80legs is a cloud-based platform that offers both web scraping and web crawling services. It is easy to use and the users can quickly change its settings based on their crawling or scraping criteria. 80legs also has a free subscription plan but it obviously has limited features compared to the premium plans.
To get the best possible experience when using 80legs, you need to pair it with a 80legs proxy when web scraping or crawling. This is because most websites have strict restrictions against the use of bots on their site and a proxy would allow you to bypass these restrictions and to avoid getting banned by those websites.
This is possible because a 80legs proxy will handle all of your web requests for you so any website will only be able to see the IP address of the proxy server and not your own. Through continuously rotating proxies, you can deceive any website you want to scrape into thinking that 80legs’ requests come from genuine users and not from a bot.
Let’s set up a 80legs proxy server.
For Windows:
To set up proxies in Windows, simply search for “Proxy Settings” in your windows search bar and open the search result.
You are then given two options to choose from: Automatic proxy setup or Manual proxy setup. If you want windows to automatically detect your proxy settings, choose the first option. Choose the second option if you want to utilize a specific ip address and port number.
If you chose the first option, then:
- Turn on Automatically detect Settings
- Turn on Use setup script
- Enter the script address
- Click Save
If you chose the second option, then:
- Turn on Use a proxy server
- Input both server address and port number
- If you have any addresses you would like to visit without a proxy, enter them here
- Turn on Don’t use the proxy server for local addresses check box if you want to access a local server without a proxy
- Click Save
Image Alt Text: Windows Automatic Proxy Setup
For Mac:
To start configuring your proxy settings in MacOS, simply:
Step 1. Click on the Apple Icon.
Step 2. On the drop down menu, click on “System Preferences”.
Step 3. Click on “Network”
Step 4. Click on “Advanced”
Note: Make sure to connect to your wi-fi first.
Step 5. Click on “Proxies”
This should then redirect you to MacOS proxy settings. MacOS is more straightforward compared to windows. You only have one option which is to manually configure your proxy server.
Here are the steps to follow:
- Select which proxy IP protocol you want to configure. This depends on which protocols your proxy service provider offers.
- Turn on Secure Web Proxy
- Input the Proxy Server Address and Port Number
- Click OK to save the configurations
Note: You may be prompted for your Mac user password to save your settings.
Image Alt Text: Configuring MacOS Proxy Settings
Congratulations! You have now finished configuring a 80legs proxy server.
