XF 2.3 Stopping guests from viewing latest content

[Charlie G]

As the title says, how can I stop guesses from viewing the latest content on my site.

I currently have over 25,000 guests doing this and it is causing my server to be slow.

 

[AndyB]

You can use this add-on:

https://xenforo.com/community/resources/human-verification.10589/

 

[smallwheels]

If you are talking about the "what's new" / "latest posts" page it is easy to not show the link to guests by adding this display condition to it:



However: This only does hide the link. Anyone who knows the URL can still open it directly, so this won't help against the typical bot of today that hits in waves. Im am not aware of any possibility to block guest access to "what's new" in XF directly, there is no permission for that. So as far as I know you can currently only do that via other filter options aside of stock XF or with a XF add on (but I am not aware of one that would dedicatedly offer that functionality). Would be helpful to have one.

 

[Alvin63]

As the title says, how can I stop guesses from viewing the latest content on my site.

I currently have over 25,000 guests doing this and it is causing my server to be slow.

It'll be bot swarms scraping content. If you can download a server log and run it through Claude, it's probably tell you what paths they are hitting. I had similar recently and needed to set up Cloudflare rules to curb them so the server didn't get overloaded.

It's happening a lot - check out this thread

Thread 'Crazy amount of guests'

Oct 12, 2025

I have a small forum, usually a few hundred guests at most. The last days the number of guests have been unusually high, around 3000 and climbing. We now have over 4800 guests. That's not normal. Many "Viewing unknown page" or "Latest content", with a warning sign. IP addresses are from all corners of the world. Many from south America, Brazil mostly. Also saw quite a number from Vietnam of all places, but everywhere else too.

We're on Cloud and I don't know what to do. Could we be under attack? We have been in the past, a few times I think. For reasons I cannot possibly fathom; we're a...

• Levina
• bot swarms guests
• Replies: 1,885
• Forum: Forum management

• 

 

[smallwheels]

It'll be bot swarms scraping content. If you can download a server log and run it through Claude, it's probably tell you what paths they are hitting. I had similar recently and needed to set up Cloudflare rules to curb them so the server didn't get overloaded.

The OP has a very clear question:

how can I stop guesses from viewing the latest content on my site?

Why on earth should one download a server log and run it through Claude to answer this question?

 

[Charlie G]

Thank you for all the replies folks.

@AndyB's add-on has certainly stopped them in their tracks.

 

[smallwheels]

Thank you for all the replies folks.

@AndyB's add-on has certainly stopped them in their tracks.

But in regards of your initial question by massive overacting: It is not limited to "what's new" but to all pages and it's ability to let search engine bots pass seems to trust the user agent that the bot transmits, so not very reliable.

Having the check box on all pages and for all visitors is probably somewhat effective but probably also somewhat annoying for real users. If you want to understand the bot issue better you should read the thread that @Alvin63 mentioned. It is long, but worth it (despite the density of useful information in this thread has sadly massively downgraded over the last days/last couple of pages).

 

[Charlie G]

If you want to understand the bot issue better you should read the thread that @Alvin63 mentioned. It is long, but worth it (despite the density of useful information in this thread has sadly massively downgraded over the last days/last couple of pages).

Thank you @smallwheels and @Alvin63
It seems my issue isn’t resolved so I will have a trawl through that thread.

 

[Alvin63]

Thank you @smallwheels and @Alvin63
It seems my issue isn’t resolved so I will have a trawl through that thread.

Cloudflare rules are a good start. I had 5000 appearing in the guest list and it was affecting the server. I now have 4 cloudflare rules and botfightmode on all the time and it's generally 350 to 500 in the guest list now. There are waves of storms now and then - when it shoots up to 1800 in the guest list - but then quiet for a few days.

That seems to be the main thrust of that thread initially but some people use other solutions.