Flipboard •
Since 2010
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Official Docs
What is Flipboard?
Flipboard bot fetches content for Flipboard's social magazine platform, which presents web content in a visually appealing, magazine-like format. Users can create their own magazines by curating content, and publishers can reach Flipboard's audience through RSS feeds or direct partnerships. The bot fetches article content, images, and metadata to create the rich, visual experience Flipboard is known for. With millions of users consuming content through Flipboard's mobile and web apps, the bot represents significant potential traffic for publishers.
User Agent String
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/125.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 Flipboard/1.0; +https://flipboard.com/browserproxy
How to Control Flipboard
Block Completely
To prevent Flipboard from accessing your entire website, add this to your robots.txt file:
# Block Flipboard
User-agent: FlipboardProxy
Disallow: /
Block Specific Directories
To restrict access to certain parts of your site while allowing others:
User-agent: FlipboardProxy
Disallow: /admin/
Disallow: /private/
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Allow: /public/
Set Crawl Delay
To slow down the crawl rate (note: not all bots respect this directive):
User-agent: FlipboardProxy
Crawl-delay: 10
How to Verify Flipboard
Verification Method:
Flipboard identification in user agent
Flipboard identification in user agent
Learn more in the official documentation.
Detection Patterns
Multiple ways to detect Flipboard in your application:
Basic Pattern
/Flipboard/iStrict Pattern
/^Mozilla/5\.0 \(Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7\) AppleWebKit/537\.36 \(KHTML, like Gecko\) Chrome/125\.0\.0\.0 Safari/537\.36 Flipboard/1\.0; \+https\://flipboard\.com/browserproxy$/Flexible Pattern
/Flipboard[\s\/]?[\d\.]*?/iVendor Match
/.*Flipboard.*Flipboard/iImplementation Examples
// PHP Detection for Flipboard
function detect_flipboard() {
$user_agent = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] ?? '';
$pattern = '/Flipboard/i';
if (preg_match($pattern, $user_agent)) {
// Log the detection
error_log('Flipboard detected from IP: ' . $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']);
// Set cache headers
header('Cache-Control: public, max-age=3600');
header('X-Robots-Tag: noarchive');
// Optional: Serve cached version
if (file_exists('cache/' . md5($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']) . '.html')) {
readfile('cache/' . md5($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']) . '.html');
exit;
}
return true;
}
return false;
}
# Python/Flask Detection for Flipboard
import re
from flask import request, make_responsedef detect_flipboard():
user_agent = request.headers.get('User-Agent', '')
pattern = r'Flipboard'
if re.search(pattern, user_agent, re.IGNORECASE):
# Create response with caching
response = make_response()
response.headers['Cache-Control'] = 'public, max-age=3600'
response.headers['X-Robots-Tag'] = 'noarchive'
return True
return False# Django Middleware
class FlipboardMiddleware:
def __init__(self, get_response):
self.get_response = get_response
def __call__(self, request):
if self.detect_bot(request):
# Handle bot traffic
pass
return self.get_response(request)
// JavaScript/Node.js Detection for Flipboard
const express = require('express');
const app = express();// Middleware to detect Flipboard
function detectFlipboard(req, res, next) {
const userAgent = req.headers['user-agent'] || '';
const pattern = /Flipboard/i;
if (pattern.test(userAgent)) {
// Log bot detection
console.log('Flipboard detected from IP:', req.ip);
// Set cache headers
res.set({
'Cache-Control': 'public, max-age=3600',
'X-Robots-Tag': 'noarchive'
});
// Mark request as bot
req.isBot = true;
req.botName = 'Flipboard';
}
next();
}app.use(detectFlipboard);
# Apache .htaccess rules for Flipboard# Block completely
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Flipboard [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]# Or redirect to a static version
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Flipboard [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/static/
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /static/$1 [L]# Or set environment variable for PHP
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent "Flipboard" is_bot=1# Add cache headers for this bot
<If "%{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /Flipboard/i">
Header set Cache-Control "public, max-age=3600"
Header set X-Robots-Tag "noarchive"
</If>
# Nginx configuration for Flipboard# Map user agent to variable
map $http_user_agent $is_flipboard {
default 0;
~*Flipboard 1;
}server {
# Block the bot completely
if ($is_flipboard) {
return 403;
}
# Or serve cached content
location / {
if ($is_flipboard) {
root /var/www/cached;
try_files $uri $uri.html $uri/index.html @backend;
}
try_files $uri @backend;
}
# Add headers for bot requests
location @backend {
if ($is_flipboard) {
add_header Cache-Control "public, max-age=3600";
add_header X-Robots-Tag "noarchive";
}
proxy_pass http://backend;
}
}
Should You Block This Bot?
Recommendations based on your website type:
| Site Type | Recommendation | Reasoning |
|---|---|---|
| E-commerce | Optional | Evaluate based on bandwidth usage vs. benefits |
| Blog/News | Allow | Increases content reach and discoverability |
| SaaS Application | Block | No benefit for application interfaces; preserve resources |
| Documentation | Selective | Allow for public docs, block for internal docs |
| Corporate Site | Limit | Allow for public pages, block sensitive areas like intranets |
Advanced robots.txt Configurations
E-commerce Site Configuration
User-agent: FlipboardProxy
Crawl-delay: 5
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Disallow: /api/
Disallow: /*?sort=
Disallow: /*?filter=
Disallow: /*&page=
Allow: /products/
Allow: /categories/
Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml
Publishing/Blog Configuration
User-agent: FlipboardProxy
Crawl-delay: 10
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /drafts/
Disallow: /preview/
Disallow: /*?replytocom=
Allow: /
SaaS/Application Configuration
User-agent: FlipboardProxy
Disallow: /app/
Disallow: /api/
Disallow: /dashboard/
Disallow: /settings/
Allow: /
Allow: /pricing/
Allow: /features/
Allow: /docs/
Quick Reference
User Agent Match
FlipboardRobots.txt Name
FlipboardProxyCategory
otherRespects robots.txt
Yes
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