One question after installation...

[Jwrbloom]

I noticed a large number of bots and crawlers already established in the database.

What are they for?

[Crizzo]

Hi,

That you can See when they visit your board.

Without them, you would just see: 6 Guests, now you see:
2 Guest, GoogleBot, BingBot, Etc.


Regards

[thecoalman]

phpBB by default hides certain links from bots, the login link, profiles etc. As part of the bot group they also have their own forum permissions, e.g. if you have chit-chat forum you want guests to see but block bots you can do that.

It's also possible to set up second group like "bad bots", add the bad bots that group and use no access permissions of forums for their group. It can also be used that way in reverse, if for example you have forum behind login for registered users only and are displaying Google ads. You can set up another group for Google ads bot so it can get access to the topics. Note that if it's forum you want truly private don't do this as someone can spoof the bots user agent.