OpenRSS.org is a nonprofit organization that provides RSS feeds for websites do not have them. I’m seeking support on trying to get OpenRSS.org user agent added as a Verified Bot, so that our feed fetcher can access Cloudflare-enabled websites without human verification and JavaScript errors.
What steps have you taken to resolve the issue?
I’ve tried filling out the Verified Bots form. However, it has been weeks without any response and there is no acknowledgement that the submission is being reviewed. Thank you for any information.
The criteria to meet are listed here, it is worth ensuring you meet all those:
There are two ways to submit for verification, through the Cloudflare Dashboard and through an external form. Please note than the external form takes significantly longer to process: Verified Bots Policy · Cloudflare bot solutions docs
Hi, thanks for the reply. As indicated in my original post, I’ve already submitted the form (twice, actually) and there hasn’t been any response. What is the timeframe in which I can expect a response? This issue is degrading the service and affecting quite a bit of our users. Thanks.
@Brian_M sorry for asking here but are you able to provide any info on general timelines for approvals? We posted another thread about this that Mark also responded in months ago and submitted both main bot form + Google Form:
It’ll soon be 5 months and we still haven’t heard back. We’d really love to get verified as our customers are running into many false positives due to Cloudflare blocking our bot when it is attempting to find broken links on a customer’s site.
Thank you. I can provide any additional info you need via email: [email protected]
Thank you for getting back with me. We don’t suggest using any IP address we have, because those may change. I believe we outlined this in our application. Is there another way to complete the verification? I also can be reached directly at mark[at]openrss.org if necessary to work through any private details. Thanks again and looking forward to your reply.
We’ll need to reach out offline to understand how we can verify the IP(s) for valid OpenRSS requests.
We are exploring other Verification methods that don’t require IP validation. Could be helpful to understand how we could potential implement an IP agnostic verification for your setup.
I don’t understand. You’ve said that we can verify via a reverse DNS suffix. Why couldn’t you just use the IP address from a reverse DNS lookup on openrss.org? It’s fine to use that IP address if you’re just using it for verification purposes. But your heuristics shouldn’t rely on it because we don’t want your bot evaluation algo to break if it changes.