website issues

[1970428scj]

Is this site going online and offline?

[eightamrock]

I have a similar issue on johnlsayersarchive.com that I run. Usually coincides with when bots start crawling the site for updates.

Im 90% certain thats what happens here as well.

[gullfo]

i think Stuart uses the server for other projects (rendering etc) which can increase the load, but also this forum software has some limitations and thats why you see the db issues and/or corrupt files. certainly bot scales can impact the site but you can also restrict the common ones fairly easily in most software or system settings (like network firewall quotas etc)

[Soundman2020]

Right! There's been some DoS attacks on the server lately (Syn floods mostly, but others too), and it protects itself by going offline for a brief time, then coming back up again, automatically. But sometimes the damage is already done (damn DoS bots!!), and it can't come up again fully, so it needs human intervention. I'm working on automating that, so it can come back up 100% reliably... Stay tuned!
Also, the server runs a heavy load, and isn't that powerful to start with! The internet connection is pretty fast, and the ISP is decent, so no problems there now. That used to be an issue, until I switched ISPs a couple of years back. So now it's just a matter of $$$! I need to buy a new server, and reconfigure the back server, but money doesn't grow on trees, unfortunately. It's going to take a couple of thousand dollars that I don't have spare right now, but hope to have shortly. ... Stay tuned!
But for peace-of-mind, there are several backups running every day, and stored in different places (on-site and off-site), so even in the event of a catastrophe, I can still get it up and running again reasonably fast.

- Stuart -