get 1GB of integrated storage with UpdraftVault for 99.999% reliability, redundancy and scalability. Get more control over how many backups are stored in a specified interval. Restore from other backup plugins including BackWPup, BackupWordPress, Simple Backups and more. Run backups at set times e.g. during periods of low traffic. Backup to more than one location for added protection. Get detailed reports. Includes cryptographic checksums so you can verify the integrity of the backup files and more. Get Premium migration. Migrating to the destination site is more direct and can be done from the source site. Get Multisite / multi-network compatibility. Backup non-WP files and databases e.g. tables belonging to your e-commerce store or customisations to WordPress core. Get database encryption. Manage your backups and migrations from the WP-CLI. Get Premium Support. Find out more on our comparison page. UpdraftPlus Premium is available for purchase here. Managing multiple websites? UpdraftCentral is a powerful remote control dashboard for WordPress that allows you to manage your backups, as well as updates, users, pages, posts, plugins and themes from one central location. Choose between: UpdraftCentral (free, self-hosted) UpdraftCentral Premium (paid-for, self-hosted) UpdraftCentral Cloud (paid-for, fully-hosted) Optimize your sites centrally by combining the power of WP-Optimize and UpdraftCentral or manage your backups centrally by combining the power of UpdraftPlus with UpdraftCentral. Need to create a temporary clone of your site? UpdraftClone makes it quick and easy to create a temporary sandbox for changes you want to try out. Simply select the versions of WordPress and PHP that you want, and we’ll do the rest. More about UpdraftClone The full suite of plugins from Team Updraft and friends UpdraftPlus. Backup, migrate and restore. Rated 5* on the plugin directory and trusted by more than 3 million WordPress website owner WP-Optimize. Clean the database, compress images and caching. Optimize your WordPress website. 5* user rating. 1 million + active installs. All-In-One Security (AIOS). Secure your WordPress website. Comprehensive, feature rich and easy to use. 5* user rating and 1 million + active installs. WP Overnight. Quality Extensions for your WooCommerce store. 5* rated invoicing, order and product management, customer management solutions and more. Easy Updates Manager. Take control of updates. Lots of features for free, and a Premium version with even more – over 300,000 users. Internal Link Juicer.Boost your SEO. Automate internal links within your WordPress website. Save time and rank higher in the search engines. For other useful, free plugins see our lead developer’s profile, here. Are you multilingual? Can you translate? Do you want to help people that speak your language to backup, migrate and restore their WordPress websites? The UpdraftPlus backup, migration and restoration plugin is ready and waiting. The translation process is easy, and web-based – please go here for instructions: https://updraftplus.com/translate/. Or, if you’re already an expert WordPress translator, just pick out the .pot file from the wp-content/plugins/updraftplus/languages/ directory – if you scan for translatable strings manually, then you need to get these functions: _x(), __(), _e(), _ex(), log_e(). Many thanks to our existing translators. License Copyright 2011-24 David Anderson This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA Non-English translators are provided by volunteers, and wordpress.org does not give plugin developers control over their translations; thus relying on them is at your own risk; UpdraftPlus cannot guarantee that translations from the original English are accurate. We recognise and thank those mentioned at https://updraftplus.com/acknowledgements/ for code and/or libraries used and/or modified under the terms of their open source licences.