This is NOT a defeat; it is a learning experience. When you take another look at things you will now know what DIDN'T work (or did not work as expected), you can adapt your plans accordingly.xantia_v6 wrote: Today, 07:51 I have admitted defeat for now, and put the Cloudflare settings back to what they have been for the past year or so. I have learned a bit along the way, and it is very difficult to distinguish a bot without an account from a legitimate user who has not logged-in yet.
The good news is that the bot attack seems to have subsided now, the number of "guest" users has reduced from around 9000 to about 700 and has been stable there for a few hours.
There is a saying that goes "No plan survives first contact with the enemy" (actually it was "No plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy's main force", credited to Prussian Field Marshal Helmuth von Molkte the Elder in 1880, but has been 'modernised' since then). You tried something that did not work as expected, but you now have valuable experience for next time.
Thank you for all of your efforts (past, present and future).