HR Paperstacks wrote: Fri Mar 15, 2019 3:51 pm
I haven't gone through the sign up in a while, but I wonder if the captcha could be updated. Maybe the bots know how to get around this one now and that another one is needed.
It’s very possible. It seems the forum goes through a spike like this about once every 4 months or so..
I know I’ve also deleted and trashed posts/threads and banned users all week.. Including this morning...
One of the posts is about cheap cialis. I haven't felt the need for such things but I do wonder if buying such a product off the internet from someone you have no idea who they are, just to save some cash, is a wise idea. On the other hand, what's the worst that could happen? THAT will keep me up all night, so to speak.
HR Paperstacks wrote: Fri Mar 15, 2019 3:51 pm
I haven't gone through the sign up in a while, but I wonder if the captcha could be updated. Maybe the bots know how to get around this one now and that another one is needed.
good suggestion.
Right now it is a Q&A: What city is this forum about? : Omaha.
I changed the question , let's see what happens this weekend.
Coyote wrote: Sat Mar 16, 2019 1:29 am
good suggestion.
Right now it is a Q&A: What city is this forum about? : Omaha.
I changed the question , let's see what happens this weekend.
And if that doesn't work, maybe a different captcha system altogether.
Coyote wrote: Sat Mar 16, 2019 1:29 am
good suggestion.
Right now it is a Q&A: What city is this forum about? : Omaha.
I changed the question , let's see what happens this weekend.
And if that doesn't work, maybe a different captcha system altogether.
Knock on wood, no Russians today.
What other Q&A can you think of that Omahans would know?
Coyote wrote: Sun Mar 17, 2019 12:59 am
What other Q&A can you think of that Omahans would know?
I guess my main worry is keeping out legitimate non-local users (e.g. those from some of the other city forums who just like to see what is going on in other cities).
Maybe a generic captcha system like the crazy words would work good for this. I'm not sure what exists for phpbb though.
I ran into the same problem HR Paperstacks did a few days ago where my browser would download a forum file instead of loading the page. It was either a cookie or cache issue since the site would load fine in an Incognito window.
jessep28 wrote: Thu Mar 21, 2019 2:15 am
I ran into the same problem HR Paperstacks did a few days ago where my browser would download a forum file instead of loading the page. It was either a cookie or cache issue since the site would load fine in an Incognito window.
Kudos to the team! you all do a great job keeping the spammers out of the forums. I deal with the nasty spammers every day and imagine it is a constant fox hunt keeping them out of the posts.
Omababe wrote: Mon Oct 07, 2019 10:23 am
Lots of these errors over the past week or so. It killed a post I was trying to make on Friday (I think).
It killed the whole forum the past week. I suspect most people came to the forum and ran into the endless error messages and just left. Some of the forum veterans like me just muddled through it as we know that technical issues and this forum have always gone hand in hand. All those bogus posts that look like they are from foreign countries could be the source of the problem but then again it just might be that the site that hosts this forum is kind of a joke. I would bet it is both of those issues. I did not want to complain so I did not say anything until now.
P.S.- It is not out of the realm of possibilities that this forum has angered somebody who knows a thing or two about computers who is trying to jack this forum up so it does not work right.
Typically, a 500 error like this is some plugin or theme creating an issue. Or it could go back all the way to the server being too small to handle the new 'traffic' and its timing out. Either way this site is practically unusable in this state.
This issue is typically because of a corruption of the cache. Last time this happened it was because there was a stuck file out there that could not even be deleted.
It's essentially a host problem. The server they have our site on seems to run into problems from time to time.
Maybe one out of three tries gives valid results. Many error screens. Lots of times it sits there and spins for several seconds before returning an error or a result.
Everything was pretty alright yesterday and Monday, but I'm experiencing problems again. I'm getting the error message about 2/3 of the time I click and or try to login.
Before Monday and Tuesday, it was about 3 or 4 days of essentially not being able to login/post due to the error message about 80% of the time. Got down to about 20% on Monday and Tuesday, now back to 66% error message.
This morning (Thur) it is terrible. I moved about 10 new spam threads out if exitance and it took three or four tries for each step needed using a refresh to get it done.
For the record NEBUGEATER does not equal BUGEATER !!!!!!!
Right now I am flying around the board with no errors. One item of note is that it only shows 34 "users" online rather than the 500 + that have been showing.
For the record NEBUGEATER does not equal BUGEATER !!!!!!!
FYI - https won't stop bots. But it is definitely a good idea. When you log in using http, your password gets sent in the clear which can be intercepted on things like public Wi-Fi.
HR Paperstacks wrote: Sat Oct 12, 2019 3:14 pm
FYI - https won't stop bots. But it is definitely a good idea. ...
So there are no simple HTTP-only bots out there ?
But yes, this site should redirect HTTP -> HTTPS (possibly just a checkbox on the hosting site) and then fix the mixed-content errors, s/http:/https:/ on images and such as future browser versions will ignore them.
