Man, saw a site owner post this on FB today—his site got destroyed by bots for a solid 36 hours. Total nightmare fuel. When he finally got back online, his big brain solution? Challenge on literally every single page. Homepage, blog, about us, contact, everything. You gotta prove you're human just to read the guy's mission statement.



Not gonna lie, 36 hours of watching your server burn while you can't do anything is traumatic. The guy was desperate. But brother, this is textbook fear-driven decision making.



Here's the thing nobody talks about—he's blocking his real audience now. Nobody wants to click through a verification just to read a blog post. Bounce rate is gonna go through the roof. And the funny part? Search engine crawlers are bots too. Hit Googlebot with a challenge and watch your rankings disappear overnight.







What caught my attention was the complete lack of surgical thinking. Identify the specific endpoint getting hammered and protect that. Rate limit by IP. Watch behavior patterns and block silently without the user even knowing. 





Honestly, the infection is still there. He put a band-aid on the symptom but never treated the disease. A week from now he'll be wondering why his traffic tanked and users are complaining, and those bots are probably gonna find another way in anyway.



Over here in our group, we actually deal with this the right way. Come join us. We're stronger together.

REAL CASE STUDY: Site Went Down 36 Hours from Bots and Dude Put CAPTCHA on EVERYTHING—Traffic's Gonna Tank and He'll Wonder Why