Need troubleshooting advice

[sross]

ok well, I am running vb3.0.6 and after upgrading I now have issues with bots attaching to my forums, then it brings the cpu on my server to 100%. I tried using a robots.txt file to block all robots and this doesn't stop a lot of them who ignore it. I got an application called robot control pro which makes a nice htaccess file, and for a week it was a godsend, however today it quit working and I am waiting to hear back from there support staff. Funny, a few hours after it stopped working my cpu spiked and i had to lock my forums. I am just wondering why this is happening. It's obviously something wrong with my code maybe? It must be isolated to me otherwise many people would be posting about it. What should I do to fix the root cause of this? Should I totally rebuild my forum from scratch? Not the database but just the code? Getting desperate

[Jake Bunce]

An htaccess file is the best way to block spiders. I recommend asking your host if they know why the htaccess file stopped working. Maybe they changed something on your server.

[sross]

my host says nothing has changed but i am still trying to make them look into it. When my robot control application/htaccess system was running i did not have these issues. I even tried locking my forums so only registered users could access it. I figured, ok, if only registered users can access it then the bots will not be able to cause me problems. I bring the forum back online in that state and within 2 minutes my cpu was 20% and rising (it's 0.17 with forum off). I have no idea what to do or why this is happening, only thing i can think to do is re-install vb3 and hope that works, i'm in hell.

[Jake Bunce]

my host says nothing has changed but i am still trying to make them look into it. When my robot control application/htaccess system was running i did not have these issues. I even tried locking my forums so only registered users could access it. I figured, ok, if only registered users can access it then the bots will not be able to cause me problems. I bring the forum back online in that state and within 2 minutes my cpu was 20% and rising (it's 0.17 with forum off). I have no idea what to do or why this is happening, only thing i can think to do is re-install vb3 and hope that works, i'm in hell.

That's because an "htaccess" block will turn away a spider before the request ever gets to vBulletin. Without "htaccess", vBulletin is forced to handle the requests.