High number of views for newish posts

[ME 109]

Gidday you lot, been a while.
I drop in every so often to see what's going on. Recently in another forum I read that people were having trouble accessing this site.
Just looking at some new posts in the 'Post 1970's airheads' Some of these posts have a very high number of 'views' compared to older posts.
A post from Ade B has over 200k views in about 6 weeks.
How can this be? It's not 'people' creating these views, surely??
I suspect this has something to do with folk not being able to access the site?

[Kurt in S.A.]

I'm sure those "others" are bots, spiders, etc., that crawl the net looking for content to bring back to their search engines. It's annoying, but it's a good way for the info from this forum gets out there. The difference can be something like 10-20 to one for each actual member.

Kurt

[Jeff in W.C.]

I’ve had trouble accessing this site at times. I get an error stating that the maximum number of users is on the site already.

[ME 109]

I’ve had trouble accessing this site at times. I get an error stating that the maximum number of users is on the site already.

That's what the problem seems to be, Jeff.
There was a post on ADVrider regarding being unable to access the Boxerworks site due to maximum number of users.
If there is any benefit of bots getting the group out there, it all comes undone if members can't log on because of bots etc.
Ok, so it's bots doing it. Fry dem bots!

[Kurt in S.A.]

Actually that is called a denial of service. I posted about that in this thread. The Vintage BMW forum has also had this issue but they have brought on board a Cloudflare feature which blocks all of those attacks.

viewtopic.php?p=137067#p137067

Kurt

[Steve in Golden]

Thanks for that ME, I had not noticed.

Maybe we will have to require a login to access all forums then. For a long time it's been that one can view the post '70 Airheads and other forums without having to login. But due to the denial of service problems we've been having, perhaps we will have to lock it down.

Thoughts?

[barryh]

Thanks for that ME, I had not noticed.

Maybe we will have to require a login to access all forums then. For a long time it's been that one can view the post '70 Airheads and other forums without having to login. But due to the denial of service problems we've been having, perhaps we will have to lock it down.

Thoughts?

If locking it down is what it takes then it should be considered if only on a trial basis. If members can't get in or worse they can get in but are unable to reply to a post, then the forum can't flourish. The downside is it may discourage new members as most people would want to view the forum before signing up.

Cloudflare is another option and I'm seeing more sites where I have to use that. If it comes to a choice I would much prefer signing in to something like Cloudflare or Captcha.

[ME 109]

Thanks for that ME, I had not noticed.

Maybe we will have to require a login to access all forums then. For a long time it's been that one can view the post '70 Airheads and other forums without having to login. But due to the denial of service problems we've been having, perhaps we will have to lock it down.

Thoughts?

I have no solutions.
After reading of folks troubles logging on, and then noticing post view counts, I sensed something was not right and that this was probably the reason for login problems.
I think the people we'd like to see here will join to access the info they need.

[Steve in Golden]

I would prefer not to lock it down, that's for sure. But if we keep having denial of service problems then might have to do so. We'll leave it as is for now. And I will investigate Cloudflare, but of course it would cost more money. Also if the forum had to be moved to a new host to support using Cloudflare that would be a bit of a drawback as that would be a lot of work (as well as more money no doubt). And the forum software does not support Captcha (I don't think so anyway) so that could be another issue.

Anyway for now we'll just keep an eye on things and hope for the best.

If locking it down is what it takes then it should be considered if only on a trial basis. If members can't get in or worse they can get in but are unable to reply to a post, then the forum can't flourish. The downside is it may discourage new members as most people would want to view the forum before signing up.

Cloudflare is another option and I'm seeing more sites where I have to use that. If it comes to a choice I would much prefer signing in to something like Cloudflare or Captcha.