Session table size

[ukautoforums]

Hi,
I've noticed some php forums growing to quite a file size when backing up. When I've looked its the session table that seems to be the cause.
If I use the admin control panel to purge the sessions, the table does indeed empty but the file size of the table is not reduced.

Is there something else I need to do to reduce the actual file size of the table please?

Thanks

[thecoalman]

Large sessions table can be caused by a lot of bot activity. Check the online user list (heading is link) and display guests. If you see a user agent of a bot in guests list add it to bots list. This can also be caused by cron task not running.

As for the table size open the db in phpmyadmin, scroll to the bottom and find the check all box on left, in drop down select optimize.

[ukautoforums]

Thanks, looks like I am getting hit by:

facebookexternalhit/1.1 (+http://www.facebook.com/externalhit_uatext.php)
and
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Barkrowler/0.9; +https://babbar.tech/crawler)

I am also seeing quite a bit from
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; GPTBot/1.2; +https://openai.com/gptbot)

Not sure whether to block Open API? I am guessing its using my content to feed into its model.

[thecoalman]

Whether you block them or not add them to the bots list. Also add Claudebot, that's another one that has been running amok.

[Mick]

There have been a few topics on the subject lately that may be helpful, have a look at these for example:

viewtopic.php?t=2652265
viewtopic.php?t=2654353

[ukautoforums]

Thanks all, creating some new bot rules has sped up the sites and resolved my issues.