I'm sure users have noted an occasional 503 error with the forum. You may have also noticed an occasional Cloudflare captcha screen during your browsing.
We are changing to new hosting and a new server yet this month, those 503 errors should (should) be handled once that process is complete.
Those errors result from BOTS overloading the server/database as they scrape the site. There are a dozen or so good and approved bots, like DuckDuckGo, Google, Bing and others. Some are normal search engines (that have been around forever) and others are new AI based BOTS. Some of those AI bots are respectful and their crawling rates are normal and acceptable. Others, not so much...and they don't pay attention to the server side filters that are in place.
These screenshots are from Xenforo this morning, the site that develops the forum software. One is their normal load of 2000ish guests, the other shows over 180,000 guests. That slowed their site to a crawl.
I've added a plugin that manages those BOTS and helps control their drain on server resources. IH8MUD gets hit hard, this screenshot is from the past 24 hours. Yes, the site sees 1.8 million attempts over a 24 hour period.
The plugin is still under development, and is getting daily updates and improvements.
Back to your normal tech
We are changing to new hosting and a new server yet this month, those 503 errors should (should) be handled once that process is complete.
Those errors result from BOTS overloading the server/database as they scrape the site. There are a dozen or so good and approved bots, like DuckDuckGo, Google, Bing and others. Some are normal search engines (that have been around forever) and others are new AI based BOTS. Some of those AI bots are respectful and their crawling rates are normal and acceptable. Others, not so much...and they don't pay attention to the server side filters that are in place.
These screenshots are from Xenforo this morning, the site that develops the forum software. One is their normal load of 2000ish guests, the other shows over 180,000 guests. That slowed their site to a crawl.
I've added a plugin that manages those BOTS and helps control their drain on server resources. IH8MUD gets hit hard, this screenshot is from the past 24 hours. Yes, the site sees 1.8 million attempts over a 24 hour period.
The plugin is still under development, and is getting daily updates and improvements.
Back to your normal tech