You may have noticed some intermittent slowness over the last few weeks. This is because the website has been hit with unnecessary 'bots' that have put high loads on our host's server. A 'bot' is an automated piece of code that crawls or indexes websites primarily for search engines (e.g. Google).
Unfortunately there are also malicious or simply unconstrained bots that perform Denial of Service (DoS) attacks that can slow or even grind websites to a halt.
Please note: this results in simply a strain on the services provided by the website's server. There is no attack on our data and no breach of any member information.
What We're Doing About It
We have put a number of measures in place to identify and block these bots. One measure is a 'Verify You're Human' check box that will appear before you reach the forum. It is a simple check box (no pictures of buses etc to match
) that you click once. This will allow you to enter the site and use as normal. That's it. Pics of before and after below.Hopefully we won't need it for long but we will be fighting a running battle with the bots for the next few days (or more
). Bear with us but good news is the load is already down on the server and at the moment it's fast and working well. With luck it'll stay that way! Thanks
Craig
