JTZL's Bot Maze vs MainWP Dashboard

JTZL’s Bot Maze protects your WordPress site from unwanted AI crawlers and scrapers by planting invisible trap links that only bots will follow. When a bot enters the trap maze, it gets lost in an ever-expanding maze of realistic-looking fake pages while it quietly builds a suspicion score based on its behavior. How it works: Trap link injection — Invisible links are added to your real pages. Legitimate visitors never see them, but bots following every link on the page will enter the trap maze. Lazy maze generation — Trap pages link to more trap pages, generated on demand. The deeper a bot goes, the more time it wastes. Bot scoring — Each trap page visit adds suspicion points. Deeper traversal earns bonus points. Once a threshold is reached, the visitor is flagged as a bot. Blocking and tarpitting — Flagged bots can be blocked outright (403), served decoy pages (light tarpit), or slowed down with a deliberate delay (full tarpit). Crawler verification — Known search engine crawlers (Googlebot, Bingbot, etc.) are verified via reverse DNS and exempted from scoring. Features: Zero impact on legitimate visitors — trap links are hidden from humans and search engines Configurable injection method (content, footer, or both) Adjustable scoring thresholds and blocking behavior robots.txt integration to signal trap paths as disallowed Analytics dashboard showing bot activity, top IPs, and score distribution Blocked Bots detail page showing full user agent, score, visit history Optional comprehensive tracking mode to monitor blocked bot persistence Automatic log retention and maintenance via WP-Cron Privacy policy suggestion for GDPR compliance Geographic heat map of bot activity by country with two GeoIP provider options MaxMind GeoLite2 local database — all lookups on your server, GDPR-friendly (recommended) ip-api.com external API — simple setup, no license key required Lightweight — minimal footprint, geographic tracking is fully optional Third-Party Services This plugin offers optional geographic tracking with two provider options. No data is sent to any external service unless a site administrator explicitly enables one of these providers. MaxMind GeoLite2 (Recommended) When MaxMind GeoLite2 is selected as the GeoIP provider (Settings > Bot Maze > Geographic Tracking), the plugin downloads the GeoLite2-Country database from MaxMind and performs all IP-to-country lookups locally. No visitor data leaves your server. What is downloaded: The GeoLite2-Country database (~60 MB), updated weekly via WP-Cron. What is sent to MaxMind: Only your license key during database downloads. No visitor IP addresses are shared. Requires: A free MaxMind license key from maxmind.com/en/geolite2/signup. Service website: https://www.maxmind.com License: GeoLite2 databases are licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Terms of service: https://www.maxmind.com/en/geolite2/eula ip-api.com When ip-api.com is selected as the GeoIP provider, the plugin sends visitor IP addresses to ip-api.com to resolve their country of origin. This data is used to display a geographic heat map of bot activity in the admin dashboard. What is sent: The visitor’s IP address only, over unencrypted HTTP. When it is sent: At the time a trap page visit is recorded, only while this provider is selected. Service website: http://ip-api.com Terms of service: https://ip-api.com/docs/legal Privacy policy: ip-api.com does not log queries from the free API endpoint. Note: The free tier only supports HTTP (not HTTPS). If your site must comply with GDPR, use the MaxMind local database option instead. Geographic tracking is off by default and requires explicit opt-in by a site administrator.

Managing multiple WordPress sites can be a time-consuming and frustrating task. The MainWP Dashboard empowers you to take back your time by allowing you to efficiently manage and secure all your WordPress sites from your own centralized Dashboard. Designed for agencies, freelancers, and web professionals, MainWP offers comprehensive control with a privacy-first approach. Harness the power of MainWP for updates, backups, and more, ensuring your sites are always running smoothly and securely. Features for Advanced WordPress Management: Centralized Updates: Keep all your WordPress sites up-to-date with single-click updates. Secure Backups: Implement scheduled or on-demand backups for complete site security. Manage both your sites and your clients with the Client Management module The built-in Cost Tracker allows you to easily keep track of client costs Private and Self-hosted: Your data stays yours, with full privacy and control. Stop the Software as a Service (SaaS) Treadmill: Built on WordPress’s core principles, the MainWP Dashboard plugin is uniquely positioned as the go-to solution for WordPress management. It combines ease of use with robust features and unmatched privacy. The MainWP plugins are open-source and privacy-focused and come with their own privacy policies to ensure that the plugins do not collect any personally identifiable information (PII). The MainWP Dashboard is extendable, allowing third-party developers to hook into it. It also provides support for CLI and has its own REST API, so anything you need or want to run your business your way can be developed for your MainWP Dashboard. All of this makes MainWP the best non-SaaS alternative to ManageWP, InfiniteWP, WPRemote, and WP Umbrella. Getting Started with MainWP: MainWP is designed to be user-friendly and intuitive, even for those new to WordPress management plugins. With a straightforward setup process and a clean, organized dashboard, you’ll be able to start managing your WordPress sites efficiently in no time. Setting up MainWP is straightforward, install the dashboard on a private WordPress site, add the MainWP Child plugin to your other WordPress sites, and take control. Your Guarantee of Privacy The MainWP plugins come with their own privacy policies to ensure that the plugins do not collect any personally identifiable information (PII). How Is MainWP Free? What’s the Catch? How Will You Continue to Pay Development Costs? MainWP Dashboard is 100% FREE and always will be. Whether you manage 5 sites or 5,000, the core dashboard remains free. We make money by offering MainWP Pro, which provides access to a wide range of premium add-ons. These premium add-ons are organized into two clear categories: Integrations: Add-ons in this category enable seamless connections with popular third-party services and plugins, allowing you to integrate the tools you already use directly into your MainWP Dashboard. Extensions: These are custom-built, standalone add-ons developed exclusively for the MainWP Dashboard, designed to add unique and specialized functionality to enhance your WordPress management experience. For more details, visit our Premium Add-ons page and see how our free and pro features compare at Free vs. Pro: Know the Difference. Experience the MainWP Difference Are you ready to take the hassle out of managing your WordPress sites? MainWP makes it easy to keep everything updated, secure, and running just the way you need it. With over 20k site owners trusting MainWP with over 700k WordPress sites, every day, you’ll quickly see how much simpler website management can be. Try it today and feel the difference for yourself!