As I am sure most of you have realized, the site has been unusually cranky recently. Often having access issues, throwing up codes and being VERY slow to navigate.

There has been an influx of attacks on our site, mainly AI generated, looking for weaknesses to exploit. No, we haven't been penetrated (hehe), and there is no data to steal anyway. Passwords are hashed, and we have good encryption across the board.

The slowdown happens when we get hit with a cluster of attacks, and the servers resources are taxed by throwing up 403/404 errors keeping them out.

Another issue is the HUGE increase of Bots/Crawlers that come and index the site. These are good, because then you search for a subject in google etc, the data is indexed and helps provide search results. But, these bots spend all their time reading each and every post, over and over and over.. Multiply that by a few hundred bots and server resources are again, taxed.

What we are doing about this? A couple approaches.
1) We increased our sever memory. This has helped SIGNIFICANTLY. Thank you to all those who have donated over the years, those funds go to keep the system alive and allow us to improve as needed.

2) We are being more proactive about blocking IP addresses and IP ranges that are known to be associated with mass-bots and AI penetration (hehe) testing. This is tedious and manual work. The downside to this is that we may inadvertently block YOUR access to the site since crawlers often use major ISP IP addresses to be in the net. If this happens, you will get a 403 or 404 error page. If you do, please find your IP address (I use this site) and email us at webmaster@waguns.org with your username, the IP address given. We will work quickly to unblock that address.

Long term solutions:
1) We are looking at implementing Cloudflare as a frontline IP validation tool before access to the site is granted. We don't want it to have it be a cumbersome process to verify you are a real person (click all the pictures with sidewalks type of thing), so we are looking carefully at our options here.

2) The language that this site uses (phpBB) is very outdated and in need of a massive overhaul. This is a huge undertaking to create a whole new site, while still retaining users, posts, feedback, links, photos etc.

So, in the meantime, know that we know there are glitches, and we are working to keep those glitches to a minimum. If you get blocked, it's not you, it's us (unless you got banned, then it's you). Let us know so we can fix it.

Thank you all!
Dan, Steve and the entire Mod Team

I was just going to recommend Cloudflare, I'm using that in a SaaS course I'm taking right now.

What kind of cost are we talking about to create a new site?

Cross fingers for software update so I can peoples posts.

Other than that I've got a few jokes I'll keep to myself lol

Any pics of said attempted penetration?

And was it just the tip…?

Hip shot? $2-3k.

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One thing to watch for, Cloudflare is run by Leftists and loves to deplatform Wrongthinkers.

I'm a member on a wargaming board about 20 years old that's looking at moving to Invision.