If you run WordPress on Windows (and who doesn’t?) and have the need to block specific user agents (bots, crawlers, browsers) below is a decent way I’ve found that uses rewriting rules and works along side the needed WordPress rules:

Adding this rule to your web.config will block the request from the specified agent(s):

 <rule name="RequestBlockingRule1" stopProcessing="true">
          <match url=".*" />
          <conditions>
            <add input="{HTTP_USER_AGENT}" pattern="agent1|agent2|agent3" />
          </conditions>
          <action type="CustomResponse" statusCode="403"
             statusReason="Forbidden: Access is denied."
             statusDescription="You do not have permission to view this page." />
        </rule>

Continue reading “IIS / WordPress – Blocking User Agents using Rewrite Rules” →