What are bots, how to make a bot for a social network, website or automation

18.11.18 IT / Misc 2511

Bots are special programs that do most of the routine work. Today bots are very common; they are embedded in social networks, websites and are used for other purposes. Bots differ from regular programs in that they usually emulate user behavior, trying to replace real people.

If you look closely at the word work, then you can see the word slave and bot (or a similar robot) - this kind of hints that a bot or a robot is designed to free people from the "slavery" of work. Indeed, bots are capable of completely replacing humans - it all depends on the level of intelligence embedded in the development.

How to make a bot ? First, you need to decide what functionality the bot should have. A bot program can be written in almost any programming language, depending on where you want to embed the bot. For example, to make a bot for social networks , PHP is usually used. Let's briefly consider the principles of writing bots:

• bot for social networks (vk, facebook, ok, etc.) - these are usually chat bots, but not only - you will need to use the social media API. The developed code is hosted on its server, which is registered in the settings of the social network, and when an event occurs, it will send data about the event to the specified server - all that remains is to process and send back the response;
• site bot can have much more capabilities, there is no API restriction, as with social networks. Such a bot can perform any routine work on your site - create materials, respond to messages to site visitors, collect data for analysis, etc. - the possibilities are endless. Bot - works on top of the site, it can partially or completely perform the functions of the site administrator;
• Automation Bots is an even wider scope for bots. Such a bot can automate any processes, be it using any service, program, etc. A simple example is a bot that programmatically clicks buttons in the browser.

As you can see, the possibilities of bots are almost endless, you can develop a bot for almost anything. In this case, a bot is a manager or a program that runs on top of other software.

However, many today have a bad association with the word bot, since along with the positive qualities of bots, they also have negative ones. Bots harm many users - leave spam , increase indicators, are used for hacking, steal original content and automatically post it on the attacker's sites, and also do other unwanted actions. But good and bad are everywhere, so you shouldn't just pay attention to the bad sides of bots. Before bot development it is enough to analyze whether it will harm someone and only then develop it.

Thus, it was considered what bots are and what they are made for. You can develop bots only if they do not harm anyone and do not violate the law. Making a bot for a social network , website, or to automate a process is not difficult, but remember that bots can be both useful and harmful. To develop a bot or other software, you can always leave a request on this site.