# Slowww Forums



## Bienvenidos

Hi everyone,

   Today the forums have been really slow; I was just shut out of the Spanish forums for five minutes. Also, my computer keeps freezing because of this, every time I visit WR or click on a thread. I can get into WR fast (dictionaries) but I cannot get into the forums without the page not loading at all. It's sporadic; sometimes the forum will load while at others it won't. I'm only experiencing this today. Every other site is fine except this one. Server issue? Only a temporary problem,  I hope.  

Thanks.


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## Alxmrphi

They're trying to lock you out


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## Bienvenidos

Haha I really laughed out loud after that one (in fear of using CHATPSEAK I will NOT type those three infamous letters )

I guess this only happened to me, then, since nobody else responded  

That's OK. Thanks for your wonderful comment, as always, Alex


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## .   1

I had similar problems about 10 hours ago.
Lockouts and sloooow service.

.,,


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## roxcyn

They said they were rebooting the forum so perhaps that is why the slow service?


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## geve

It's been slow for me too. Bien, I suspect that it's a bug specific to people who recently misbehaved.


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## badgrammar

Slow here too, and some peculiar glitches.  I guess it will all get straightened out, although I suspect what Geve suspects, and I might fit that description!


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## ILT

Well, it is slow here too and I've gotten a couple of blank pages instead of the actual page. I hope they are not trying to block me too


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## Whodunit

I love translating said:


> Well, it is slow here too and I've gotten a couple of blank pages instead of the actual page. I hope they are not trying to block me too


 
If they are trying to block you, they're doing the same with me, too. 

Several times the forum has been _real_ slow, and then it was normal again. Especially the search window loads for minutes and freezes after a while ...


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## mkellogg

I have to find a way to block some of these computers that try to download all threads.  It seems another one is hitting us today. 

Searches?  They shouldn't be that bad.  Just don't include any common words in the search such as "a" or "the", "la", etc.


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## Whodunit

mkellogg said:


> Searches? They shouldn't be that bad. Just don't include any common words in the search such as "a" or "the", "la", etc.


 
Yes, sometimes they are a mess, and after some minutes (or maybe it's just one minute), the page goes blank. I usually search for words in titles only, most often just for one word that is not very common.


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## Alxmrphi

mkellogg said:


> *I have to find a way to block some of these computers that try to download all threads. It seems another one is hitting us today. *
> 
> Searches? They shouldn't be that bad. Just don't include any common words in the search such as "a" or "the", "la", etc.



What do you mean? Can you elaborate on what some computers are trying to do?


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## mkellogg

There are some companies and other "organizations" that go through trying to copy all the pages of the website for various purposes.  (Newest, "bestest" search engine, copyright control, email address harvesting for SPAM (no, they can't get your emails), etc.)  They will go through and request a thread per second, trying to copy them all.  The poor server has to dig up all these old threads off the hard disk, format all those smilies and the whole page, and deliver it to them.  When that happens, our forums slow to a crawl. 

Aren't these fun things I get to deal with?


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## Alxmrphi

Ah, Spiders etc?


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## mkellogg

That's right.  I was trying to avoid technical terms.   These are bad spiders that don't follow the rules that I give them.


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## Alxmrphi

Unless they have a network acting through other people's computers they must not have that big of a net of ISP's to block.

Meh it must be tricky sorting it out, as experts did probably write it, unless you came up with a unique thing with accounts that was identified by the user account, and they needed to give that in with every HTTP request, but then guests can see the forum, ah. 

Yep tricky, good luck with that!


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## Bienvenidos

Thanks for the answers everyone.  

 I hate that one idiot who is trying to copy the whole forum is ruining our forum experience.  
That must be hard to deal with; kudos to you, Mike, for taking the time to deal with and discipline those pesky, evil spiders!  

It looks like things are much faster today, so I'm glad.  

Thanks again, everyone.


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