Forum unresponsive - maybe try Cloudflare to block bot traffic?

[lowwall]

The forum has been borderline unusable for the past few weeks. I run a forum and we went through something similar a couple of months ago. It turns out the problem was that we were getting such massive amounts of traffic from AI spiders that it was overwhelming our server. We have a very savvy site admin and we tried a bunch of stuff to block it on our own, but in the end we had to turn to Cloudflare to get relief.

Setting up your site with them is free and not that difficult. Once set up, you can see if the free tools make a difference, but my guess is you will end up needing the automated anti-AI bot tools that come with the $20/month subscription.

 

[chillyinCanada]

I haven't had any trouble with it. Are you sure that it's on our end?

 

[RIHappyDiver]

Same as @chillyinCanada , no problems at all.

Erik

 

[pdwh]

I have seen the issue. A couple of times a day and for a few minutes to more than an hour, I'll try to hit the site, and I just get no response at all. Then an hour later, it's fine.

 

[chillyinCanada]

I have seen the issue. A couple of times a day and for a few minutes to more than an hour, I'll try to hit the site, and I just get no response at all. Then an hour later, it's fine.

Is this a recent experience?

 

[pdwh]

Is this a recent experience?

On and off ever since the longer outage a few months ago.

 

[lowwall]

I'm usually getting very slow responses. It often times out when I attempt to post. And it happens on my phone, home and work computers.

Edit: it worked fast for this post, bit it timed out twice when I was trying to post the original post on this thread.

 

[Divin'Papaw]

The forum has been borderline unusable for the past few weeks. I run a forum and we went through something similar a couple of months ago. It turns out the problem was that we were getting such massive amounts of traffic from AI spiders that it was overwhelming our server. We have a very savvy site admin and we tried a bunch of stuff to block it on our own, but in the end we had to turn to Cloudflare to get relief.

Setting up your site with them is free and not that difficult. Once set up, you can see if the free tools make a difference, but my guess is you will end up needing the automated anti-AI bot tools that come with the $20/month subscription.

I haven't had any trouble with it. Are you sure that it's on our end?

Same as @chillyinCanada , no problems at all.

Erik

Zero performance issues for me as well, but since I own a good bit of Cloudflare stock, I like the idea!