Recently as of this week there's been quite a slow load out on the website, with a 503 Service Unavailable error. Is there anything malicious happening or has the traffic increased? There's only about 40 active users as of 5/26/25, so I wonder what's causing the issue.

I had noticed the site being slow and erratic recently as well. @MissS said they are aware and addressing it.
Does seem better this morning.

Actually @KaguyaCloud it is a massive bot attack, which is affecting other sites as well.
In a way that's good news for us, because many heads will find permanent solutions more easily than if it was just one site being targeted.
We did have some massive surges in 'guest' numbers over 1,000 (actually bots) and associated with the initial slowdowns, but yesterday it was really bad without any large number present at all, so more associated with what the bots are doing or trying to do. So I hope we've completely defeated them, but I wouldn't be surprised if they try to get around our defenses again.

Well at least isn't drones.

Here is a picture of the problem. Right now there are 135 users and only 9 of them are registered. Some of the 125 guests will be lurkers but most of them are bots.
On May 22 we had 3521 users all at the same time. If I recall, only 7-9 were members, some were lurkers and the majority were bots.
The bots are trying to get into everything. They are trying to post, access the control panel, and are reading everything they can.
As bower said, we are not the only site under attack. There are many many of them and from all sorts of hosting sites. We are all working together to find a permanent fix. We find something that works and then the bots find a way around it. It's frustrating as a user for the slow speed and it's frustrating as an admin to find a fix that works. Unfortunately, this is not going to be solved in a day although I wish it would.

MissS wrote: ↑Tue May 27, 2025 9:04 am Right now there are 135 users and only 9 of them are registered. Some of the 125 guests will be lurkers but most of them are bots.
On May 22 we had 3521 users all at the same time. If I recall, only 7-9 were members, some were lurkers and the majority were bots.

Is there a way to implement captchas for first time viewers of the site as a means of filtering out the bots?

Rajun just tried something new and it's working much better for me now.

glad to see the site is back up.

I was wondering about how slow the site was a couple days ago. Thanks to the moderators for working to fight these intrusions!

A big thank you to Rajun and all the Mods for working so hard on this. I couldn't get the site to come up at all last night along with some other sites. It's good to be "home" again!

Must add my thanks to @Rajun Gardener and Mods for all the fabulous work. It's good to know that it's not just the dodgy system here, which I thought might have been the case, timed as it was with network works.

Pathetic that people feel compelled to try to sabotage fun and informative sites like TJ by sending out the bots. Thanks for all the Mods are doing!

Gardadore wrote: ↑Wed May 28, 2025 8:51 am Pathetic that people feel compelled to try to sabotage fun and informative sites like TJ by sending out the bots. Thanks for all the Mods are doing!

It's the equivalent of destructive teenagers before computers.
Like kids going around shooting out windows with BB guns.

Most don't know that I'm really a bot.

Not being a computer person of any sort, I am wondering if this has anything to do with artificial intelligence stuff?

Anyways, a big ol' Thanks ! to all the hard work done to keep this site up and running by all youse guys !!

Tormahto wrote: ↑Wed May 28, 2025 2:23 pm Most don't know that I'm really a bot.

So you believe that you have succeeded in hiding this? NOT

Tormahto wrote: ↑Wed May 28, 2025 2:23 pm Most don't know that I'm really a bot.

yep. but you are a nice one...give that bot a cookie