loadingreadyrun.com

Hey Everyone,

CloudFlare is a CDN and cache system designed to speed up websites, mitigate traffic spikes and limit the effectiveness of DDoS attacks. You may have heard of them in conjunction with the recent massive SPAMhaus DDoS attack that was largely ineffective despite being so large that it impacted Tier 1 internet providers (read about it here).

As of today, LoadingReadyRun is now also using the CloudFlare distribution network. Hopefully, the only difference you will notice is that the LRR site is loading faster and more reliably as all of the static content (images, css, javascript, etc) is being served from the closest of CloudFlare's 23 data centers spread all over the world. The only down side is that, since CloudFlare is quite aggressive in its caching, if you update your avatar, you might not see the new image for a few hours. All in all, I call that a reasonable tradeoff for faster load times across the entire site.

As with any site update, please let me know either in this thread or by email ([email protected]) if you experience any glitches or strangeness that you think might be caused by this change. Please include you Browser/OS version and ideally a screenshot of the problem.

When did this take effect and was it the reason that I wasn't able to access the site from home for a week?

Also thanks for fixing that.

Lord Hosk wrote:When did this take effect and was it the reason that I wasn't able to access the site from home for a week?

Nope. It only went into effect yesterday.

Did this have anything to do with all the smelly french Spambot invaders last night?

I like this.

Dubious_wolf wrote:Did this have anything to do with all the smelly french Spambot invaders last night?

*Shudders* Never again, Note to self look for alarming words before translating things in other languages.

I saw one CloudFlare error this morning at about 5AM, but it was gone with a refresh. I'd be willing to bet it was a caching issue that self-resolved between the error and the refresh.

I've noticed absolutely no difference and my viewing experience has been unchanged. (Funny how when software works correctly no one notices and no credit is given?)

My signature image isn't rendering currently, but I'm suspecting that's probably on Raptr's end, not due to this. In any case, I see no other change, which is good!

Hopefully this move will also lead to a decrease in forum spam. CloudFlare filters out a lot of spammers and botnets automatically. Post here if you do/don't notice a decrease in forum spam so that I can monitor CF's effectiveness with the current security settings.

Not counting the giant Russian spambot this morning?

Definitely counting that. Priv message me any information that you have and I'll take appropriate action.

My cookies for the forums are being a bit weird. I've been logged out on refreshes twice in the last two days, even though I always check the "stay logged in" box.

Twice that I can remember, since switching, I have been greeted with a error message saying the site is temporarily offline. Once jut minutes ago, and another time a few days ago. I should have screenshotted it or copied down what it said, but I'm a dummy.

Twice before I could access the forums, and then I had to log back in.

Yeah, I had that for a bit this morning. As far as I can tell, Kathleen did just too damn great a job hosting feed dump for IPv4 to handle, killing the site.

(I have no idea)

Site was down just a bit ago.

Server was thrashing. I'm looking into why, and taking corrective action.

Do you think the server is becoming sentient?

It's all the spambots. They're merging together to form an AI.

ashton wrote:Server was thrashing. I'm looking into why, and taking corrective action.

That kinda sounds like you're gonna spank the servers with a ruler followed by "Now you go and think about what you did."

General Michi wrote:

ashton wrote:Server was thrashing. I'm looking into why, and taking corrective action.

That kinda sounds like you're gonna spank the servers with a ruler followed by "Now you go and think about what you did."

I like to think that that's what they do every time something comes up with the site going wrong.

Forum seems to go down more frequently for me, now.

"Go down" ?

Yeah ditto; I just get a CloudFlare error message every so often when I log on. That or, as happened today, I keep getting logged out when I try to open a thread so can't post replies, plus slow running. The latter only happened today though, and might just be my computer.