Some bots cannot access website even after uninstalling BotBlocker

Hello!

When you perform a correct uninstallation using the standard WordPress “Delete” action, BotBlocker Security is designed to deinstall completely.

During the deactivation phase, the plugin also automatically removes its dedicated Must-Use (MU) plugin file, botblocker-mu-plugin.php, from your wp-content/mu-plugins/ directory. If you were using the Early Init feature (PRO), it also cleans up the modifications made to the wp-content/advanced-cache.php file.

If bots or tools are still encountering a BotBlocker captcha page after the plugin has been deleted, this is a clear sign of aggressive external or edge caching. Here are the likely causes:

• CDN Caching: If your site uses a CDN like Cloudflare, the verification page might be stored at the “edge.” Since BotBlocker is no longer active to handle the bypass, the CDN may be serving a static, cached version of that challenge page to visitors it identifies as suspicious.
• Server-Level Caches: Even after restarting services, some server-side caches like Varnish or Nginx FastCGI might still hold static HTML fragments of the blocked page. These often require a specific “purge all” command rather than a simple service restart to clear the stored content.
• Persistent MU-Plugins: While the uninstaller should handle it, you may want to manually verify that the wp-content/mu-plugins/ folder is empty of any BotBlocker-related files just to be absolutely certain.

Because the plugin code is no longer on your server to generate new pages, any BotBlocker screen you see is a “ghost” image being served from a cache layer. Please ensure you purge your CDN cache completely and check for any remaining static files in your hosting provider’s specific cache directories.

If the problem does not resolve after a full cache purge, please contact us for further investigation at admin@botblocker.top