Forums slow?

[Lemming]

Has anyone else found that logging in, opening topics etc. has been very sluggish over the past few days? I'm wondering whether it's a problem in my house or at the server.

[Not_the_monk]

Yes, I thought it really was quite sluggish maybe a day or two ago. Seems more like normal right now however.

[jiffa]

Its lagging a bit when opening up, thought it was just me

[Lemming]

Seems like we have some kind of database issue.
I'm busy for the next couple of days so hope it doesn't get any worse.
I'll look into it after that.

[Lemming]

I still don't know what's going on here.

It seems that the problem started around 22nd May. From that date onwards the forums have been maxing out the permitted amount of CPU capacity. When it hits the max it gets capped and that's what causes the delays.

The question is why it's suddenly using so much processor power. It's not a particularly power hungry application and the number of users hasn't increased dramatically since 22 May.

The server company are convinced that it's a software issue but, as far as I know, nothing changed around 22 May. They updated the PHP (the software platform that the phpBB forum software runs on top of). That briefly broke the forum altogether yesterday but they've sorted that now. I'll update the phpBB software soon because there is a new version available but I'm not convinced that's the cause.

For some reason it hasn't been maxing out over the past couple of hours. Again, I'm not aware of anything changing. Fingers crossed it stays this way.

[Lemming]

This is still going on and still mystifying me.

[Lemming]

This remains bizarre but has changed a little.

I tried updating the phppBB software to the latest version and also blocked a few robots - notably Facebook - but none of that seemed to make any difference. The number of guests viewing the forums dropped dramatically but the madness on the server remained the same.

Then, a few days ago, the problem mysteriously largely stopped. No idea why. Weirdly it still happens for an hour or so around about 1am UK time every night. I can't see anything special about the activity on the forums around that time and the server company have no idea either.

[Lemming]

Update -

This is still happening to some extent. The 1am blast still happens every night but I noticed a bigger issue creeping in recently.

The hosting company has given me shell access to the operating system so I can investigate further. I'm pretty sure it's caused by robots overloading the system.

I blocked a new Facebook robot the other day and that seems to have helped.

[Kermit]

What happened to the forum last few days? Did the tangerine man and the x geezer take us down .

[Lemming]

Same problem.
This time masses of bots with little in common to block.
It slowed us down so much that it would often time out.
For time being I've applied some sledge-hammer blocking.
This may have shut out lots of real people and may not work for long. We'll see.

[avfc-herbalist]

The forums timed out for me a few times today around 1pm. I then noticed that the most ever users online was 2440 on Wed Jul 23, 2025 12:43 pm that's a lot of bots.

Running a lot faster now though Lemming!

[brufy]

Site is pretty much unusable at the moment. Constant time outs…

[Lemming]

The problem is caused by swarms of bots descending like locusts. Apparently they are scraping data to feed their large language models. Traditional methods of blocking them no longer work because they constantly evolve to evade blocks.

When I log into the forums and notice a large number of guests and no named users I frequently do a 'Purge all sessions', which logs everyone out and disrupts the bots for a short while. Immediately after doing that the forums become super fast again. The problem is that any real members get logged out, which is why I check who's logged in first.

The attacks seem to come in waves so sometimes all runs smoothly. When the bot activity becomes too extreme it causes the server resources to max out, which is why everything becomes slow or stopped.

[Jolly]

The problem is caused by swarms of bots descending like locusts. Apparently they are scraping data to feed their large language models. Traditional methods of blocking them no longer work because they constantly evolve to evade blocks.

When I log into the forums and notice a large number of guests and no named users I frequently do a 'Purge all sessions', which logs everyone out and disrupts the bots for a short while. Immediately after doing that the forums become super fast again. The problem is that any real members get logged out, which is why I check who's logged in first.

The attacks seem to come in waves so sometimes all runs smoothly. When the bot activity becomes too extreme it causes the server resources to max out, which is why everything becomes slow or stopped.

Do you mind me asking how much your hosting costs are? Maybe its time to move to a host with better security?

[Lemming]

If you know of a hosting service that has some means of identifying these AI bots, please let me know. Moving the sites would be a big job but not impossible if there was some advantage.

We're currently with Hosting Heroes, whom I inherited from HullDJ. Their servers are very fast and reliable.

I'm not an expert but I'm not sure what 'security' would mean in this context. There are some commercial services that claim to help but there are pros and cons to using them. They usually seem to require taking over the whole domain so all of the traffic to the ACD would pass through them, not just the forums.

This latest generation of bots don't appear to be deliberately malicious, just reckless and selfish. I'm not sure that any automated system could recognise and stop them but, as I say, I'm no expert so, if anyone knows better, I'd love to hear from you.