Blackhole Pro helps keep your WordPress site safe and secure by trapping bad bots and blocking them from your site. This helps to keep spammers, scrapers, scanners, and other malicious nonsense away from your site, so you can save precious server resources for your good visitors. Blackhole Pro is built to be secure, fast, and flexible. To get started with Blackhole Pro, follow this quick-start guide.

Installation

First, install the plugin and activate the license.

For more detailed information about how to do this, here is a step-by-step guide to installing Blackhole Pro.

Note: Blackhole Pro includes complete inline documentation; click the “Help” tab in the upper-right corner of any Blackhole settings screen for more information. Also, here is the installing plugins guide at the WP Codex, just in case.

Usage

Here is an overview of how to use the plugin:

  1. Disable page caching. Make sure your site does NOT have any page caching enabled. Learn more »
  2. Activate license. Visit the License screen to activate your license and enable the plugin. Learn more »
  3. Add robots rules. If your site is using the virtual robots.txt file provided by WordPress, Blackhole will add its robots rules automatically. Otherwise, if your site has a physical robots.txt file, you will need to add the rules provided at the top of the plugin settings page. Learn more »
  4. Customize settings. (Optional) Visit the Blackhole settings page to customize any options as desired. Learn more »

That’s all there is to it. Once the plugin is active and configured, you can relax while Blackhole helps to protect your site against bad bots. It all happens automatically, silently in the background. To view and manage blocked bots, visit the Bad Bots Log.

Pro Tip: Want to verify that Blackhole is working properly? Follow this guide.
Reminder: Blackhole Pro includes complete inline documentation; click the “Help” tab in the upper-right corner of any Blackhole settings screen for more information about options and other on-screen items.

Questions and Feedback

If you have questions or feedback, you may:

I’m always here to help, and your feedback always is appreciated.