Manta is an online platform that’s dedicated to aiding small businesses grow and reach their full potential. It helps reach towards wider audiences by applying a variety of techniques on the website of small businesses. These techniques range from building an effective SEO to strengthening the small business’s brand and help them stand out from the competition.
There is a lot of valuable content available on Manta that could help you grow your business. Manually gathering all of that data though would take a lot of time and effort. If you want to do it quickly and efficiently, you need to use a web scraping tool and let it do the job for you. A problem with using a web scraper though is that websites will ban your account and IP address if they detect that you're using one.
To avoid getting flagged by websites when using a web scraping tool, you need to pair it with a Manta proxy. A Manta proxy will handle all of your web requests for you so any requests that your web scraper makes will seem as if genuine users are the ones sending those requests so you won’t get banned.
Let’s set up a Manta 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 Manta proxy server.
