Random downtimes on forums

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Chrisax
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Posts: 23046
Joined: Wed Apr 19, 2006 1:08 pm

Random downtimes on forums

Post by Chrisax »

We are currently experiencing random downtimes on our forums, as well as on Alliance forums that we host.

This is the first time ever, and we don't know the cause yet.

We are working on it and we have contacted the company hosting the web server (bots servers are not affected).

I'm sorry for the issue and we'll fix it as fast as possible.
User avatar
Chrisax
President
Posts: 23046
Joined: Wed Apr 19, 2006 1:08 pm

Re: Random downtimes on forums

Post by Chrisax »

We identified the main issue as an absolutely massive crawling and indexing of the site by some bots, and "sucking" content from other bots. Beyond "good manners". (We are very regularly indexed by Google or Bing without any issue.)

Main issues are Huawei's bot Petalbot, ex-AspiegelBot (https://www.hypernode.com/blog/performa ... ine-stores), and SEMrushBot

I might be related to the fact some companies have been kicked out the Google / Bing sphere and are aggressively building their own data banks.

Anyhow, we took a first series of measures, and we're ready for more if this is not enough. :guns: :)
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