Thanks everyone.

thalweg87 wrote:

Will this change, or any other planned changes, make the website play nicer with a VPN?

That’s a hard one. Spammers and scammers use the same VPNs. Rather than play whack-a-mole with them and the VPN we just take out the VPN. It’s not as bad as it used to be but this is probably because a lot of hosting and vpn ASNs are blocked now.

There was a period of time where there would be 30+ spammer accounts registering per day. Now it’s maybe 5 a week that actually make it past the checks we have in place and those are probably humans.

I’m not sure what other sites do for spammer management but we’re putting in a sizable effort here. lol

Upgrades complete.

Dutchboy wrote:

My biggest issue is I went from almost never having to log in to now it’s sometimes multiple times a day.

I’ll see what I can do about this. This wordpress functionality hasn’t changed any in quite a long time, that I am aware of.

I was working on a more permanent way to recognize members and automatically log them in if they are not already. The code is just commented out at the moment. What it will do is store a token in your browser’s local storage. This is not a cookie so doesn’t have an expiration date tied to it. Then when you visit a page are you are not logged in, the page will try and authenticate you with that token. If successful then the page would be reloaded to reflect your login status.

I’ll work on finishing this but it may be a next weekend task. lol

I sort of remember needing to decide on how I wanted to handle multiple browsers. (computer, phone, work computer…)

James is still around but it would probably help if there were 8 days in a week. lol

I got PHP upgraded for the staging site and ironed out a few issues. I still need to compile the module I used to pinpoint the database problems we were running into a while back. We’ve been doing really well for uptime since but I would still like to have the capability to pinpoint any future problems that may come up.

Replies to what?

This is fixed. The recent upgrade to bbPress 2.6.10 from 2.6.9 caused the issue. They released 2.6.11 shortly after which fixed things. happy dance here lol

It looks like the issue is with any standard page. My regular test account sees a 404 on my account and others.
https://www.in-depthoutdoors.com/my-account/
https://www.in-depthoutdoors.com/contact/

Hey Denny – do you mean this page?
https://www.in-depthoutdoors.com/

Thanks!

Thanks Steve – I just confirmed it’s not a caching issue as well. Pages aren’t cached for logged in users.

I’m not getting a 404 error myself so this may be permissions related. There was a 50% bump in page traffic this past 24 hours. This was mostly from spam bots out of Germany, Lithuania and France. I’m not sure if the two are related. I hope not. lol

Dutchboy wrote:

As I posted Anchor Marine in Delano can do the repair. If you want the best in the business then call Georges Boat Repair in East Bethel.

What he said. After I got out of the military back in 89 I worked for a few different companies that produced fiberglass products. We’d also do repairs for locals here and there, usually boats. The damage in your picture can definitely be fixed. Just pick a shop with the experience needed.

Seems fine on iPhone x but not sure what version I am on.

Attachments:

1. 

   IMG_0001.png
   

Never mind – I found the topic. It’s fine on firefox/android. I do have an iphone I can test from. It’s been a while since I turned it on so probably needs updating. (will check before and after updating)

Which post is this happening on? I can add some style rules to help. On apple phones/tablets all browses are powered by safari under the hood.

Never to late for a good joke! lol

A while back (years?) an idea crossed my mind on the night before April 1st. I thought about adding some code that would randomly popup a window saying “You are about to tickle ????”, pulling a random member name out of the topic being viewed. The “Cancel” button wouldn’t actually dismiss the popup and you would be presented with a “You just tickled ????!”. The recipient would get a notification that they have been tickled by them. After laughing to myself for a bit imagining the awkward looks of concern and embarrassment the ticklers would have I let the idea pass. I didn’t want to be the cause of any workplace (or dock) shootings. lol

Dutchboy wrote:

I have never understood the need for passwords on these sites.

Spammers and scammers. We have various hurdles in place that helps keep their numbers low that do make it in. Needing an account to post is one of the hurdles.

I’m glad it worked! I hadn’t actually tested it. The functionality was previously handled by woocommerce but that’s not installed now.

Under the settings tab on your profile there should be an option to change your password. I replied to your email with a link to that page as well.

We are actively blocking VPNs that have been used by spammers or bots. If your VPN uses a blocked host for an exit node then you will also not be able to access this site via that node.

I used your IP associated with your post. You are using Charter. There is no firewall rule blocking that ISP. We do block ASN’s of known hosting providers which spammers use. We’d have to be under attack before I’d consider blocking an entire ISP.

Attachments:

1. 

   Screenshot-2024-02-10-173136.png
   

What’s your ASN?

Thanks Dave – this seems more like an application firewall issue. The file you attached was taken at 6:02, just before you posted. I found an event logged with your IP address so I’m pretty sure it was your upload attempt.

I have changed some thresholds for the rules to hopefully allow you to change your profile image. Please try again and let me know if it works.

Thanks!

The next time it happens would you take a screenshot and attach it here. I’ll try using a non admin test account and see if I can replicate the issue that way. Thanks!

This is working for me, both uploading and using my webcam. Is this working for anyone else?

Although we did cache the data queried for the recent topics widget it could still cause traffic pileups during refresh. The new database table I am using to track active topics could probably be used to show recent topics too, without the performance impact.

When I’m under the hood this weekend I’ll see what I can do.

I had to disable most of the activity tracking that gets dumped into the buddypress activity table. A lot of other forum actions would get bogged down otherwise. There’s also 11 indices on that table. I feel like it is over optimized and possibly confusing the database server on which index to use. (depending on the query)

But that’s just me speculating.

Your timeout was probably caused by the nightly cron task that clears out deleted posts and does other maintenance tasks for the forum. The type of tables being used in the database are locked up at the row level when operations are taking place so that helps overall it can still cause issues if your post needs data from one of the locked rows.

It’s good to hear things are running better though!

I’ll have a look at this over the weekend. (maybe sooner)

These guys charged their nissan ariya with a generator near the north pole. (no garage, sub zero temps)
https://www.thenissannext.com/en/PoletoPole.html

My understanding is that the car’s battery and drive train was left stock to prove their point that an ariya can deal with the cold. Mileage may very for other makes/models though. lol

I came across this article that was rather insightful.
Scientists may have the key to treating tinnitus: Retrain the brain

Knocking on wood here. lol

Actually there was a few seconds of downtime late saturday night but that was caused by me so no mystery there.