End-of-January Update

[willy]

As you may already be aware, I made a change to the server earlier. I've noticed there are settings that need some fine-tuning to prevent things like "Too Many Requests" errors from hitting us. With that in mind, I thought it would be helpful to have a thread to explain what I did and why I did it a little more clearly as well as to make a place for people to share feedback about issues that arise.


1) Willy, What Have You Done?
I have placed our forum behind a Web Application Firewall. Specifically, BunkerWeb.


II Why would you do something like this?
Lots of reasons. The important ones from the end user perspective revolve around security. In a nutshell, it helps prevent malicious internet traffic from having a chance to ever make it to the forum. That means lots of spam/bot accounts get pre-filtered, but it also means if someone tries to launch a DDoS against us (just as an example) it help stop that in its tracks so the site stays up more regularly. Or if someone tries poisoning our database with a SQL injection, it can help intercept and prevent the request from completing, which means all of our collective data in this community is safer from exfiltration. Stuff like that is why I did this.


c. Is this going to fuck up my experience though?
I hope not. But maybe. Hence, this thread.


4^th - WHAT THE HELL WHAT MIGHT HAPPEN??1?
I have noticed a need for some fine-tuning though, mostly as it relates to being served "Too Many Requests" errors. Those errors arise because of how it tries to identify problematic behavior, but it's not AI and it doesn't have any idea how the forum software is built, so sometimes (especially on the admin side) as I'm moving around through the boards it will trigger that error. You may or may not see the same thing. If you do while just casually browsing, please let me know. If you encounter that message while trying to fuck with things to see if you can make it break, FAFO.

If for some reason you find yourself getting Forbidden errors (or a 403 error page), it's possible something's gone extra bad though and the firewall has decided your IP address is a problem. Try accessing from a different IP address - your phone, the library, wherever - and try accessing. If that works, it blocked your IP and you should message me RIGHT AWAY while you're still using that new IP address that you just logged in from. That way I can have it clear your IP address and go make additional tweaks to prevent it from happening again. I got my own IP address banned from it earlier today when I was setting something else up and suddenly a whole bunch of stuff I was working on said it was forbidden.

If things go catastrophically bad, you can send a notification here.

[willy]

New threads are throwing 429 errors right now (or "Too Many Requests" might be another thing you see). The threads are still posting, which is good, but the error is less than ideal, I know, I'm working on it

[willy]

I think for most normal forum activity the 429 errors have been resolved. Please let me know what you folks see on your end though as time goes on.

[willy]

I messed up with playing around with settings again because I can't leave well enough alone. Sorry if you experienced any errors.

[Space Cowgirl]

The new thing is that after I make a post, the post posts, but I get a "loading" thing across the top of the page. I haven't been sent to the bunker page in a couple days.

[willy]

Well I'm glad the bunker isn't grabbing people as much. I'll keep an eye out for the issue on posting... in fact, this is the first test to see if it's happening for me right now

Hmm ok mine posted just fine this time. I'll keep watching though. If other people are experiencing this issue, please let me know too.