Overview
Higher Logic Vanilla uses a link-preview bot to generate rich link embeds (also called Smart Embeds / Rich Embeds) when community members paste URLs into posts and comments.
When a user shares a link, Vanilla's servers fetch a small amount of public page metadata—such as Open Graph title, description, and image—so the community can display a preview card. This fetch is performed by Vanilla infrastructure on behalf of the end user.
This article documents how that bot identifies itself and how site operators can recognize and allow its traffic.
Identification
| Property |
Value |
|---|
| User-Agent |
vanilla-forums-embed/1.0 |
| Purpose |
Social / link preview (page preview) |
| Operator |
Higher Logic Vanilla |
| Access model |
Intermediary — requests are initiated when community users embed links |
Example request header:
User-Agent: vanilla-forums-embed/1.0
What the bot does
The bot:
- Requests the target URL over HTTP/HTTPS when a user embeds a link in a Vanilla community.
- Reads public HTML metadata used for previews (for example Open Graph tags, title, description, favicon, and primary image).
- May fetch linked preview images to validate or display them.
- Respects
robots.txt directives for the vanilla-forums-embed/1.0 user agent before fetching page content.
- Uses short request timeouts and does not crawl sites broadly or follow links for indexing.
The bot does not:
- Index your site for search.
- Train AI models on your content.
- Bypass CAPTCHAs, login walls, or other access controls.
- Continuously scrape sites on a schedule.
When you will see this traffic
You may see vanilla-forums-embed/1.0 in your access logs when:
- A Vanilla community member pastes your URL into a discussion, comment, or knowledge article and Vanilla generates a link preview.
- An existing embed is refreshed or revalidated by Vanilla.
Traffic volume is typically low and proportional to how often your URLs are shared in Vanilla communities.
Allowlisting and bot protection
If your site uses Cloudflare Bot Fight Mode, Super Bot Fight Mode, WAF custom rules, or similar bot protection, preview requests may be challenged or blocked. That prevents Vanilla from rendering a rich preview of your page.
To allow legitimate Vanilla link previews:
- Match requests whose User-Agent contains
vanilla-forums-embed.
- Prefer allowing verified / known good preview bots once this agent is listed in Cloudflare's verified bots directory.
- Do not require interactive challenges (JavaScript or CAPTCHA) for these server-to-server preview fetches.
For Cloudflare operators, see Cloudflare's documentation on Verified bots.
robots.txt
Vanilla checks your site's robots.txt before scraping page content for embeds. You can disallow the agent if you do not want Vanilla to generate previews of your pages:
User-agent: vanilla-forums-embed
Disallow: /
Disallowing the agent will typically cause embeds of your URLs in Vanilla communities to fall back to a plain link (no rich preview card).
Related product documentation
Contact
If you believe this bot is behaving incorrectly, or you need allowlist assistance, contact Higher Logic Vanilla Support or open a ticket through your usual support channel. Include the requesting IP address, timestamp, and full User-Agent string from your logs.