Just some notes about some changes with the site coming up. The Internet has always been an ever-changing beast to keep up with over the years. There are always a variety of evolving standards, changes to operating systems, servers, applications, and many others that all happen behind the scenes. Paflyfish has had to adapt to this over the last thirty years. A couple of examples would be Google's requirements for site security and the shift in users from desktops to smartphones. The site changed over a few years ago to a new forum platform, Xenforo, and it helped accomplish those and more.
One of our bigger issues has always been dealing with unwanted foreign attacks. We had them in the form of human and bot user signups by the thousands on the old site. A daily chore of manually deleting this scourge, and again with the new forum platform, the problem was fixed. Not seen is a continued attack by these foreign bots still trying to get in and hammering the site for a variety of reasons. These systems are from Asia for some reason. They pose a security risk to the site and impact the performance.
I'm going to have to try and add a front-end system (Cloudflare) to filter traffic from certain regions and countries. I'm not sure how it will go and how it will affect the site and users. There are some of you that use VPNs and personal security software on your devices to keep yourselves safe on the Internet. Once these new security measures are installed, I'm not sure how this will impact some users here on the site. There may be some disruptions for all users by simply adding the service with no filtering, and then once I start filtering countries, some users might be impacted.
There is no intention to interfere with any traffic or users we get from North America. VPN's will still be permitted, just certain countries will be filtered.
The plan would be to get this started in the early part of November. I'll notify everyone once it happens. If there are issues for you, please try and post them in the Site and Forum comments. It is easier for everyone to see any known problems.
One of our bigger issues has always been dealing with unwanted foreign attacks. We had them in the form of human and bot user signups by the thousands on the old site. A daily chore of manually deleting this scourge, and again with the new forum platform, the problem was fixed. Not seen is a continued attack by these foreign bots still trying to get in and hammering the site for a variety of reasons. These systems are from Asia for some reason. They pose a security risk to the site and impact the performance.
I'm going to have to try and add a front-end system (Cloudflare) to filter traffic from certain regions and countries. I'm not sure how it will go and how it will affect the site and users. There are some of you that use VPNs and personal security software on your devices to keep yourselves safe on the Internet. Once these new security measures are installed, I'm not sure how this will impact some users here on the site. There may be some disruptions for all users by simply adding the service with no filtering, and then once I start filtering countries, some users might be impacted.
There is no intention to interfere with any traffic or users we get from North America. VPN's will still be permitted, just certain countries will be filtered.
The plan would be to get this started in the early part of November. I'll notify everyone once it happens. If there are issues for you, please try and post them in the Site and Forum comments. It is easier for everyone to see any known problems.
