We're Admitting New Inmates, for now.
I'm allowing new registrations again, although guest viewing is still turned off. I've also turned some of the features back on. Either what Jason H. at IPB did worked or it didn't. He wasn't all that optimistic. We're in a gray area when it comes to size. Although the forum is not that busy on a daily basis when it comes to users, the number and size of the posts makes it a moderately-sized IPB site.
I'll be checking the stats. Guest viewing might be part of the problem due to bots of one form or another. Although the forum isn't being spammed, the bots are still trying. Jason thinks that might be a big part of the problem, and it agrees with data I saw on previous occasions when activity spiked.
That got me thinking. People who do search engine spamming are always slurping up chunks of my medication pages. They used to use the same couple of bots, because my name, "Crazy Meds" and the same chunks of text, usually from the disclaimer, would show up on hundreds of sites promoting dubious 'pharmacies.' Bots are now cheaper and more sophisticated, so "Crazy Meds" and many different chunks of text show up for each 'medication' the spammers are trying to sell. Thus you can't see the extent of the problem like you used to. Plus the fragments show up only on Google. You usually don't see the text if you go to the blog / domain / whatever, as it's usually an automatic redirect to another page or site.
While that has nothing at do directly with the problem of the forum, those bots probably ignore robots.txt, which means they'll hit the forum and cause trouble. Because they may or may not be identified as bots they'll be doing all sorts of shit at once, making the forum work as if there were fifty or sixty people on at once, not ten.
The blog spammers' bots are more sophisticated as well, albeit still nonsensical. They'll post things like "Crazy Meds Lexapro Side Effects" on a blog with a link to a third-level domain or page with a name that is the same as the phrase, instead of burning an entire domain with a name like crazymedqzs.com
That search engine and blog spamming, combined with the usual e-mail spamming and the very domain name is why e-mail from me and the forum is blocked by most spam filters.
In any event, if I can't get the amount of CPU time used to no more than 1.00% on an average over a 24 hour period either the forum goes away or I need cash to move over to a virtual private server. Once a sales rep gets back to me I'll know how much cash I'll need.
I'll be checking the stats. Guest viewing might be part of the problem due to bots of one form or another. Although the forum isn't being spammed, the bots are still trying. Jason thinks that might be a big part of the problem, and it agrees with data I saw on previous occasions when activity spiked.
That got me thinking. People who do search engine spamming are always slurping up chunks of my medication pages. They used to use the same couple of bots, because my name, "Crazy Meds" and the same chunks of text, usually from the disclaimer, would show up on hundreds of sites promoting dubious 'pharmacies.' Bots are now cheaper and more sophisticated, so "Crazy Meds" and many different chunks of text show up for each 'medication' the spammers are trying to sell. Thus you can't see the extent of the problem like you used to. Plus the fragments show up only on Google. You usually don't see the text if you go to the blog / domain / whatever, as it's usually an automatic redirect to another page or site.
While that has nothing at do directly with the problem of the forum, those bots probably ignore robots.txt, which means they'll hit the forum and cause trouble. Because they may or may not be identified as bots they'll be doing all sorts of shit at once, making the forum work as if there were fifty or sixty people on at once, not ten.
The blog spammers' bots are more sophisticated as well, albeit still nonsensical. They'll post things like "Crazy Meds Lexapro Side Effects" on a blog with a link to a third-level domain or page with a name that is the same as the phrase, instead of burning an entire domain with a name like crazymedqzs.com
That search engine and blog spamming, combined with the usual e-mail spamming and the very domain name is why e-mail from me and the forum is blocked by most spam filters.
In any event, if I can't get the amount of CPU time used to no more than 1.00% on an average over a 24 hour period either the forum goes away or I need cash to move over to a virtual private server. Once a sales rep gets back to me I'll know how much cash I'll need.
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