crawlantix

<p>Crawlantix AI Bot Tracker monitors visits from 30+ AI crawlers and gives you visibility into how bots interact with your site. See which bots visit, what pages they crawl, and catch misbehaving bots with a built-in logging-only honeypot. Lightweight, privacy-first, and fully functional out of the box.</p>
<p><strong>Free forever — no artificial limits on bot detection.</strong></p>
<p><strong>Tracked Bots (30+):</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>GPTBot / ChatGPT-User / OAI-SearchBot (OpenAI)</li>
<li>ClaudeBot / Claude-Web / anthropic-ai (Anthropic)</li>
<li>Googlebot / Google-Extended (Google / Gemini)</li>
<li>bingbot (Microsoft / Copilot)</li>
<li>PerplexityBot (Perplexity)</li>
<li>DeepSeek, Qwen (Alibaba), Mistral AI</li>
<li>Applebot-Extended (Apple Intelligence)</li>
<li>Meta-ExternalAgent (Meta AI)</li>
<li>Bytespider (ByteDance)</li>
<li>CCBot (Common Crawl), Amazonbot, YouBot, DuckDuckBot</li>
<li>AI2Bot, Diffbot, Timpibot, PetalBot</li>
<li>SemrushBot, AhrefsBot, DataForSeoBot, MJ12bot, DotBot</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Features:</strong></p>
<h4>Lightweight Bot Detection (30+ Bots)</h4>
<p>Hooks into WordPress <code>init</code> with a priority-1 action. Bails immediately on non-AI User-Agents — zero performance cost for human visitors. All 30+ bots tracked.</p>
<h4>Dashboard with Charts</h4>
<p>Clean dashboard with trend chart and provider breakdown pie chart (Chart.js, bundled locally). Summary cards show total visits, unique bots, pages crawled, and daily averages. No external dependencies.</p>
<h4>Bot Activity Table</h4>
<p>Dedicated tab showing all detected bots with visits, bytes transferred, 24h sparklines, verification status, and honeypot hit counts.</p>
<h4>Crawled Pages</h4>
<p>See which pages bots visit most, which bots crawl them, and when they were last seen.</p>
<h4>Honeypot Endpoint (Logging Only)</h4>
<p>A CSS-hidden, aria-hidden, rel=nofollow link is injected in the footer. Only raw link-extracting bots will follow it. Visits are logged for transparency. Active defense (blocking, tarpit, rate-limit, decoy, shadowban) is reserved for the paid build.</p>
<h4>Bot Verification</h4>
<p>Reverse DNS (FCrDNS) verification for major bots — confirms Googlebot, GPTBot, ClaudeBot, etc. are actually who they claim to be.</p>
<h4>Privacy First</h4>
<p>IP addresses are SHA-256 hashed with a per-install salt before storage. Raw IPs are never saved. Includes WordPress Privacy API exporter and eraser hooks so data-subject access and erasure requests can flow through the standard WordPress Tools <span aria-hidden="true" class="wp-exclude-emoji">→</span> Personal Data workflow.</p>
<h4>AI Discovery Layer</h4>
<p>Serves <code>ai-plugin.json</code> (a discovery manifest that tells visiting AI agents the site is monitored) and <code>llms.txt</code> / <code>llms-full.txt</code> (text content authored by the admin via WordPress pages with slugs <code>llms-txt</code> and <code>llms-full-txt</code>) at the site root.</p>
<h4>Data Retention</h4>
<p>Bot visit data is retained for 30 days. Older records are automatically pruned via WP-Cron.</p>
<h3>External Services</h3>
<p>This plugin connects to the following external services:</p>
<h4>Reverse DNS Lookups</h4>
<p>The bot verification feature performs reverse DNS (FCrDNS) lookups using PHP’s <code>gethostbyaddr()</code> and <code>gethostbyname()</code> functions to verify that bots are who they claim to be (e.g., confirming a request claiming to be Googlebot actually originates from Google’s network). These lookups send the bot’s IP address to your server’s configured DNS resolver and the authoritative DNS servers for the IP address’s reverse DNS zone. Under some privacy regimes, IP addresses may be considered personal data. This feature runs automatically when a known AI bot visits your site and cannot currently be disabled via the admin UI (a filter hook <code>crawlantix_enable_verification</code> is available for developers).</p>
<p>No other external services, third-party APIs, or remote requests are used by this plugin. All analytics data is stored locally in your WordPress database. Chart.js is bundled locally — no CDN requests are made.</p>
<h3>Privacy Policy</h3>
<p>Crawlantix AI Bot Tracker is designed with privacy as a core principle:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Bot traffic only.</strong> The plugin only tracks automated bot traffic identified by User-Agent strings. Human visitors are not tracked and no cookies are set.</li>
<li><strong>No raw IP addresses stored.</strong> All IP addresses are SHA-256 hashed with a per-install random salt before storage (or AUTH_SALT when defined in <code>wp-config.php</code>). The original IP address cannot be recovered from the hash. Note: pseudonymous IP hashes may still be considered personal data under GDPR.</li>
<li><strong>Data stored per bot visit:</strong> IP hash, User-Agent string, requested URL, HTTP referrer URL, request method, timestamp, and derived fields (bytes transferred, bot verification status). Referrer URLs may contain personal data depending on the referring site.</li>
<li><strong>WordPress Privacy API integration.</strong> The plugin registers exporter and eraser callbacks with WordPress core, so data-subject access and erasure requests filed through Tools <span aria-hidden="true" class="wp-exclude-emoji">→</span> Personal Data flow correctly.</li>
<li><strong>No external data transmission.</strong> All analytics data remains in your local WordPress database. No data is sent to Crawlantix or third-party services. The only external communication is DNS lookups for bot verification (see External Services above).</li>
<li><strong>Data retention controls.</strong> Bot visit data is automatically pruned after 30 days. Administrators can delete all collected data on uninstall via the “Delete Data on Uninstall” Settings toggle.</li>
</ul>
<p>For sites that require a formal privacy policy disclosure, you may note: “We use the Crawlantix AI Bot Tracker plugin to monitor automated AI bot traffic to our site. This plugin records bot User-Agent strings, pseudonymous IP hashes, pages visited, referrer URLs, and timestamps for detected bot traffic only. Raw IP addresses are cryptographically hashed before storage. No human visitor data is collected.”</p>
<h3>Premium Version</h3>
<p>Crawlantix also offers paid tiers at <a href="https://crawlantix.com" rel="nofollow ugc">crawlantix.com</a> for site owners who need active bot defense in addition to monitoring. The paid build adds the following features on top of everything in this free version:</p>
<h4>Protect tier</h4>
<ul>
<li>Active honeypot responses: HTTP 403 block, tarpit (random 5–25s delay with worker-exhaustion safeguards), rate limit 429, decoy content, shadowban.</li>
<li>Auto-block of repeat honeypot offenders, with configurable thresholds.</li>
<li>Per-IP response rules — apply a chosen response strategy to specific IP hashes (up to 200 rules).</li>
<li>Custom honeypot paths (up to 5) with a reserved-route safety list.</li>
<li>Email alerts for honeypot hits and parameter explosion patterns.</li>
<li>Robots.txt trap entries that catch non-compliant scrapers.</li>
<li>Optional override that suppresses the WordPress core <code>/wp/v2/users</code> REST endpoints (username-enumeration hardening, off by default and easy to opt back in).</li>
</ul>
<h4>Optimize tier</h4>
<ul>
<li>Full REST API at <code>/wp-json/ai-tracker/v1/</code> with API key authentication and 13 endpoints (status, stats, page, trends, bots, top-pages, report, export, alerts, honeypot, crawled-pages, etc.).</li>
<li>GeoIP location tracking with MaxMind GeoLite2.</li>
<li>Crawl Analytics tab with deeper traffic-quality metrics.</li>
<li>Extended data retention up to 365 days.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Scale tier</h4>
<ul>
<li>Backup & restore — export all data as JSON; import with merge or replace modes.</li>
<li>Unlimited retention.</li>
<li>Priority support.</li>
</ul>
<p>The paid build is a drop-in upgrade: same plugin slug, same database tables, same option keys, so all your historical bot data carries over with no migration step on your part.</p>


Crawlantix AI Bot Tracker

Track 30+ AI crawlers visiting your site with real-time dashboards, logging-only honeypot, and bot verification.

Pierre Lannoy

Hosterra

<p><strong>Device Detector</strong> is a full featured analytics reporting and management tool that detects all devices accessing your WordPress site.</p>
<p>For each call made to your site, <strong>Device Detector</strong> analyzes the sent header, detects the device doing the call (and its characteristics) and can:</p>
<ul>
<li>modify the <code>is_mobile()</code> WordPress core function to be more precise and reliable;</li>
<li>add some CSS classes to the <code>body</code> tag of your site (many classes to choose from);</li>
<li>let you use the result of the detection in your own developments;</li>
<li>record detected characteristics for reporting.</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Device Detector</strong> can report the following main items and characteristics:</p>
<ul>
<li>KPIs: number of hits, class breakdown, clients types and engines;</li>
<li>Classes: Bot, Desktop, Mobile and Other;</li>
<li>Devices types: Camera, Car Browser, Console, Feature Phone, Phablet, Portable Media Player, Smart Display, Smartphone, Tablet, TV;</li>
<li>Client types: Application Library, Browser, Feed Reader, Media Player, Mobile Application, PIM.</li>
<li>Technical characteristics and versions of all browsers;</li>
<li>Device identification: brand, model, etc.;</li>
<li>OS identification: name, version, etc.;</li>
<li>Calling channel: site backend, site frontend, cron job, Ajax request, XML-RPC request, Rest API request, Atom/RDF/RSS feed;</li>
</ul>
<p>For a full list of items, characteristics and supported devices, please see the ‘devices’ tab in the plugin settings.</p>
<p><strong>Device Detector</strong> supports multisite report delegation and per site configuration (see FAQ).</p>
<p><strong>Device Detector</strong> supports an extensive set of WP-CLI commands to:</p>
<ul>
<li>get a device detail: see <code>wp help device describe</code> for details;</li>
<li>display Device Detector status: see <code>wp help device status</code> for details;</li>
<li>toggle on/off main settings: see <code>wp help device settings</code> for details;</li>
<li>describe engine capacities: see <code>wp help device engine</code> for details;</li>
<li>display devices statistics: see <code>wp help device analytics</code> for details.</li>
</ul>
<p>For a full help on WP-CLI commands in Device Detector, please <a href="https://perfops.one/device-detector-wpcli" rel="nofollow ugc">read this guide</a>.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Device Detector</strong> is part of <a href="https://perfops.one/" rel="nofollow ugc">PerfOps One</a>, a suite of free and open source WordPress plugins dedicated to observability and operations performance.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Based on the amazing <a href="https://github.com/matomo-org/matomo" rel="nofollow ugc">Matomo</a> UDD, Device Detector is a free and open source plugin for WordPress. It integrates many other free and open source works (as-is or modified). Please, see ‘about’ tab in the plugin settings to see the details.</p>
<h4>Developers</h4>
<p>If you’re a plugins / themes developer and want to take advantage of the detection features of Device Detector, visit the <a href="https://github.com/Pierre-Lannoy/wp-device-detector" rel="nofollow ugc">GitHub repository</a> of the plugin to learn how to use it.</p>
<h4>Support</h4>
<p>This plugin is free and provided without warranty of any kind. Use it at your own risk, I’m not responsible for any improper use of this plugin, nor for any damage it might cause to your site. Always backup all your data before installing a new plugin.</p>
<p>Anyway, I’ll be glad to help you if you encounter issues when using this plugin. Please read carefully the FAQ at the bottom of this page before requesting support.</p>
<h4>Privacy</h4>
<p>This plugin, as any piece of software, is neither compliant nor non-compliant with privacy laws and regulations. It is your responsibility to use it – by activating the corresponding options or services – with respect for the personal data of your users and applicable laws.</p>
<p>This plugin doesn’t set any cookie in the user’s browser.</p>
<p>This plugin may handle personally identifiable information (PII). If the GDPR or CCPA or similar regulation applies to your case, you must adapt your processes (consent management, security measure, treatment register, etc.).</p>
<h4>Donation</h4>
<p>If you like this plugin or find it useful and want to thank me for the work done, please consider making a donation to <a href="https://www.laquadrature.net/en" rel="nofollow ugc">La Quadrature Du Net</a> or the <a href="https://www.eff.org/" rel="nofollow ugc">Electronic Frontier Foundation</a> which are advocacy groups defending the rights and freedoms of citizens on the Internet. By supporting them, you help the daily actions they perform to defend our fundamental freedoms!</p>


Device Detector

good plugin

Full featured analytics reporting and management tool that detects all devices accessing your WordPress site.

Crawlantix AI Bot Tracker vs Device Detector