Functionality Suggestion

Interesting idea, but I’m not sure if I follow.. can you elaborate and/or describe how it would work? Not clear on how someone/something would “circumvent” the blackhole trap. Thank you.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 4 months ago by Jeff Starr.
• This reply was modified 8 years, 4 months ago by Jeff Starr.

I got the same idea. Let me explain it in other words: Let the keyword “blackhole” in the hidden link and the robots.txt be changeable by the admin to make it difficult for bot coders to recognize the blackhole trap.

Maybe instead of hardcoded the keyword “blackhole” offer a textfield on the settings page with “blackhole” by default and let admins change it to any distinct, valid string. Or offer a random string.

My second feature request is: Can you implement either the automatic change of the robots.txt by the plugin or at least a textarea on the settings page to edit the content of the robots.txt? That would make the plugin more useable to set up.

Hi Martin,

Yes, the custom keyword is a great idea and is now possible with Blackhole Pro, along with many other awesome features.

For the automatic editing of robots.txt, my recent tests revealed that it’s not really feasible for numerous reasons. Fortunately editing a text file is trivial for most folks.

Thank you kindly for the feedback, and for the positive review.

Gonna go ahead and close this thread to keep things organized. Feel free to post again if needed. Thank you.