XF 2.3 Blocking guests from seeing style-variation?

[Dannymh]

I am having issues trying to hide the style chooser for guests. The reason i want to do this is because under google analytics I am getting absolutely hammered by guest users hitting the misc/style-variations link.


I tried to set this in a template modification as follows on page_container

find:

<xf:if is="$xf.visitor.canChangeStyleVariation($xf.style)">
                                                <a href="{{ link('misc/style-variation') }}" rel="nofollow"
                                                    class="js-styleVariationsLink"
                                                    data-xf-init="tooltip" title="{{ phrase('style_variation') }}"
                                                    data-xf-click="menu" data-z-index-ref=".u-bottomFixer" role="button" aria-expanded="false" aria-haspopup="true">

                                                    <xf:fa icon="{{ $xf.style.getVariationIcon($xf.visitor.style_variation) }}" title="{{ phrase('style_variation') }}" />
                                                </a>

                                                <div class="menu" data-menu="menu" aria-hidden="true">
                                                    <div class="menu-content js-styleVariationsMenu">
                                                        <xf:macro name="style_variation_macros::variation_menu"
                                                            arg-style="{$xf.style}"
                                                            arg-live="{{ true }}" />
                                                    </div>
                                                </div>
                                            </xf:if>

replace with

<xf:if is="$xf.visitor.user_id">
                                            <xf:if is="$xf.visitor.canChangeStyleVariation($xf.style)">
                                                <a href="{{ link('misc/style-variation') }}" rel="nofollow"
                                                    class="js-styleVariationsLink"
                                                    data-xf-init="tooltip" title="{{ phrase('style_variation') }}"
                                                    data-xf-click="menu" data-z-index-ref=".u-bottomFixer" role="button" aria-expanded="false" aria-haspopup="true">

                                                    <xf:fa icon="{{ $xf.style.getVariationIcon($xf.visitor.style_variation) }}" title="{{ phrase('style_variation') }}" />
                                                </a>

                                                <div class="menu" data-menu="menu" aria-hidden="true">
                                                    <div class="menu-content js-styleVariationsMenu">
                                                        <xf:macro name="style_variation_macros::variation_menu"
                                                            arg-style="{$xf.style}"
                                                            arg-live="{{ true }}" />
                                                    </div>
                                                </div>
                                                </xf:if>
                                            </xf:if>

However this is not working and I still have the style variation for guests. as seen below



Is there something I am doing wrong or something else I can do to change this?

Regards
Dan

 

[bzcomputers]

Should work just fine. Double check any other template mod on same code block with higher execution order.

 

[Onlyme]

@Dannymh Did you resolve this? I'm having the same issue and the template edit above doesn't work. For now I've blocked the url with cloudflare /misc/style-variation.

 

[Dannymh]

@Dannymh Did you resolve this? I'm having the same issue and the template edit above doesn't work. For now I've blocked the url with cloudflare /misc/style-variation.

Yeah it wasn’t applying to the template I had to alter the code to match the published template and it then worked fine

 

[Chromaniac]

i used the code on page_container template and it worked for me.



hiding the link does not stop the bots from hitting it though. i still get like 15K-40K hits on a daily basis lol.

 

[Dannymh]

Put in a redirect or page rule that sends guests to 403 for that page.

I also have challenge rules in on cloudflare that sends the “I am human” verification check for worst offending countries. I often have to chase the varying countries as they evolve constantly

 

[Kirby]

It is not necessary to completely remove the style variation chooser for guests; making sure it does not use links for live variation switch is sufficient to stop bots from needlessly acccessing those URLs.

K

Future fix Post in thread 'Google tries to crawl links from style variation chooser menu'

Dec 3, 2025

A less invasive option:

style_variation_macros

<xf:macro name="variation_menu_item"
    arg-routeType="public"
    arg-route="{{ link('misc/style-variation') }}"
    arg-variation="!"
    arg-icon="fa-adjust"
    arg-label=""
    arg-selectedVariation="{$xf.visitor.style_variation}"
    arg-live="{{ false }}"
    arg-redirect="{{ null }}">

    <xf:set var="$tag" value="{{ $live ? 'span' : 'a' }}" />

    <{$tag} class="menu-linkRow {{ $variation === $selectedVariation ? 'is-selected' : '' }}"
        {{ !$live ? 'href="' . link_type($routeType, $route, null, {...

• Kirby

• 

After applying the change it will take some time though to see requests go down as bots might still have / remember previously seen URLs and continue to access them.