Tips for Bots
Use cloudflare for geo blocking of countries/asn's works great. You can also challenge users instead of block if you are concerned.
(ip.src.country eq "CN") or (ip.src.country eq "HK") or (ip.src.country eq "VN") or (ip.src.country eq "BR") or (ip.src.country eq "AR") or (ip.src.country eq "EC") or (ip.src.country eq "UY") or (ip.src.country eq "IR") or (ip.src.country eq "SG") or (ip.src.country eq "IQ") or (ip.src.country eq "BD") or (ip.src.country eq "VE") or (ip.src.country eq "CL") or (ip.src.country eq "PY") or (ip.src.country eq "MX") or (ip.src.country eq "PA") or (ip.src.country eq "BG") or (ip.src.asnum eq 136907) or (ip.src.country eq "SN")
Block old chrome versions or challenge if using cloudflare and block empty user agents
For apache httpd.conf below
# Block empty user agents
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^$ [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]
# Block Chrome below 120
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Chrome/([1-9][0-9]|10[0-9]|11[0-9])\. [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]
Clouldflare block chrome
(http.user_agent contains "Chrome/100." or http.user_agent contains "Chrome/101." or http.user_agent contains "Chrome/102." or http.user_agent contains "Chrome/103." or http.user_agent contains "Chrome/104." or http.user_agent contains "Chrome/105." or http.user_agent contains "Chrome/106." or http.user_agent contains "Chrome/107." or http.user_agent contains "Chrome/108." or http.user_agent contains "Chrome/109." or http.user_agent contains "Chrome/110." or http.user_agent contains "Chrome/111." or http.user_agent contains "Chrome/112." or http.user_agent contains "Chrome/113." or http.user_agent contains "Chrome/114." or http.user_agent contains "Chrome/115." or http.user_agent contains "Chrome/116." or http.user_agent contains "Chrome/117." or http.user_agent contains "Chrome/118." or http.user_agent contains "Chrome/119." or http.request.uri.query contains "action=printpage" or http.request.uri.path contains "printpage")
Turn off certain forum features for guests.
Make sure your site supports HTTP2 for your webserver.
Tweak your PHP/Database settings. User latest versions.
But in generally tweak, all settings, from webserver, php, database. The defaults are not enough for bigger sites.