Lead Adventure Forum
General => Announcements and forum stuff => About Forum => Topic started by: anevilgiraffe on June 03, 2025, 07:27:04 AM
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I just posted a reply to a thread and the post button took me to one of those weird holding pages full of links for holidays and stuff like that...
dammit, should have screen shot it.
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It's happened to me a couple of times. It's inbetween pages on the site, it's asked me to click to agree to cookies, then it redirects me somewhere else. If I refresh the cookies page instead of clicking anything it brings me back to normality. Something's obviously wiggled its way in.
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happened again
(http://leadadventureforum.com/gallery/66/1462-030625073518.png)
Just as Cubs says, asks for cookies and then I'm looking at holidays for elderly singles...
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Happened to me too just now, actually when clicking on this thread.
I've seen this a couple of times before in 1.5 decades of browsing the LAF, but I have absolutely no idea what causes it...
...Just as Cubs says, asks for cookies and then I'm looking at holidays for elderly singles...
Go for it; this is your chance! ;D
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Go for it; this is your chance! ;D
Just remember, a replacement hip could mean greater flexibility.
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Will there be deck quoits and shuffleboard? Is Mrs Blenkinsop still looking for a husband? It's not the fucking Nolan Sisters as the house band again is it? Inquiring minds must know. Asking for a friend of course. ;)
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Got it as I logged in just now.
Cookie choices very poor - no mint and chocolate chip...
then the holidays for seniors ... cheeky buggers
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Hi all,
Joe here - I've been looking into this.
Earlier today, the site's database was automatically "locked" by our host, IONOS (for no reason as far as I can tell), which caused the website to be down for around two hours.
With it being locked, IONOS most likely saw a "dead" site and temporarily switched the website to a placeholder state, which is what you've been seeing every few clicks.
I'll keep investigating why it got locked in the first place and keep tabs on it, but for now, the best course is for everyone who's experiencing the weird redirects is to clear your browser/device caches and go from there.
Cheers!
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I've had a cookie consent page multiple times this evening - not had this before.
Big green accept cookies box in the middle of a white screen. Each time I have clicked back, and then the link again ad it has worked. But really quite irritating
I've also posted this twice now as the first one didn't save.
Third attempt as now got cookie page
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keep getting the same - cookies thing, then the same page listed above - in chrome and edge - had to clear my cookies for chrome, seems to have stopped it - i hope
nope not stopped it
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On Firefox (with adblocker), I'm getting blank white pages each time I click on a post/etc. I have to refresh for the page to load (including this page where I'm responding). Been consistent for the past 2-3 days.
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Yes, this has been happening to me also - cookie page and (just now) the random old age singles cruise page. Had the cookie page repeatedly via phone earlier, and now on the laptop too.
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Just started getting this too - including the first time that I tried writing this message. To describe it as “irritating” is a bit of an understatement.
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Clearing cookies / cache does not help - it is almost like Ionos servers are not in sync. and you get bounced around randomly.
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On Firefox (with adblocker), I'm getting blank white pages each time I click on a post/etc. I have to refresh for the page to load (including this page where I'm responding). Been consistent for the past 2-3 days.
Me too.
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it happens often here on my laptop too. Very annoying.
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Sadly almost every page, simply hitting refresh seems to get past it, sometimes two or three, refreshes but it goes away.
messing with posting though.
Hopefully site will get fully unparked soon and it will go away
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More often than not recently, when I click on a link to load a post, I get a blank page instead, with no content of any kind. Sometimes, if I reload the page a few times, it will give the page I want. But sometimes it just persists in loading a blank page.
I'm using Firefox in Windows 10.
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Yes I have the same issue, on posts, gallery and messages. Problem started yesterday evening (EU time) and can take 3 or 4 reload attempts to get the page to open.
I use Brave on Win10
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same here.
not a blank page tho' - more a 'we use cookies' page you're asked to agree to ... refreshing once or twice brings up the page-proper.
also getting that thing where you get a list of generic 'subjects' for surfing - as tho' the domain name has lapsed, or is yet to be registered.
started yesterday.
also on firefox - win 11
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I had this a few days ago, then it went away, but now it's back today :(
Blank page only (ad-blocker)
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Hi all,
The problem seemed to be with the .htaccess file associated with the website since the database went down. I've since fixed that, so please do feel free to clear your browser caches once again and see if you experience any blank screens or weird parked template style pages.
If you do, feel free to get back to me, and I'll investigate further.
Cheers,
Joe
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I've just clicked through a few forums and posts and it all seems fine now. 8)
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Seems fixed for me too. Phew!
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Until the moment I go to re-open this thread and get the cookie page again
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So browsed 6-8 pages fine. Posted on here to say OK. Then went to reopen this thread and got the cookie page, and now got that several times in a row
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Was about to say "fixed" after using MS Disk Cleanup, deleting Cache, deleting Broswer History. Browsed on other websites. Back here and then clicked to this and it happened again.
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Yes, still happening for me also.
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Me too. Even after a cleaning (cookies, cache, etc...).
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I'm also getting the same thing on multiple pages/threads, including this one, until I refreshed but it is getting annoying.
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it seems to be fixed. Browsing multiple threads and no more annoying cookie pages.
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Literally 20x the cookie screen has come up to try to block me from logging in to the page and then type this comment. Practically impossible to interact on the board.
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False joy, the cookie page is showing again >:( more than ever, I'd say !
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Yes, the cookie monster just ate my first reply. Took me a dozen or more refreshes to get here in the first place.
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Hi again,
Can people who are experiencing the weird Cookie pages post some screenshots of the page, please? I can't seem to replicate this at all on my end, and will need to see it to diagnose it. :)
EDIT: Also, screenshots of the inspect window will be great too!
Cheers!
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This is what it looks like.
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I don’t know if anything has been changed, but I’m not having the problem now. It was really bad about 6-8 hours ago, but I haven’t seen it happen in the past couple hours.
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Just happened to me now.
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Still happening and can’t post a screengrab of the cookie page :?
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Bugger, I jinxed it, it’s doing it again to me too!
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17 times between trying to log in and trying to post this. This comes up first. If you click 'Agree' it takes you to that holiday advert screen. If you try to refresh, sometimes it takes you to your page, sometimes it just brings up the cookies page again and you have to repeat several times to get to normality. It's a lot, lot worse than it was.
https://thumbs-eu-west-1.myalbum.io/photo/1k0/fbbc47d5-9843-4e9e-ad40-4b1ae66b4e15.jpg
Weirdly, it won't let me post this as a direct image, I have to put the link to the screenshot.
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yep, need to refresh dozens of times to get to any page now.
did give me plenty of opportunity to screengrab the pages I guess. o_o
(https://i.imgur.com/26RF0iH.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/vf14PWJ.png)
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(https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/54570742563_f8e54daeba_c.jpg) (https://www.flickr.com/gp/41874623@N00/0i1zm0995T)Screenshot_20250606_053219_DuckDuckGo (https://www.flickr.com/gp/41874623@N00/0i1zm0995T) by markndebs (https://www.flickr.com/photos/41874623@N00/), on Flickr
(https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/54570742988_d4b52b3fc3_c.jpg) (https://www.flickr.com/gp/41874623@N00/p2Rdd09P42)Screenshot_20250606_053233_DuckDuckGo (https://www.flickr.com/gp/41874623@N00/p2Rdd09P42) by markndebs (https://www.flickr.com/photos/41874623@N00/), on Flickr
(https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/54570742958_657a437190_c.jpg) (https://www.flickr.com/gp/41874623@N00/0FBL9v907s)Screenshot_20250606_053244_DuckDuckGo (https://www.flickr.com/gp/41874623@N00/0FBL9v907s) by markndebs (https://www.flickr.com/photos/41874623@N00/), on Flickr
These are what I'm getting on my mobile, on the laptop it's just continual blank screens.
Getting absolutely loads of redirects now, has taken over 20 minutes to put this post up.
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Same for me. Please sort asap.
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Ironically it was worse after clearing cookies
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Yes; posting has been an adventure the past few days, and has been getting worse too.
Interestingly, I've been trying to post screenshots dozens of times, and those posts never went through. What did happen regularly though, was this forum error message, which was new to me...
I still can't post the picture, even though I can post without it, apparently.
It states:
path cannot be empty
+++EDIT+++ I just attempted to upload it to the forum, as I was suspecting the uploading instead of linking was the issue, but when trying to put a picture in my gallery, I got the following error message:
implode(): Argument #2 ($array) must be of type ?array, string given
+++RE-EDIT+++ Something was done though, because the cookie and adds-pages are no longer appearing right now...
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I was having this problem yesterday evening & early this morning.
I am, at the moment, getting access to the LAF.
Typing this with fingers crossed. :D
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Hi all,
As of last night (2am-ish), I manually reset the DNS records and linked the domain back up to the webspace. So the time to live will have come into effect by now.
As of today, I have not experienced any parked pages on either my iPhone or desktop, whether on WiFi or mobile data. For me, it looks promising.
I would advise all to flush your DNS' on your devices, though, just to make sure you're seeing the most up-to-date website, and once again (I know this is getting long in the tooth now :?) clear your cache. Also, to be extra sure, for those who are using WiFi and not mobile data, feel free to restart your modems.
Keep me updated on your findings.
Thanks!
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Still can't attach pictures to posts; I just tried...
+++EDIT+++ Also; I'm still getting cookie messages dozens of times again now, after a short hour or so of them disappearing :?
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Problem is getting worse and worse.
I am guessing the "blank page" is what I get instead of the cookie notices other users are mentioning as my browser is set to automatically reject and block cookies and trackers. Usually happens in the background so I don't ever see the pop-ups.
Whatever has changed on LAF in the last few days that is causing this problem does not occur on any other site I have visited.
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Still happening on my mobile. I’ve cleared DNS, etc.
Is random when it happens. So can go to the main lead adventure index, click into colonial forum, and all is well. Then I clicked into specific forum post and get the purple page of weirdness. I’ll push back arrow, and click into that post. I can do this several times; click post, get purple page, click back, repeat. Eventually I get into the post and can read.
Finally, when I clicked the reply button on this thread I got the purple page. I’ll try and reset/clear cash again to see if it resolves the problem.
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Hiya,
I've only just got back into the website, but here's the update:
I am fighting tooth and nail with IONOS to explain to them that this is on their end of things, and this is absolutely ridiculous. They're "Currently investigating the problem."
From the database being locked a few days ago, to parking our domain, and then to fob it off as a user "caching/DNS issue" is safe to say... getting long in the tooth.
Once this problem is fixed and the site is stable for all, I'll be looking into moving the Lead Adventure Forum off this IONOS "Managed Server" because, as of right now, I have very limited functionality when it comes to actually fixing or controlling anything behind the scenes.
All of this to say... thank you for your patience thus far. However, there might be more downtime in the coming days as I work to fix this, as I'm the only one working on it currently.
Cheers,
Joe
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Thanks for the update Joe.
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Yes, thanks for working on this and keeping us posted.
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Thank you.
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Good luck Joe...
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So, roughly midnight local time (California) could not log into site at all - getting that image seen on page 1 of this thread. Just FYI. Perhaps down for fixing.
However, I am confused. And perhaps I missed an announcement. But I thought LAF was owned by Northstar - yet "Wargames Illustrated" is working to fix? Has there been a change in ownership or maybe just a farming out of website management? Perfectly understandable if so, LAF is not Northstar's north start after all.
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yes, very bad for me earlier on today - had to give up trying to access the site.
better atm.
*tried Chrome earlier on, wondering if it was Firefox, but the problems remained.
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Good luck Joe, efforts appreciated, sorry I cannot post up the screen and console captures, but its all sdparking redirection.
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First time since yesterday I was able to log on without the Ionos redirect page. Appreciate the update, but perhaps also broadcast that via other channels and forums too? If one can't get here, one can't know why the link is not working.
Really appreciate the work and diligence.
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I've merged the existing two topics and renamed the new thread to make it, hopefully, more visible.
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blimey, you could do without this nonsense, Joe. Hope it gets sorted out asap.
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Had one incident early today, but last few hours seem better?
I have not cleared anything. lol
iOS latest version.
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Hi!
Current sitrep:
I no longer believe it to be a parked domain nor a .htaccess issue. In fact I think the problem stems beyond that.
On 2 June, the website saw unusually large traffic and IONOS “locked” the database in an act of security. I’ve gone through the site analytics on those days and after to see that the LAF spikes exponentially. My guess is that the site was bot crawled and that led to server outages and downtime.
The redirects we’ve been seeing were IONOS’ automated dns parking filling in for a down website.
When on the phone to IONOS I told them to just restart the server in the meantime to see if we could return to some stability over the weekend.
Of course, I’m still worried that the bots will come back, but for now, it seems to be functioning and I can enjoy my weekend. lol
I’ll keep an eye on it regardless!
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Thank you for the status report. Sorry you dealing with this.
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Yep, seems much better now. Was unusable at lunchtime.
Do IONOS not have a WAF or similar in front of their sites (or is that a chargeable option)?
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LAF used to have Cloudflare in front of it, I'd strongly recommend readding that as bot protection and WAF.
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And there was I thinking someone had hired Bill Armintrout to do a software upgrade.
Christ knows where the page redirects would have gone to if he had of course. ;)
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And there was I thinking someone had hired Bill Armintrout to do a software upgrade.
Christ knows where the page redirects would have gone to if he had of course. ;)
lol
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I have had a couple of instances this morning.
Is this due to our AI Overlords slurping the contents of the site?
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Got the cookie page once on my way to read this. At time of writing, there are 20 named users online and almost 18000 guests...
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This morning some pages give me the re-direct, some, like this one, let me through. :(
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I host another small forum (shared hosting) and a month ago we had the same bot activity. Took a while to figure out what was going on (hosting support were useless) and after a lot of faffing with robot.txt files I eventually went the Cloudflare route and from that ID'd the main sources of the bot traffic (Singapore, South Korea, Brazil) and blocked them. It's been pretty stable since. It's only a small forum (phpbb3) so when we were getting 4000 visitors it killed the database.
I've since changed hosting and am now much happier...
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This morning some pages give me the re-direct, some, like this one, let me through. :(
Same here. Seems quite random which pages let me through and which go to the cookie page. Just trying the page again sometimes works.
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I'm getting the cookie page again this morning, perhaps one in 4 clicks on links.
What I have noticed is that on posting a reply, the reply posts, but the refresh of the page to show you your post often fails.
The huge number of guests spotted by Severain seems significant.
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It may be the huge number of guests is using up the server resources for valid responses/queries. so we get redirected as the server cannot respond.
a mild case of Distributed Denial of Service.
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problem/s seem pretty much the same unfortunately.
stats on the left hand-side is showing roughly 18,000 guests at the point of posting, which can't be correct, obvs.
do users need to start contributing so a better server/ software / security can be used?
or is the problem more endemic (i.e. bot arbitrariness).
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Previous post lost to the white void.
Been getting the same issue for the past couple of days, using Chrome.
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Fewer issues this morning but as others have stated, the problem is still there.
I also notice very strange "views" counts on posts, for example my somewhat obscure request for an OOP MSD card deck in the bazaar has apparently been viewed over 2000 times. Seems unlikely to be genuine as I have not been deluged with people offering to sell me decks.
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Hi hi!
I've recently moved us over to Cloudflare and activated all the relevant security measures. I'll get IONOS to restart the server here soon, but hopefully once full propagation completes, these pesky bots won't be back!
Once that's done, we'll be migrating to a different provider.
Cheers again for your patience!
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Thanks again for all of your work on this. Things seem better at the moment.
Weirdly, though, the notification email for this thread ended up in my spam folder. Don't remember that happening before (and obviously I get a few emails from that address). Marked it as safe and so on but thought it worth mentioning in case LAF has found its way on to a naughty list somewhere.... this did happen a few years back I think.
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Has anyone else noticed they have rather a lot of unread posts - I apparently have not read anything on the first page of the Cold War section...
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Has anyone else noticed they have rather a lot of unread posts - I apparently have not read anything on the first page of the Cold War section...
Yes, I just logged on to find every single thread I'd ever posted in pop back up in my "replies to your posts" list.
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Very strange! o_o Like Ultravanillasmurf, it seems that I've never read anything! :D
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yup, just noticed that, along with Cloudflare verifying I'm human on a regular basis.
The guest count is dropping, but still over 10,000...
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From other websites friends manage, especially those with some form of image sharing/hosting capacity, there have been a bunch of reports of sudden huge surges of guest visits. The current leading theory is that its AI training database scrapers for text/images. Cloudflare has been a big help for most of them, lets hope that goes here as well.
In fact, besides every post being new to me apparently, issues seem to have gone entirely now.
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Yes, no cookie pages for a while here either, but lots of unread posts. They do change to being read once read, though, so not really a problem.
Notification emails still going to spam, despite earlier instructions not to; but that may be an outlook thing, so who knows.
Guest count now at nine and a half thousand and (I think) falling...
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One other, rather annoying issue, is that clicking the "new" icon to go to the last unread post in a thread now drops me back to page 1 of the thread.
This only happens the first time, then it remembers again, but it looks like it's forgotten where I was on every thread I've ever looked at :(
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Is anyone getting that "Just checking it's you XXX" notice for a few seconds before the forum popping up? ??? ??? ???
It's making me nervous! >:(
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Yup, had it several times. Mostly it just moves on, but I did have to tick the "I'm not a robot" box at one of them. If captchas start to appear, rude words will be uttered!
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That's the normal cloudfare which I am used to from another forum. Happens only at the login for me.
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Yup, had it several times. Mostly it just moves on, but I did have to tick the "I'm not a robot" box at one of them. If captchas start to appear, rude words will be uttered!
Well, as long as it keeps us "safe", stops Spam etc I'm OK with it.
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Hi all,
Just another update:
I had to clear out some database tables due to bots overloading the error logs and all sorts. One of the tables emptied was "smf_topics", which housed what members have read what posts (among other things). I have a table backup stored from 2 June on my local machine at the office, but I won't have access to this until Monday, so I will reinstate that as soon as possible then.
As for the emails going into spam folders, I'll investigate this further on Monday as well.
Despite these things, hopefully, the Lead Adventure Forum is better now with the changes and fewer bots being annoying. If you have more feedback, let me know! :)
Cheers!
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Just wanted to say thanks, WI, for all your work on this.
I used to look at another forum, a bit more niche than LAF for sure (was for fans of a once-great band that can't keep its shit together), that recently got overrun with bots and had to close down completely.
So I very much appreciate your efforts to keep LAF going, as I'm sure we all do.
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guests had dropped to double figures last night, so that helped :)
However, they're sitting at 3494 and climbing this morning :(
Looks like they're not done with us yet. I do wonder what sort of AI they're going to get out of slurping all our posts ???
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Thank you for sorting this out, I am sure we can cope with working out what we have read until Monday.
Looks like they're not done with us yet. I do wonder what sort of AI they're going to get out of slurping all our posts ???
Scary, imagine an AI version of Carlos ^___^.
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Scary, imagine an AI version of Carlos ^___^.
lol lol lol
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On that, I have articles/posts that I have read before coming through even if I have read them and they come through at the start of the article.
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Thank you for sorting this out, I am sure we can cope with working out what we have read until Monday.Scary, imagine an AI version of Carlos ^___^.
No need to imagine..... and thank you for subscribing to Skynet. ;)
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Just finished clearing (one at a time :?)messages I have already read, three pages of them !!! :o
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Sadly I am now getting a path can’t be blank message when I try to attach a picture.
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Every time I come here I get a page saying it wants to verify I'm human.
Every time.
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Every time I come here I get a page saying it wants to verify I'm human.
Every time.
Same.
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Interesting, I've had it once and never since. I wonder if cloudflare marks specific IP clusters as having suspicious levels of visits and makes all of them verify or some other consideration like that, or if its just being a bother randomly for some.
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Every time I come here I get a page saying it wants to verify I'm human.
Every time.
That will be to filter out the bots. There are now only 130 guests on rather than the 14,000 that were there sometimes last week.
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The verification splash page could have a identifying bit indicating its purpose, to alleviate any anxiety when we first see it.
It is a slight nuisance, but I find that LAF pages actually loads a bit faster than before. No more waiting on the bots to get through the queue at the server before it gets to me!
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I'm getting the cloud flare page most visits, but only once, and it auto resolves then goes to the forum.
Adding branding to cloud flare is a good question - I suppose I am so used to having CF in place at work, I know that it is a good thing, so don't see it as a problem. But for many people they have no idea what CF is and what it does in protecting websites, so having something on its verification page that indicates it is legitimate would be good (but might be a chargeable option).
It is a real pain that 3rd party bots, either trying to gather info, or perhaps acting maliciously can cause such problems to a hobby site. I do wonder if the way the forum presents pages, with lists of links at the bottom, ends up being a bit of tar pit for bots, as they keep seeing new links to follow and then cycle round and round requesting pages. The view count on threads was enormous over the last few days.
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When I try and post something with an attached image I get an error come up saying "Path cannot be empty" and the post doesn't appear. But if I say the same thing again I get the "You've already posted this" error.
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It keeps verifying that I'm human, no idea how it does that as it doesn't ask
me to tick the boxes that have traffic lights in. lol lol lol
I get through to the LAF pages, so I'll put up with that.
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It is a slight nuisance, but I find that LAF pages actually loads a bit faster than before. No more waiting on the bots to get through the queue at the server before it gets to me!
Now you mention it, yeah!
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Yes, other than the cloudflare verification, it’s been flawless now - huzzah and such.
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It keeps verifying that I'm human, no idea how it does that as it doesn't ask
me to tick the boxes that have traffic lights in. lol lol lol
I get through to the LAF pages, so I'll put up with that.
There is a lot of clever logic now (probably AI) to help with this, without you needing to find traffic lights! IIRC it looks at your browsing cache and some other metrics, to work out if you are a real user rather than a bot. I few times CF will prompt you with a simple tick box to confirm you are real, which seems to be enough to trip up bots.
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It keeps verifying I am human too and I can't post any pics
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If I link to an external image
(https://i.imgur.com/9fPimLa.jpeg)
That seems to work (I'll try adding one next - but I don't normally do that)
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Trying to attach a 10mm orc comparison photo (not mine, but one of the right size I happened to have to hand)
This fails with the Error that the path can't be empty. But it doesn't say which path it is failing to resolve.
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I find it reassuring that I’m human. Whew! 🤖
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Oh thank god it's not asking us to identify foreign fire hydrants, traffic lights or 'crosswalks' (whatever they are)...
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Yay ! apparently I am human too.
mores the point the algorithms track mouse movement and other shtuff, that cannot be supposedly done by bots yet...
Whereas i am sure AI powered bots soon will be better at identifying hydrants, ladders, bikes, etc, etc, than any humans..
If it helps the site work, then I am a happy to be human
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Took me two cycles of clicking "I am not a robot" to get in this time. Does it know something I don't o_o
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The verification is fine at my end. Photo posting still seems to be an issue. Path empty warning comes up if you use attachments.
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Ditto for me.
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The verification is fine at my end. Photo posting still seems to be an issue. Path empty warning comes up if you use attachments.
Can confirm, same for me for attachments to posts photos.
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I'm glad I'm not the only person having issues posting photos. Everything seems OK now accessing LAF from my PC but when I try from my phone I get an irritating "verifying you are human" message plus I can't attach photos. Just receive a similar "error message".
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just catching up, had the verifying screen at first, everything ok as I go through posts, then literally moving to the (current) last page on this thread and have the verification thing again. Just a quick blip, but odd. Pretty sure I was still human in the intervening moments.
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It's always nice to have a little validation from others. :)
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I had to clear out some database tables due to bots overloading the error logs and all sorts. One of the tables emptied was "smf_topics", which housed what members have read what posts (among other things). I have a table backup stored from 2 June on my local machine at the office, but I won't have access to this until Monday, so I will reinstate that as soon as possible then.
Having those back would be nice.
Thank you for your work on the forum!
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indeed, thanks for looking at it...
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I've had the strange redirects too, and now when trying to post some pics to an ongoing thread, I get this odd error message:
"Path cannot be empty"
And the post won't go onto the boards.
Any suggestions to enable posting are appreciated.
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Hi all!
Little update:
As far as I can tell, the bots are still trying to get into the website :? however, with the added security features of Cloudflare, they aren't taking the site down.
I've also added the backup table for members' read/unread posts/boards. You might have to clear your site/browser cache for it to come into effect, though, on your end of things. :)
I also hear you on uploading attachments. I've been messing with this for a few hours, and for whatever reason, I can't seem to find why it's not letting us attach images to our posts. I'll keep on with it despite hitting a wall and hopefully have an update for you guys soon!
Cheers for your patience thus far and encouragingly kind words!
EDIT: I've also modified the Bot Protection challenge to remember you for a week. So, hopefully it's not too annoying for all of you now. :D
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Thanks for the gutsy work re: the forum WI- very much appreciated by all 8)
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Hi again,
After rolling back PHP versions on the site, it seems that image uploads work once again (see below a lovely picture of some random Morrisons).
Feel free to test it yourselves. :D
P.S. If there are any other problems about the site or LAF in general. Let me know!
Cheers,
Joe
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I find it reassuring that I’m human. Whew! 🤖
Are you sure? Decker thought he was true lt a human Bladerunner and not a replicant. I would go get an iris scan ASAP, you wouldn’t want to run out of lifespan before you were ready.
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I can confirm that I can now post photos again.
Thanks.
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Good news! Thank you Joe.
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Thanks for all your work Joe.
I'm still having to retrieve notification emails from spam, despite repeatedly marking them as safe; but this is only a very minor issue. Otherwise things seem to be working as normal.
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I get a “white screen” when I try to attach photos, so it’s still not working for me, but otherwise the site is very smooth now.
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Thanks for all your work Joe.
I'm still having to retrieve notification emails from spam, despite repeatedly marking them as safe; but this is only a very minor issue. Otherwise things seem to be working as normal.
You're very welcome.
I'll add the spam email to my to-do list and see if I can see what's causing that. Most likely to do with the move to Cloudflare. :)
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I get a “white screen” when I try to attach photos, so it’s still not working for me, but otherwise the site is very smooth now.
Hmm, it could be Memory Limit. I'll have a look. Meanwhile, maybe test image uploading on an incognito browser tab to see if it's a caching issue? :)
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Hmm, it could be Memory Limit. I'll have a look. Meanwhile, maybe test image uploading on an incognito browser tab to see if it's a caching issue? :)
Good suggestion, tried, no joy. Same white screen result.
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Still getting messages I have already looked at coming up.
I am deleting them, one at a time :o, is there a way of 'mass' deleting?
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Still getting messages I have already looked at coming up.
I am deleting them, one at a time :o, is there a way of 'mass' deleting?
Click "Show new replies to your posts" beside your avatar picture.
Just above the "Last Post" column there's a "Mark all messages as read" button. Clicking that will clear everything on the page.
Depending on how much has reverted, you may need to click through multiple pages
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Cheers Zemjw.
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Is the "checking if you are human thing" going away anytime soon? Thanks in advance...
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Is the "checking if you are human thing" going away anytime soon? Thanks in advance...
I thought it already had, I have not seen that pop up at all today in 5 or 6 visits to the site. Perhaps I should ask why I am not seeing it if others still are?
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Updated iOS on my phone and now I’m no longer seeing the not a bot screen
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- “I’m a human screen” gone now (no biggie)
- was able to post attached photo today!
Hooray! Thanks for all the effort to fix all this stuff. :)
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Yes, thanks to the guys who did all the fixing.
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Indeed! Very grateful for the prompt attention.
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Still getting the “are you human” screen here. Not sure I am, but it’s nice to know someone is checking :D
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It's stopped on Firefox on Windows and Chrome on Android for me, but I was still getting it last night on Firefox on Ubuntu.
The guest count seems much more reasonable, and I suspect the record online count of 23,339 on June 4th will be difficult to beat :D
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A few hours ago, the Human verification all the time, repeated... and unable to get through. :-[
Then, now only once and I was given access. :)
Also, what's a bit weird is that it appeared in French although I always interact in English with English-language forums
and my Firefox browser uses the Breton language pack, or English by default.
(https://www.argad-bzh.fr/argad/sk/humain-LAF.png)
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I think that is laudable cultural sensitivity in the part of cloudflare. :)
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I've stopped seeing the 'verifying you are human' page - which is good. Suspect this means that either Cloudflare has seen enough of my device / IP interactions to put me in the safe pot, or / as well the overall level of bot activity has dropped off as they are being batted away by CF, so have gone to find something more interesting (too them).
Patrice - I suspect it is as mundane as you have an IP address in France, so get a localised page.
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Uploading pictures now working again for me
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I'm still getting the "prove you're human" checkbox on my desktop first time I switch on and check the site :(
I'm running Firefox on an Ubuntu machine, if that helps.
Work Windows laptop and android chrome are fine
Trying to prview this message threw the checkbox up again, and a longer than usual delay (maybe I'm more machine than usual tonight)
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Attachment of photos is now white screening failure for me, again. o_o
A thought: posted a photo that was .jpg and it worked. But .jpeg is NOT working. o_o
SOLUTION : had to convert file to .jpg by exporting to Files and then converting. Weird.
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Hi all,
The "Human verification" page is to safeguard the website from ongoing bot attacks. I know it's annoying, but it is a "necessary evil" at the moment.
Attachment of photos is now white screening failure for me, again. o_o
A thought: posted a photo that was .jpg and it worked. But .jpeg is NOT working. o_o
SOLUTION : had to convert file to .jpg by exporting to Files and then converting. Weird.
As for JPEGs, I'll add them to the accepted file types for attachments.
Cheers!
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Hi all,
The "Human verification" page is to safeguard the website from ongoing bot attacks. I know it's annoying, but it is a "necessary evil" at the moment.
As for JPEGs, I'll add them to the accepted file types for attachments.
Cheers!
Awesome, thanks! Makes it about 5 minutes less work to convert files. So weird that .jpg and .jpeg are “different”.
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Awesome, thanks! Makes it about 5 minutes less work to convert files. So weird that .jpg and .jpeg are “different”.
They're the same, so just renaming from jpeg to jpg should be fine. All the conversion is doing is likely reducing the image quality further :(
The different extension is because of the old dos extension limit of 3 characters, something unix has never cared about and windows finally got the memo about :)
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They're the same, so just renaming from jpeg to jpg should be fine......
It is absolutely fine to simply rename them.
Also it helps to remove the "s" from the "https" part of the url when linking images. Seems to reduce the "pictures not showing" problem.
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[quote :Dauthor=zemjw link=topic=149562.msg1922319#msg1922319 date=1750101055]
They're the same, so just renaming from jpeg to jpg should be fine. All the conversion is doing is likely reducing the image quality further :(
The different extension is because of the old dos extension limit of 3 characters, something unix has never cared about and windows finally got the memo about :)
[/quote]
Yes, if I was on a laptop I could do that. On iOS I have to move the photo to Files and then convert it.
You’ll never take my Apple stuff until I’m long dead … I’ve been a Mac user since 1991 lol
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For some reason and LAF notification emails are going straight to my Junk folder which is odd as they've never done this before. It still happens despite me adding the email to my Safe Sender list.
Thanks for all your help.
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For some reason and LAF notification emails are going straight to my Junk folder which is odd as they've never done this before. It still happens despite me adding the email to my Safe Sender list.
Thanks for all your help.
This may not be an LAF issue, emails from my bank amd royal mail deliveries are going to my junk despite being fine for years.
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This may not be an LAF issue, emails from my bank amd royal mail deliveries are going to my junk despite being fine for years.
I'm only seeing this happen routinely with LAF emails, though an occasional email from elsewhere does sometimes end up in junk; but every email from LAF has gone there for a while now. I keep marking them as safe, and perhaps the message will get through eventually... It's a very minor problem, though. Otherwise things are pretty much back to normal, and many thanks again for fixing this.
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I'm only seeing this happen routinely with LAF emails, though an occasional email from elsewhere does sometimes end up in junk; but every email from LAF has gone there for a while now. I keep marking them as safe, and perhaps the message will get through eventually... It's a very minor problem, though. Otherwise things are pretty much back to normal, and many thanks again for fixing this.
Can you add a filter/rule to your email client to put the emails into a folder? That may help
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Yes, if I was on a laptop I could do that. On iOS I have to move the photo to Files and then convert it.
The Files app in iOS has an option to rename the file. Select it in Files and then either do a long press or select the "..." menu. There is a rename option there
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I'm only seeing this happen routinely with LAF emails, though an occasional email from elsewhere does sometimes end up in junk; but every email from LAF has gone there for a while now. I keep marking them as safe, and perhaps the message will get through eventually... It's a very minor problem, though. Otherwise things are pretty much back to normal, and many thanks again for fixing this.
It's the same for me, no other emails (that I want) are going to Junk. As Severian says it's not a big problem in the grand scheme of things.
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Just to say that I had a notification email arrive in my inbox this afternoon, rather than going to junk as they've been doing for a few weeks now. So that's good.
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Same here...in fact it was the notification of Severian's post which did it. Earlier in the day they all went straight to junk.
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Hi all,
Lil update!
We were missing some DNS records after moving to Cloudflare. That's sorted now, so you should (as many of you have reported) start seeing emails fly into your inbox.
Additionally, I would like to note that I am currently working on upgrading and migrating LAF to a new host in the background. It'll take some time as I'm the only one working on it, but expect cool stuff on the horizon (given everything goes to plan)! EDIT: The site will still be live until I'm ready to pull the trigger on the move, so don't worry about downtime.
Thanks for your patience thus far!
Cheers once again,
Joe
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Thanks for all your help Joe, I doff my cap to you sir.
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Unrelated to LAF but I have noticed quite a few sites I frequent now showing the same captcha validation page as here, where previously there had been nothing of the sort. Someone mentioned the lots of sites are currently facing massing strain from the amount of bot accounts viewing them to scrape content, so is this a widely rolled out defense against that?
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Yes, Cloudflare is a very widely used method of protecting websites (as well as offering other functions). So it will crop up a lot around the internet.
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I can log on fine on my PC (here I am), but I keep getting in a loop with the "verify you're a human" page on my iPad.
Solutions'?
Ta
Ben
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I often use an iPad to access LAF and it’s fine
I’ve had more instances of the verifying page today than for ages. I think just keep retrying. It maybe cloud flare is detecting more bad activity today and screening at a higher level. I also think CF will learn about devices to understand if they are trusted.
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Just checked, Still in a loop. Been like this for a couple of hours now.
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Did the same to me but has let me in now.
Andrew
BeneathALeadMountain
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It gave me the run around for several hours. :'(
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Hi all,
Last night (around 3 am onwards), we got bot crawled again by a new set using "Yandex".
I had to get our host to restart the web server today to get it back online. Currently, I have Cloudflare on the "Under Attack" (which is why you're seeing lots of verification pages), and I've blocked where those bots are coming from, but it seems that these bots keep switching up their tactics and come from different places every few weeks. A real shame, but I'm on it! Thanks for your patience thus far!
Thanks,
Joe
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Well done Joe. Keep up the good work!
Andrew
BeneathALeadMountain
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This morning (UK time) I got bounced into the holding page.
I got the Are You Human check and then got in.
Android tablet.
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Just checked, Still in a loop. Been like this for a couple of hours now.
Do you have 3rd party cookies disabled?
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Well done Joe. Keep up the good work!
Andrew
BeneathALeadMountain
Plus one to that.
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Last night (around 3 am onwards), we got bot crawled again by a new set using "Yandex".
Just curious, but what's Yandex? All I found about Yandex was a Russian company. Are there many regular users here from Russia?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yandex
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Yandex is a legitimate Russian search engine crawler. It does tend to be a little aggressive.
Under attack mode is usually overkill, applying targeted rules to slow down certain bot categories, and making sure the botbot fight mode is on, plus the usual OWASP ruleset, should be sufficient for most purposes.
Its slightly trickier for LAF as traffic is presumably genuinely international. I have seen some illegitimate traffic from specific countries on my projects, and can often just block the whole country safely.
In this case, perhaps applying throttling over a certain threshold for certain countries might work instead.
Aside from all that, I've been getting the DNS parking page intermittently again for LAF...
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This am still couldn't get in on Safari on my iPad, so I went in on DuckDuckGo, that worked for a couple of hours, then now that's stopped working. Only access now on Edge on my PC.
This is becoming a proverbial pain.
Ben
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It was unavailable again this morning UK time on my work machine, but it's back for now :D
Maybe we need to adopt the Magrathean approach to unwelcome visitors. A friendly "thanks for your interest" followed by a couple of nukes if they don't take the hint. Sadly, "oh no, not again" was all too appropriate this morning :(
Thanks to the support folks for fighting them off, again
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Yandex is a legitimate Russian search engine crawler. It does tend to be a little aggressive.
Under attack mode is usually overkill, applying targeted rules to slow down certain bot categories, and making sure the botbot fight mode is on, plus the usual OWASP ruleset, should be sufficient for most purposes.
Its slightly trickier for LAF as traffic is presumably genuinely international. I have seen some illegitimate traffic from specific countries on my projects, and can often just block the whole country safely.
In this case, perhaps applying throttling over a certain threshold for certain countries might work instead.
Aside from all that, I've been getting the DNS parking page intermittently again for LAF...
Hi again, all,
I've gone ahead and disabled the "Under attack" mode with Cloudflare to make it less annoying for you to use the forum. I've hardened security using caching rules (so that Cloudflare takes pressure off the origin server), added rate limiting, certain countries have to pass a JS check, and I've added clamps on hot paths such as the login and search pages. I'll keep monitoring but so far, the origin is not serving as much which is great! I'll keep you posted!
Cheers,
Joe
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Thanks Joe, it's certainly been reliable so far this afternoon :)
Gotta get my LAF fix into my veins lol
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Been happening to me again, Monday 25th and Wednesday 27th.
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Thanks for the work in keeping things working and thanks for the explanations which I find riveting and entirely incomprehensible… :)
Doug
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Unrelated to LAF but I have noticed quite a few sites I frequent now showing the same captcha validation page as here, where previously there had been nothing of the sort. Someone mentioned the lots of sites are currently facing massing strain from the amount of bot accounts viewing them to scrape content, so is this a widely rolled out defense against that?
Correct, the Wargamers forum (effectively 20mm forum) were being hit by 130000 hits per day, wrecking our bandwidth, so the catchpa was added to get it back under 10000
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Similar problem with my iPad and Mac desktop. But not if I Google ‘lead adventure forum’. Have now added LAF to Favourites on iPad and it seems to work.
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had no access to the site for basically a day, but not sure which now as been working pretty much solid day/night this week
But simply had parking page and no access.
Not sure if was getting the more messed up because of no LAF fix, coffee, work stress etc. had some sleep this morning so improved slightly :D
Even more so as LAF works. Thanks for dealing with it
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Looks like it's happening again? 'LAF Under Siege: part 2' - at least we know what's happening (I think).
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So what's been going on here recently?
This site seems to be having more breakdowns than Britney Spears.
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So what's been going on here recently?
This site seems to be having more breakdowns than Britney Spears.
explained in this thread - https://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=150434.0
basically, the bots came back >:(
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Getting verified just about every page at the moment - presumably I'm clicking too fast...
Anyways, it's not just us - https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/29/ai_web_crawlers_are_destroying/
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Got the error last night again.
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So what's been going on here recently?
This site seems to be having more breakdowns than Britney Spears.
With less nude photo's being shared, which is not a bad thing with wargamers lol
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I've been having issues over the last two days when I log in on both my phone and laptop. The cloudfare page loads as normal but sits for around 10 seconds before telling me it's taking longer than normal, then after a couple of seconds it thanks me for verifying I'm human (no tick box having been shown) and loads the page and I'm in.
I've cleared my cache and come in to the page from a Google search but still get the same?
I have ran full virus and spyware/mallware check on both my phone and laptop with a clear result.
Jim
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Gentlemen,
One of our members Flodden 1513 has asked me to inform the Moderators that he is locked out of LAF.
His email address is not currently recognised by forum software and he cannot access LAF.
Thank you for your attention.
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I've been having issues over the last two days when I log in on both my phone and laptop. The cloudfare page loads as normal but sits for around 10 seconds before telling me it's taking longer than normal, then after a couple of seconds it thanks me for verifying I'm human (no tick box having been shown) and loads the page and I'm in.
I've cleared my cache and come in to the page from a Google search but still get the same?
I have ran full virus and spyware/mallware check on both my phone and laptop with a clear result.
Jim
The same. I can log in on my laptop OK but, as above, on my phone the cloudflare page page sits a while then tells me it is taking longer,
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Well done seems in order. All seems to be working.
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Round of applause guys, well done. Might be a few teething issues, but I think we all appreciate your hard graft.
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Yay its back - thanks for the fix guys