For some time now, excessive bot traffic - mostly AI Bot Abuse - has been causing overload on faceted views. The new version 3 of Facets already addresses this issue and offers the option of integrating facets as exposed filters in Views. This module aims to provide additional protection for existing facets until they are migrated to version 3 and exposed filters, which is often a matter of time and/or budget constraints.
This module appends tokens to facet links that are valid for a limited time. This validity period can be set in the backend.
If the token is missing or invalid, a blocking page will be shown. After 2.5 seconds the new links appears and can be clicked. This blocking page can be adapted via theme file. The blocking page has a minimalist design to minimise resource usage. It returns status code 410 ("Gone").
The protection only works against bots that traverse previously cached URLs. This module is ineffective against bots that crawl the site in real time.
The module Facet Bot Blocker offers a different approach, limiting the maximum number of facets that can be selected.
Read more:
- See also this page and the Anubis WAF.
- See also this blog article by @capellic
Supporting organizations:
Development and Maintenance
Project information
- Project categories: Security, Site search
- Ecosystem: Facets
2 sites report using this module- Created by jan kellermann on , updated
Stable releases for this project are covered by the security advisory policy.
Look for the shield icon below.
