Extendware Bot Blocker Magento Extension Review

Recently, we’ve reviewed Extendware Anti-Spam Captcha – a tool designed to free your Magento website from spammers. This time, we’d like to draw your attention to another similar product – Bot Blocker. This Magento extension blocks bad bots and frees up server resources consumed by them. Hence, you get a faster store that exists without spam.

Download / Buy  Extendware Bot Blocker Magento Extension

Two key groups of malefactors that can be blocked after the module is installed are spam and scraper bots. The first group of bots uses contact and review forms to submit spam to. As for scraper bots, they look for information that can be scraped for data mining purposes. And while spam bots can be stopped with the help of Captcha, scraper bots do not use forms, so the corresponding extension will never stop them. But you can easily increase the security of your ecommerce storefront with the help of the Bot Blocker Magento module. It will help to decrease server load, prevent spam messages, and increase stores response rate.

The extension automatically finds and blocks bots. To identify them, it adds hidden forms which are submitted by bad bots. At the same time, good bots ignore them. Another way to identify malefactors is based on a hidden link with a nofollow attribute, which is neglected by bad bots, so they can be easily determined. It is also necessary to mention, that all the improvements are not visible to customers, so user experience is not affected.

Check some user reviews on Extendware Bot Blocker Magento module and let’s proceed to the extension’s features.

Key Features

• Prevent Hacking. There are hundreds of bots that look for sensitive data and weaknesses. By blocking them, you essentially reduce the risk to be hacked.
• Improve Speed. As mentioned above, bots consume server resources, so by blocking them, you increase the productivity of your store.
• Everything is Automated. You only have to install and configure the module to implement the protection. Next, everything is done automatically, but you can still check how the module works.
• Hidden Forms. Hidden forms help to identify bad bots, but remains invisible to customers.
• Spam Protection. There are forms that can be easily submitted by customers but are unsolved for bots. Use these forms to protect your store from spam.
• Block Expiration Time. The extension provides the ability to set expiration time for each block, so you can prevent any IP from visiting your Magento store for a certain amount of time.
• Certain Path Request. If a bot request a certain path, such as “wp-login.php”, Extendware Bot Blocker can easily block it.
• Real People Are Never Blocked. Every blocked IP receives a Captcha form, so if it is not a bot, the Captcha can be solved and a real person will never be blocked.
• Manual Approval. You can manually approve bots to be blocked. Alternatively, this procedure can be performed manually.
• Whitelist. There is even a whitelist for bad bots. You can specify their addresses so the extension will not block them.

Backend

The Extendware Bot Blocker Magento extension can be rapidly configured. Go to Extendware -> Manage Extensions -> Bot Blocker -> Configure. There are just two sections of settings here: General and Advanced.

The General Sections allows you to enable/disable the functionality of the whole module. Next, you should choose a status for newly added bots: Pending allows you to approve their blocking manually; Enabled blocks bots automatically. Then you enable/disable the Honeypot form. Enable this setting to add an invisible form to the site. Bad bots submit this form, so they can be easily identified. The same is about the Honeypot link: enable the feature to add an invisible link that contains “nofollow”. A bad bot will always follow it, so the module will identify and ban the malefactor. Unfortunately, some good bots also follow this link, so you should modify your robots.txt with “/ewbb/”. Besides, it is necessary to disable the “Only Post” option in the Advanced section. The last parameter here is Form Protection. If enabled, it removes the “action” attribute of forms and add it back via JS. As a result, bots can not submit the form.

In the Advanced section, you choose IP Mode, add Honeypot Paths RegExp, specify Path Prefix, enable/disable Only Post and Verification Cookie options, choose ban length, specify Form Protection Excluded Forms, add Uri Filter RegExps, and set Salt.

All blocked bots are gathered under Extendware -> Manage Extensions -> Bot Blocker -> Bots:

Frontend

This is how a blocked bot (or a user) sees the frontend. It is necessary to solve the CAPTCHA to get to the normal storefront.

Final Words

There is no need to tell anything else about the importance of store security. Just install the Extendware Bot Blocker Magento extension and make your Magento website safer. The extension costs just $79.

Download / Buy  Extendware Bot Blocker Magento Extension