Tarot History Forum

Ross Caldwell wrote: 14 Apr 2025, 17:25

Robert wrote: 14 Apr 2025, 15:45 Don't be afraid, it really should work fine. The nightmare is all over now, Ross, you are free to access the site again without constant chaos. Do switch to ProSilver in your user control panel if you hate the theme I'm using, it will be more like what you're used to (ugly.. ).

Yay, Chrome works!

Posting from Chrome.

HURRAH!

Robert wrote: 14 Apr 2025, 17:31

Ross Caldwell wrote: 14 Apr 2025, 17:25

Robert wrote: 14 Apr 2025, 15:45 Don't be afraid, it really should work fine. The nightmare is all over now, Ross, you are free to access the site again without constant chaos. Do switch to ProSilver in your user control panel if you hate the theme I'm using, it will be more like what you're used to (ugly.. ).

Yay, Chrome works!

Posting from Chrome.

HURRAH!

Seriously. Pop the cork!

As for ProSilver, I only took that because it was default. This theme you've chosen is easy on the eyes, and powder-blue and blue tones make me happy, like a day by the pool.

Recently arrived ...

In total there are 4212 users online :: 8 registered, 0 hidden and 4204 guests
based on users active over the past 20 minutes

Most users ever online was 4947 on 14 Apr 2025, 17:15

Registered users: Ahrefs [Bot], Amazon [Bot], Bing [Bot], Google [Bot], Huck, Robert, Ross Caldwell, Semrush [Bot]

Huck wrote: 14 Apr 2025, 17:38 Recently arrived ...

In total there are 4212 users online :: 8 registered, 0 hidden and 4204 guests
based on users active over the past 20 minutes

Most users ever online was 4947 on 14 Apr 2025, 17:15

Registered users: Ahrefs [Bot], Amazon [Bot], Bing [Bot], Google [Bot], Huck, Robert, Ross Caldwell, Semrush [Bot]

Must the be updated count. 2 March 2025 had 19803 or something if I remember correctly.

Oh, that is high. Will look and see. It's been so quiet!!
Semrush was trying to post, so have deactivated it.

Google has only indexed a small fraction of our pages, so it is currently trying to index about 3000 pages or so... but it's been doing it for a couple of days now. This is a real peak, I've kept my eyes on things and it's been around a couple of hundred for the past few days since updating.
Hmmm....

If you look through "Visitor Record" in "Reception", you will get an impression, what was going on since January 22.

There was one record and another record and a third (2nd of March) and this was "19091 visitors in 20 minutes". After some research it became relative clear, that this should be an appearance of AI activities. We had various disruptions , which stopped any activity in the forum for longer periods.

I used the Visitor Record thread to talk to the agent of these AI activities. In this one-way communication somehow the state was reached, that there were only 4000 or less visitors for a few days. This did run for us without disruptions. Look at the post of the visitor thread.
Then you started to refresh the Forum, and the number did fall to the old usual state (around 200). And it seems, that then the AI activities returned to the 4000 deal.

Did you understand that ?

************

Added later:

This is the new value, below 4000. And, if I predict it correctly, it will stay at this level.

Who is online
In total there are 3962 users online :: 5 registered, 0 hidden and 3957 guests
based on users active over the past 20 minutes

Most users ever online was 4947 on 14 Apr 2025, 17:15

Registered users: Ahrefs [Bot], Amazon [Bot], Bing [Bot], Google [Bot], Huck

It's my impression that there was a huge attack on many forums and sites starting in early March. Personally, I wonder if it is AI related. I've been watching since we updated the site, and considering that we have opened the registration again, whatever is happening, they're aren't (yet?) getting through.

Sucks to try to be a good guy in a world full of evil minions.

I've made a change which might affect whether you see posts as read or not as now it is being handled by the server rather than cookies. Hopefully, this works and will things easier for users once you've refreshed. Consider marking the forums as read (there should be a link to do so at the bottom of the forum page).
Cheers,
Robert

It seems to have been a coordinated wave. I can't remember exactly when I turned off the automatic registration. This killed the bots/zombie accounts. But the wave of denial of service bot-attacks as "visitors" came later.

If you look at the new members signing up and going immediately (inactive), there are only three since 12 April. One imitates a real user-name, "NellyNelly". Before we got up-to-date, there would have been about 100 zombie accounts in two days.

All of the new registers over the past few days have been... me. I keep testing to make sure that that people can indeed register whilst the anti-spam and reCaptcha are all working. So far so good... but it means no one real has actually tried to register in the past few days, as far as I can tell.

We really should welcome whoever does sign up as an actual real new user!