Changing register.php to a different name?

[Lancet Jades]

Hello, inm the past few months the number of bots targeting my site has exponentially increased, and as a result, our bandwidth is suffering. Blocking IPs only does so much to help this. I noticed that /register.php (and /register.php/register.php, whatever that is; I'm assuming its throwing 404s) each have almost 20 times more hits than the next highest page (our shoutbox's .php file), and over 75 times the hits that any other "legitimate" page gets.

Is it possible to rename register.php so that all of these hits give 404s? It would not only reduce the bandwidth consumed by bots, but also ease up on our database as well. If so, is there a list of things (links and such) that would need to change to register.php's new name?

Thanks in advance for any help. If there's some page that details how this is possible, please direct me to it. My specific version is 3.8.7 patch level 3.

[BirdOPrey5]

Renaming register.php would require hundreds of manual changes if you did it alone.

I created a free mod on vBulletin.org that makes it a lot easier- there are just a couple of email phrases to be updated manually- please note however we do not provide official support for modifications, you would need to ask in the mod thread if you need help.

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=297834

[Lancet Jades]

Renaming register.php would require hundreds of manual changes if you did it alone.

I created a free mod on vBulletin.org that makes it a lot easier- there are just a couple of email phrases to be updated manually- please note however we do not provide official support for modifications, you would need to ask in the mod thread if you need help.

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=297834

Thank you for that! I'll check it out and post in that thread if I end up needing any help. Really appreciate this.

[Lancet Jades]

Worked like a charm! This has reduced our average bandwidth usage to about 1/5 of what it ws the past few months (and close to our historical average). Thanks for the help!

[Mark.B]

It's a great mod and I use it myself. Joe is very good at creating these mods that provide practical stuff people like to have.