Slow....

[kyli]

The forum is really slow to load....
checks who's online
500-600 unregistered users
Either we're suddenly very popular or the bots have taken over.
Its taking 10+ seconds to load the website. Idk what's happening.

Edit: The Forum is loading quick now, but still 600 users online, and it looks like we set a new record today with 2958 users online just a few hours B4 I originally posted this. That's crazy.

[wetnomad]

Same here today. Couldn't log in a couple of days ago due to some SQL problem, now this slowdown where loading the site, logging in and page transistions take 15-20 seconds each. As Kyli said, there's 500+ 'guests'. Don't know if that's the cause though.

[Greymist]

I wonder if I need to play wackamole with bots from China scraping the site again (that was the issue a few months back, they were killing the site). People have assumed that there's some AI model training going on on phpbb sites.

[wetnomad]

Hi again.

Initial page loading and transitions were even slower today, around 20-30 seconds each. Oddly, logging in was quicker at 10-15 seconds. Still 400+ guests, apparently.

[wetnomad]

Hi.

And, not seconds after posting the above, the site response seems normal, i.e. fast. Strange!

[Greymist]

Should be fixed now for the short term, until I have to play wackamole again.

Sorry about the delay in getting it back to this. I've been busy on a work project and not had energy for this. I've finally got around to adding some instrumentation to the server though through Datadog, so should be faster for me to find a cause and resolution next time.

[wetnomad]

Thanks for that Grey. I usually check the site once a day and I see the guests are down to 31 this morning, from 350+ yesterday.