Eric Posted May 19 Report Share Posted May 19 Hi folks, The server move I mentioned last month will begin soon: You'll know it's in progress when the forum is replaced with a static message, and you'll know it's back up when the message is gone and there's an update on this post. I've done a trial run of the migration and although it went smoothly, I expect a few bumps over the coming weeks as it starts getting real traffic. Thank you for your patience! 5 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eric Posted May 19 Author Report Share Posted May 19 Alright, everything is moved and at first glance, things appear to be working normally. A lot has changed behind the scenes--more than I'd normally like to change all at once, so please report any issues or broken features you encounter. 3 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lion EA Posted May 19 Report Share Posted May 19 Wow! Quick work, Eric. We appreciate your knowledge and hard work to make this move and to continue to monitor it for us. Thank you!! 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eric Posted May 19 Author Report Share Posted May 19 37 minutes ago, Lion EA said: Wow! Quick work, Eric. We appreciate your knowledge and hard work to make this move and to continue to monitor it for us. Thank you!! You are welcome! I ironed out and documented the process yesterday, and everything went smoothly this morning. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eric Posted May 19 Author Report Share Posted May 19 I've just set up rules to issue a captcha challenge for any visitor not from the US or Canada to help with the bots and spammers. I'm interested to know if anyone on the forums gets caught up in those--if not, I may block traffic from outside North America entirely. I wouldn't normally do something like that, but this is a very US-specific site. Can anyone think of a reason not to? 5 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Medlin Software, Dennis Posted May 19 Report Share Posted May 19 Avoids issues with not meeting the EU cookie type warnings. I block my site from non desired countries for the same reason. I also use a bot/vpn/proxy testing service too. It really cuts down on the non desired access. In my case, especially for blocking access to my order form from those who use VPN to try to test card numbers (almost always actually outside the US, but using a VPN). If you are interested in what I do, send me a direct email. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eric Posted May 19 Author Report Share Posted May 19 I'm using CloudFlare to manage DNS and as a proxy in front of the site. If I set up the rules to block traffic from outside of the US at that level, they won't even hit the web server. My only worry is that if a forum member is blocked for some reason, they're not going to have any way to let me know they can't get in. Since enabling the captcha 30 minutes ago (click the checkbox to prove you're not a robot), out of 910 challenges only 4 were solved. It may not be necessary to block the traffic completely if the challenge is effective against the type of traffic I'm trying to prevent. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Medlin Software, Dennis Posted May 19 Report Share Posted May 19 I tested cloudflare. Did not offer me anything I could not get from htaccess country allow. Still plenty of bots in the us which is why I added the ip testing service. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eric Posted May 19 Author Report Share Posted May 19 5 minutes ago, Medlin Software, Dennis said: I tested cloudflare. Did not offer me anything I could not get from htaccess country allow. Still plenty of bots in the us which is why I added the ip testing service. A few things I had done some country blocking with .htaccss on the old server, but never felt confident that I had a complete list of IP ranges The new server is running nginx, so no .htaccess Cloudflare keeps the traffic from even seeing the website, since they manage DNS and issue the challenge before a request to the server is made Aside from the country blocking, they're doing other bot detection magic, plus I'm adding custom web application firewall rules that are specific to the forum app. I'm a fan of doing as much of this as possible at the proxy, but I also have nginx rules set up for anything that gets through. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Medlin Software, Dennis Posted May 19 Report Share Posted May 19 Sounds great. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eric Posted May 19 Author Report Share Posted May 19 5 hours ago, Medlin Software, Dennis said: Sounds great. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Catherine Posted May 19 Report Share Posted May 19 Thank you for all your hard work for us! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Max W Posted May 20 Report Share Posted May 20 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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