Title: Bots causing extreme server load on WordPress
Last modified: August 18, 2016

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# Bots causing extreme server load on WordPress

 *  [frenetic](https://wordpress.org/support/users/frenetic/)
 * (@frenetic)
 * [20 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/bots-causing-extreme-server-load-on-wordpress/)
 * My server’s been plagued with random spikes in server load (to the point where
   I have to reboot or slowly log in and shut down and restart apache for it to 
   recover). I finally figured out how to monitor things in Apache and it turns 
   out that it’s happening when (I presume) spam bots are hammering at my WordPress
   archives.
 * These requests come from the same IPs during the attack/flood/whatever. Though
   when it happens again they’re different IPs. Today they’ve been hitting all my
   monthly archive displays (/archives/2005/08, etc). The IPs aren’t listed as being
   from any search engine.
 * If it were just a matter of bandwidth it wouldn’t be a problem, but this is taking
   out my entire server. Is anyone else dealing with this and could you point me
   in the direction of how to handle it?
 * I’ve installed the Bad Behavior plugin but I’m nervous about it blocking legitimate
   requests. Is there anything else I can do? I had WP-Cache on during the last 
   time this happened and it didn’t seem to help. Thanks.

The topic ‘Bots causing extreme server load on WordPress’ is closed to new replies.

## Tags

 * [bots](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/bots/)
 * [load](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/load/)
 * [server](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/server/)

 * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/)
 * 0 replies
 * 1 participant
 * Last reply from: [frenetic](https://wordpress.org/support/users/frenetic/)
 * Last activity: [20 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/bots-causing-extreme-server-load-on-wordpress/)
 * Status: not resolved

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