Do you know about a paywall that blocks your access to an article you want to read?
There is a way to bypass these paywalls and read any article you want; 12foot Ladder can help you.
In this article, we will explore what a 12ft Ladder is, and how it works.
Table of Contents Show
What Is 12 Foot Ladder?
12 Foot Ladder is a website that allows you to bypass online paywalls. Further, it pretends to be a search engine crawler.
It is based on the idea that “show me a 10 foot wall and I’ll show you a 12 foot ladder”.
You can use it by pasting the URL of any paywalled page into 12ft.io or by prepending 12ft.io/ to the URL.
However, 12 Foot Ladder is not the only way to access paywalled content.
There are also some extensions or apps that you can install on your browser or device.
These tools may have different features and compatibility, so you may want to try them out and see which one works best for you.
How Does 12 Foot Ladder Works?
When you visit a website that has a paywall, it usually checks your browser’s cookies, IP address, or other identifiers to see if you are a subscriber or not.
If not, it will block you from accessing the full content and ask you to pay or sign up.
However, when Google crawls a website to index its content for its search engine, it does not have any of these identifiers.
It uses a special user-agent string that identifies itself as a Googlebot.
A user-agent string is a piece of information that your browser sends to the website to tell it what kind of browser you are using.
Most websites want to be indexed by Google, so they allow Googlebot to access their full content without any paywall.
This way, they can rank higher on Google’s search results and attract more visitors.
12 Foot Ladder uses this loophole by pretending to be a Googlebot when requesting a webpage.
It uses the same user-agent string as Googlebot and sends it to the website along with the URL that you want to access.
The website thinks that 12 Foot Ladder is a Googlebot and lets it access the full content without any paywall.
12 Foot Ladder then shows you a cached version of the page that Google indexed.
A cached version is a copy of the page that Google saved at some point in time.
This way, you can bypass the paywall and read the full article without paying or signing up.
How To Bypass Online Paywalls By 12 Foot Ladder?
To bypass online paywalls by 12 Foot Ladder, you can follow these steps:
- Find the URL of the paywalled page that you want to access.
- Prepend 12ft.io/ to the URL; it requests the page on your behalf
- Enter the modified URL into your browser and press enter.
Alternatively, you can also paste the original URL into 12ft.io and click on the Bypass Paywall button.
Limitations And Alternatives To 12 Foot Ladder
12 Foot Ladder may not work with every website or every article.
Some websites may have different methods of blocking crawlers or detecting paywall bypassing tools.
In that case, you may want to try some other alternatives, such as Unpaywall, Bypass Paywalls Clean, Bypass Paywalls, Incoggo and Anti-Paywall.
These are extensions or apps that you can install on your browser or device to access paywalled content.
They may have different features and compatibility. However, you may want to try them out and see which one works best for you.
The Bottom Line
12 Foot Ladder is a website that lets you read paywalled articles for free by showing you the cached version that Google crawls.
It works by prepending 12ft.io/ to the URL of any paywalled page and pretending to be a search engine crawler.
There are some alternatives to 12 Foot Ladder, such as browser extensions or websites that can also bypass paywalls.
