We just noticed through Google Analytics that 6% of our recent traffic went to a blank template page that we’ve never seen before (/tdb_templates/blank-category-template-4/). We don’t have a cloud template with that name. Any ideas where this came from and how I can get rid of it? We’re on the latest version of both WP and Newspaper
To follow up on this, all of the hits occurred on July 23rd. Looks like some sort of bot attack
…and coincidentally July 23rd is when I updated to the latest version of the Newspaper theme.
Hi,
That’s most likely bots. They usually target the sitemaps. If I check the license key you used to create this forum account I find two websites. Both those websites contain the cloud templates in the sitemap, and there is a cloud category template with that exact name on both of them.
I suggest excluding the cloud templates from the sitemap. They are no actual value to the website in terms of indexing, and should not be in the sitemap.
In Yoast you can exclude them from the sitemap like this -> https://prnt.sc/kusU8jICwzWk Then bots will have no way to access them directly.
Such things can happen at anytime. It’s a coincidence that it happened after updating the theme, since the cloud templates were in the sitemap before most likely.
Thank you!
Thank you! I’ve excluded the templates from the sitemap and will keep an eye on things.
