Forum is very slow and times out at times

[xelasnave]

Originally Posted by Outcast

Ditto...

been having major issues for the past few days... very slow to load, often times out...

I have tried the following browsers with the same result: Brave, Safari, Edge & Chrome. It is even worse on my mobile phone, irrespective of whether I am on our home wifi connection or mobile data.

I am on a 100/25 FTTP NBN connection

Hopefully it is a minor glitch which can be rectified easily.

Cheers

Does this mean that the issue is at the provider level?

I sure would like to hear what the site owners have to say...do they care?

alex

[RB (Andrew)]

Sorry guys, we mods do not have access to see what the problem is.
It's the same problem for us too, the site is extremely slow.

Only Mike and mojo have admin access and they're the only ones that can fix the problem but I haven't heard from either of them.

RB

[rmuhlack (Richard)]

Are these the final IIS death throes?

As has already been mentioned, the forum platform hasn't been updated in 12 years. The IIS home page is still featuring the 2016 calendar "IceInSpace Astronomy Calendar 2016 On-Sale NOW!". Projects, articles and equipment reviews are similarly out of date. The site doesn't seem to be getting much love, and maybe that's why the forums are so quiet: there are lots of other social media options these days to engage with other like minds, that are more active and don't require a 30 second wait to get a page load...?

[AnakChan (Sean)]

MySQL issues I'm guessing? I used to run my own forum (but used myBB instead of vBulletin).

[leon]

Hey Guys just a thought.

If there are problems that only a few dollars can help to fix, why don't we all pay a $10.00 to $20.00 yearly members fee, surely that would cover some costs if that is what is needed.

Just a thought, because if we want to keep this Forum that we all love maybe we can step up and help.

I am happy to do that what about the rest of you

Leon

[alpal]

Originally Posted by RB

Sorry guys, we mods do not have access to see what the problem is.
It's the same problem for us too, the site is extremely slow.

Only Mike and mojo have admin access and they're the only ones that can fix the problem but I haven't heard from either of them.

RB

Do you have any way to contact them? -
email address?


Allan

[Startrek (Martin)]

The site is not going to miraculously repair itself as it would have done that by now
It’s probably going to get worse
As Leon suggested, I’m happy to pay a $20 per year membership fee to keep it active and reliable for the benefit of current members and future members
I don’t of any other bonafide Astronomy open forums in Australia. Most others are club related or supplier related.
It would be sad to see it eventually shut down

My 2 cents ……

Martin

[glend (Glen)]

Originally Posted by Startrek

The site is not going to miraculously repair itself as it would have done that by now
It’s probably going to get worse
As Leon suggested, I’m happy to pay a $20 per year membership fee to keep it active and reliable for the benefit of current members and future members
I don’t of any other bonafide Astronomy open forums in Australia. Most others are club related or supplier related.
It would be sad to see it eventually shut down

My 2 cents ……

Martin

Martin, I don't want to get sucked into a debate about the merits of a pay for use service, but can point out the site does attract advertising revenue. Hosting is pretty cheap. Without owner input we can only speculate, and risk being banned.

[Startrek (Martin)]

Glen,
What I should have said is any call for help by the owners , I’m happy to listen and help
I guess we’ll just sit tight and be patient and hope this issue dissolves
Martin

[RB (Andrew)]

The site seems a bit better today I think or is it just me?
It's making it very hard to do the everyday moderator jobs.

Originally Posted by alpal

Do you have any way to contact them? -
email address?


Allan

I've only got the email address for Mike and the usual IIS PM.
Mike is very hard to get a hold of lately.

[RB (Andrew)]

Here's the contact info if anyone wants to reach out to Mike or mojo:

https://www.iceinspace.com.au/contactus.html

RB

[mldee (Mike)]

There's something jaw-droppingly strange in this situation. When, as one member commented, the home page still has ads for a 2016 calendar, it's pretty indicative that there's been a problem developing for some time, and not just an unexpected domestic crisis or such causing the sudden silence from the owner. I hope that the teddibly teddibly polite posts here help, but I has me doubts.

And no, I have no suggestions for a solution as I know nothing about the forum's business arrangements. There doesn't seem to be many other paid membership astronomy forums around the world, and to go that route would just be another step down the great Australian penchant to overcharge for everything. A cash donation if that's the problem, yes, paid membership, no way. Fresh advertising must cover the ongoing cashflow needs. My 2 cents.

[xelasnave]

Well I am concerned for Mike.

I remember how once he was so dedicated and involved ..even giving talks around the place.

He produced planetary images that were recognised world wide.

It seemed that he would become a leader in Astronomy...another Brian Cox ... an even more famous presenter.

I cant imagine why he just quit...

Anyways I wish him well and I must say this place has been wonderful while it lasted, and it is sad to see it slowly dying for the want of some input by its creator.

What would be nice is if Mike passed the thing over to someone like he used to be when this site was perhaps the best in the world.

alex

[Wussell (Russell)]

It looks like an issue with the back end.

Ping time to the site itself is fine, so can only think that the database requires some tlc.

[mojo (Terry)]

The problem should be fixed now. The issue involved a bad web crawler that was indexing 1000's of pages at once and exhausting all the web server connections.

I have blocked the crawler with much prejudice. Should all be good now.

Cheers.

[RB (Andrew)]

Thanks Terry.

RB

[Leo.G (Leo)]

Originally Posted by mojo

The problem should be fixed now. The issue involved a bad web crawler that was indexing 1000's of pages at once and exhausting all the web server connections.

I have blocked the crawler with much prejudice. Should all be good now.

Cheers.

Google AI (chatGPT)?


Relating to what a few members suggested about financial assistance, I run a small forum, a band of misfits from a much larger (over 3,000,000 members worldwide which just suddenly vanished) now defunct site we all gathered at back in the day.
A few of us keep in touch via the forum, some drop in every now and then to say hi, some come in once a year if that.
It's not paid membership but it recently cost $410 US to renew the contract for two years along with the site name. It's not a subscription based site, I asked members for donations to pay, many of whom don't want to see the site disappear and in no time I had most of the cash. I had to contribute around $100AU but I didn't mind, people I've known for 18 years online and despite never meeting them in person we've become friends.


I'd be happy to contribute if it helps with site costs here!

[AstroViking (Steve)]

Thanks for sorting the issue out, Terry! The forum loads almost instantly now.

[xelasnave]

Is this "spider" consistent with an attack?

Googling it seems one could use a spider for an attack if you had time one your hands and a hate filled attitude such as you find with these nut jobs who hate the world and consider themselves superior...

I have someone in mind and I bet our problems will continue one way or another ...which raises a question ...is this something that the Commonweath Police would act on?

Realistically I presume I am wrong but seeing we can now chat again everyone please offer their two cents worthlol:


alex

[AstroViking (Steve)]

It's an attack of sorts, Alex. Not a malicious "trying to break in and do damage" attack, but what's called a Denial of Service attack that degrades the site's performance so much that it becomes unusable.

There are a lot of search engine 'bots' out there that will try and download an entire website to help people find content on the 'net. (Think Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, etc.)

There are also bots out there that will copy an entire site and then try to find configuration errors or vulnerable software versions so that malicious attackers can find a way in.

Most bots are well behaved and don't make thousands of connections at a time and will obey the "robots.txt". Sadly, there are far too many that don't.

Regards,
V