feat: rate-limit good bots via object cache, add curl/ClaudeBot tiers, whitelist cache warmer

config/badbots.conf

@@ -10,7 +10,6 @@ firefox/19.0
 firefox/38.0
 firefox/18.0
 wget
-curl
 libwww-perl
 WinHttp
 okhttp
@@ -229,7 +228,6 @@ Xaldon
 Zeus
 ZmEu
 Zyborg
-crawle
 igdeSpyder
 Robot
 Aport
@@ -373,7 +371,7 @@ PolycomVVX
 ^The Knowledge AI
 SputnikBot
 od-database-crawler
-Hype%20Machine
+HypeMachine
 The Hype Machine Engine
 Apache-HttpClient
 Goodzer

config/goodbots.conf

@@ -20,4 +20,6 @@ SemrushBot|10
 DotBot|20
 PetalBot|20
 Bytespider|20
-GPTBot|0
+GPTBot|50
+curl|10
+ClaudeBot|50

config/whitelist.conf

@@ -12,3 +12,7 @@
 # ua:MyMonitoringTool
 #
 # Lines starting with # are comments. Blank lines are ignored.
+ua:rss-parser
+ua:ZelistBot
+ua:SimplePie
+ua:SI-CacheWarmer

includes/class-itk-bot-blocker.php

@@ -119,10 +119,10 @@ class ITK_Bot_Blocker {
             return;
         }
 
-        // Sliding window: track hits per bot per minute using transients.
+        // Sliding window: track hits per bot per minute using object cache (no DB writes).
         $window  = (int)(time() / 60); // 1-minute window
         $tk_key  = 'itk_rl_' . md5($name) . '_' . $window;
-        $count   = (int)get_transient($tk_key);
+        $count   = (int)wp_cache_get($tk_key, 'itk_rl');
 
         if ($count >= $limit) {
             // Over the limit – log and send 429.
@@ -147,7 +147,7 @@ class ITK_Bot_Blocker {
         }
 
         // Under the limit – increment counter and allow through.
-        set_transient($tk_key, $count + 1, 120);
+        wp_cache_set($tk_key, $count + 1, 'itk_rl', 120);
     }
 
     /* ── Blocking ─────────────────────────────────────────────── */