Tarot History Forum

Yes I think we might have a new denial of service attack.

I don't know what to do about it. Most of them are labelled "guest", it doesn't say "bot".

I don't have an option to limit the number of guests visiting.

March 22, 20.00 .... 7129 visitors
Somehow it reached c9200, but I couldn't write it ....

March 23, 01.00 .... 635 visitors
March 23.06.00 .... 594 visitors
March 23, 11.00 .... 627 visitors

This was a rather quick fall ....this was written after the following post of firecatpickles

I know it isn't ideal, but it may help if you limit viewing any posts on the forum to those who have registered only. rif at cartomancy limits viewing our posts to registered members, and we don't have this problem.

When I log out I can see any posts on this forum. When I log out of cartomancyforum I have to log back in to see any post.

Perhaps start with a limited view of subforums for unregistered members and see what happens?

firecatpickles wrote: 22 Mar 2025, 23:26 I know it isn't ideal, but it may help if you limit viewing any posts on the forum to those who have registered only. rif at cartomancy limits viewing our posts to registered members, and we don't have this problem.

When I log out I can see any posts on this forum. When I log out of cartomancyforum I have to log back in to see any post.

Perhaps start with a limited view of subforums for unregistered members and see what happens?

I'm afraid that option would also cut us off from search engines, though. Many researchers who don't register find relevant posts that way.

March 23, 18.00, after staying some time around 500-600 visitors ...
we' ve now 1507 in the last 20 minutes
********************
March 24, 00-00
we've now 2375 in the last 20 minutes
Luckily ..... Not such big steps as yesterday
*******************
March 24. 11.00
we've now 2570 in the last 20 minutes
********************
March 24, 17.00
1425
.... that looks good
*********************
March 25, 02.00
2142
*********************
March 25, 05.00
2206
*********************
March 25, 09.00
2301

You can use CAPTCHA to help. Do you do your own coding?

Breakdown at March 25 in the afternoon, I saw a 9000, but couldn't write. Some life at 04.00 in the morning with interuption, March 26, value around 6500. But posting is interrupted.
I see a 7741 at 04.24. Some functions work occasionally.

March 26, 08.00 ... (3,5 hours later) the number of visitors dropped to 553

March 26, 16.00 ... 556

March 26, 18.14 there was ....

18.15 there are 11228 users online :: 6 registered, 0 hidden and 11222 guests
based on users active over the past 20 minutes

Registered users: Bing [Bot], Google [Bot], Huck, Magic Moon, Majestic-12 [Bot], Ross Caldwell

18.47 In total there are 8689 users online :: 4 registered, 0 hidden and 8685 guests

Then allover the night till March 27, 4 o'clock about 7000 vistors.
March 27.00, 07.00 Now about 500-600 users online 530

This is rather similar to the activities yesterday. Where in the world sleep the people at MEZ 06.00-16.00 ?
The visitor record was 19091 02 Mar 2025, 17:17, this 17.17 also fits with this information.
Somehow this looks like "from North America".
Well, let's think about it ....

March 27 14.20 .... 527 visitors in 20 minutes .... North America sleeps ....
A number of 527 visitors or more was very rare in the most time of this forum in the 17 years of its existence. Maybe 100 was a very normal value. In recent times I observed an improvement to values between 50-300 in 20 minutes, although the actual activities of us writers has gone down against earlier states. Maybe cause there are much more mobile phones now.
A real difference of the new carastrophic situation might be the word "trump".
We had "trump" used in our 25000 postings very often, the local Forum search engine has about it .... "The following words in your search query were ignored : trumpbecause they are too common words: trump" ... The recent historical situation around Mr. Trump has likely increased the number of "trump" questions for google with a very high factor, so that a lot of our new visitors simply misunderstood, that we 've nothing to do with Mr. Trump, and this specifically in Northamerica.
Btw: The termini "trump cards" often lead to modern playing card decks.

So let's see, what happens next.
March 27, 15.12 MEZ ... In total there are 535 users online ... North America sleeps

North America ileft the sleeping bag .... 17.30 MEZ and "In total there are 11436 users online"

Strange enough, although there are many visitors there were no difficulties till now ... today.

After a long night with some frustrating experiences (the Forum didn't work) we're again at the point, that North Amerrica sleeps ....

A visitor value below the 500 (long time not seen) , there are 484 users online

March 28, 07.00 MEZ

What shall we do with this?
Shall we distribute the headline "Tarot History Forum etc. in big Danger , caused by etc."

I don't believe the forum is in existential danger, but we do get denial of service overloads. It could indeed be because of the name of the current US president, as you theorized. There is, of course, nothing we can do about that. Even if we stopped using that word completely, there are hundreds of thousands of instances here.

The only thing that might work is to block all search engines from access to the forum while he is in office. I guess this would make the forum go dark from the web's perspective. Not an attractive option, since people search Tarot topics through here all the time.

It looks like we'll have to put up with the inconvenience of occasionally being locked out.