For Info:

I think that the response problems might have started on Thursday but it was only yesterday when I realised it wasn't my lap top or broadband but the site. There were times yesterday when I was out and just couldn't get on.

I have passed the info on to DiBradio but he's away until Tuesday so we might have to persevere as best we can until then.

Cheers for the update, Tony.
Glad it wasn't just me.

Like you say CT the problems have been there for days

I have noticed that there has been a significant uptick in the number of visitors to the site recently - well over 600 currently but yesterday lunch it was over 1,200

the other thing I am noticing is the increase in what I can only assume is bot activity - the MMT has had well over 20,000 views in the last 48 hours and an incredibly it is close to 190,000 views since the turn of the year, which is substantially more than it has ever had in a year in it's lifetime - not for a minute do I believe that even 40% of this years views have been genuine visits by real people

I think I may know the cause of the problem, see the attached photo (not 100% sure mind).

There are ways to stop various bots scraping your content with the sites' robots.txt file and other means - though I know disallowing a specific bot in the robots.txt file isn't foolproof.

https://www.427marketing.co.uk/blog/pre ... ur-website
https://fingerprint.com/blog/website-co ... revention/

The problem, whatever it is, is not just affecting the message board. But I’ve no idea and will leave things up to DiBraidio.

I don't think I have ever seen Claude AI or Claude [Bot] on this board - though I do not always look

I have commented before that since the launch of various AI apps that viewing activity on certain threads has gone through the roof - if anything it seems to generate more views in a vicious spiral

ClaretTony wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 28, 2024 2:26 pm

The problem, whatever it is, is not just affecting the message board. But I’ve no idea and will leave things up to DiBraidio.

It won't necessarily just be on the message board (that just happened to be something that I came across) - but I do strongly suspect that it will be a bot/bots scraping content; as CP said the thread view numbers are up quite significantly.

Chester Perry wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 28, 2024 2:27 pm

I don't think I have ever seen Claude AI or Claude [Bot] on this board - though I do not always look

I have commented before that since the launch of various AI apps that viewing activity on certain threads has gone through the roof - if anything it seems to generate more views in a vicious spiral

Yeah it may not be just Claude, I don't know the finer details of it all it's just something that I suspected and was going to suggest anyway before this thread popped up.

It's not a problem unique to UTC anyway.

Was thinking it was my phone but PC was just the same.

It'll get sorted

Thanks for the update, Tony.
As others have said - glad it wasn’t just me.
I now also feel better about a post I made appearing three times on the thread!

Middle-agedClaret wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 28, 2024 5:38 pm

Thanks for the update, Tony.
As others have said - glad it wasn’t just me.
I now also feel better about a post I made appearing three times on the thread!

One of mine appeared about 8 times!

Leisure wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 28, 2024 5:48 pm

One of mine appeared about 8 times!

That was funny. I thought you were taking the mickey out of the previous poster whose post went on 6 times

Leisure wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 28, 2024 5:48 pm

One of mine appeared about 8 times!

Could have been worse....might have been 8 people turned up for 1 seat on your coach!

Still running very slow for me today.

yep me too, all day

Site just started to work good for me

Site is now running normally

Thank goodness , I've actually had to speak to my wife whilst the board has been sluggish.

Slow. Again.

tally wrote: ↑

Tue Apr 30, 2024 7:40 pm

Site is now running normally

Not for me. Slower than the Harle Syke bus.

Glad I saw this thread. I just struggled badly to get on, so much so I did an internet speed check. Then I started thinking have I posted something wrong and been banned. I saw those repeating posts the other day and thought ‘how childish’. Apologies for thinking that.
Hope all returns to normal. What are bots used for anyway?

Glad I saw this thread. I just struggled badly to get on, so much so I did an internet speed check. Then I started thinking have I posted something wrong and been banned. I saw those repeating posts the other day and thought ‘how childish’. Apologies for thinking that.
Hope all returns to normal. What are bots used for anyway?

Oops. See above.

Very erratic, one minute it seems fine, then it signs you out and has you checking connections it is so slow.
If AI is trawling message boards, Facebook etc. For content and opinion I certainly won’t trust it to answer anything.

I like the idea of someone in America or China asking AI a question and AI responds with stuff about Muric and not being able to get a pie at half time.

Surely Di Bradio is not the only person who can sort out the erratic delay problem
Strongly suggest that CT enlists the help of a technician to get it fixed before the weekend when we have a massive game in our season
People will not wait indefinitely for the site to be fixed however much they like it
Not a complaint CT. Just a piece of advise

FCBurnley wrote: ↑

Tue Apr 30, 2024 11:25 pm

Surely Di Bradio is not the only person who can sort out the erratic delay problem
Strongly suggest that CT enlists the help of a technician to get it fixed before the weekend when we have a massive game in our season
People will not wait indefinitely for the site to be fixed however much they like it
Not a complaint CT. Just a piece of advise

It's advice, and not very good advice at that. It costs you nothing to be here. Off you go before the weekend of the massive game - see if you'll be in a better place.

FCBurnley wrote: ↑

Tue Apr 30, 2024 11:25 pm

Surely Di Bradio is not the only person who can sort out the erratic delay problem
Strongly suggest that CT enlists the help of a technician to get it fixed before the weekend when we have a massive game in our season
People will not wait indefinitely for the site to be fixed however much they like it
Not a complaint CT. Just a piece of advise

CT and the other admins administer this forum voluntarily as far as I know and they do the best they can with the resources they have at their disposal. Its not an easy task ensuring that the site performs optimally and with the current internet landscape being affected by bad actors on a daily, even hourly basis its no wonder that forums such as this are affected from time to time.

As for the big game on Saturday, I'm sure most of us will be at the ground watching - I certainly will be.

Bullabill wrote: ↑

Tue Apr 30, 2024 11:59 pm

It's advice, and not very good advice at that. It costs you nothing to be here. Off you go before the weekend of the massive game - see if you'll be in a better place.

Thank you for the spelling lesson. Your comments are most constructive

FCBurnley wrote: ↑

Tue Apr 30, 2024 11:25 pm

Surely Di Bradio is not the only person who can sort out the erratic delay problem
Strongly suggest that CT enlists the help of a technician to get it fixed before the weekend when we have a massive game in our season
People will not wait indefinitely for the site to be fixed however much they like it
Not a complaint CT. Just a piece of advise

There are times when I wonder whether it is worth it - reading this is one of those times.

ClaretTony wrote: ↑

Wed May 01, 2024 11:25 am

There are times when I wonder whether it is worth it - reading this is one of those times.

Get a computer chap in to sort it and send FCBurnley the bill. I don't know where he lives, but if you address it to Entitled Git I'm sure it'll get there.

FCBurnley wrote: ↑

Wed May 01, 2024 11:05 am

Thank you for the spelling lesson. Your comments are most constructive

Its just a shame yours aren't

FCBurnley - what a total chump.

I’ve got a strong suggestion for you - get yourself a bloody life if you can’t handle this site being slower than normal for a few days. Jesus wept.

Rick_Muller wrote: ↑

Wed May 01, 2024 11:05 am

CT and the other admins administer this forum voluntarily as far as I know and they do the best they can with the resources they have at their disposal. Its not an easy task ensuring that the site performs optimally and with the current internet landscape being affected by bad actors on a daily, even hourly basis its no wonder that forums such as this are affected from time to time.

As for the big game on Saturday, I'm sure most of us will be at the ground watching - I certainly will be.

Some reports of the Claudebot suggest that it's requesting pages at 100-200 per second. To put that into context, if you loaded a new page on this forum every 60 seconds, the bot is consuming the equivalent resources of 6000-12000 unique users, simultaneously.
If this site were a commercial ad-laden platform (like many of the others) there would be cash to provide infrastructure to resist this (and other) malicious/grey behaviours. But for a free, voluntary service - this is a massive challenge.

Leon_C wrote: ↑

Wed May 01, 2024 10:49 pm

Some reports of the Claudebot suggest that it's requesting pages at 100-200 per second. To put that into context, if you loaded a new page on this forum every 60 seconds, the bot is consuming the equivalent resources of 6000-12000 unique users, simultaneously.
If this site were a commercial ad-laden platform (like many of the others) there would be cash to provide infrastructure to resist this (and other) malicious/grey behaviours. But for a free, voluntary service - this is a massive challenge.

Let’s be honest, as we saw from the previous incarnation of this group, even a commercial ad-laden platform isn’t guaranteed to fair any better

I have “experience” in providing time for free and it’s a difficult job.
The UTC team do a fantastic job on here

Awful post from FCBurnley. Do you have any idea what it costs to host a forum like this without ad revenue?

Happy to offer my time (for free, of course) if I can be of any help to DiB or CT.

Network engineer by trade but dabble in code too. Been a while since I used phpBB but sure I could get my head around it again!

Seems OK this morning ...

wilks_bfc wrote: ↑

Thu May 02, 2024 7:33 am

Let’s be honest, as we saw from the previous incarnation of this group, even a commercial ad-laden platform isn’t guaranteed to fair any better

I have “experience” in providing time for free and it’s a difficult job.
The UTC team do a fantastic job on here

100% agreed, switching to an ad-fest is the WORST thing that could happen to this platform!

Rapido for me today.

All Rock and Roll here in Ireland as well

Seems OK for me here.

Just reading thst Owen Coyle has left us for Bolton! Judas!!!

It’s been asking for my user name and password before I could get on, the problem was it rejected one or both of them several times so I left things alone for a few minutes then went back on, rejected again but then let me in. Does anyone know if it ask's you to log in with user name and password every few months as it’s been doing that for me every few months.

beddie wrote: ↑

Thu May 02, 2024 1:49 pm

It’s been asking for my user name and password before I could get on, the problem was it rejected one or both of them several times so I left things alone for a few minutes then went back on, rejected again but then let me in. Does anyone know if it ask's you to log in with user name and password every few months as it’s been doing that for me every few months.

Same happened to me. Wouldnt except my user name or password

beddie wrote: ↑

Thu May 02, 2024 1:49 pm

It’s been asking for my user name and password before I could get on, the problem was it rejected one or both of them several times so I left things alone for a few minutes then went back on, rejected again but then let me in. Does anyone know if it ask's you to log in with user name and password every few months as it’s been doing that for me every few months.

Does that to me too beddie occasionally ..Tend to ignore the site for 1/2 an hour and it allows me to log in again.

The site is working as intended here in Ontario, Canada. And please, no ad-fest! I read the 'other' BFC message board on occasion plus the Forest and Everton boards, all are ad-fests and more or less unreadable unless one enjoys continual pop ups!

Awayfromburnley wrote: ↑

Thu May 02, 2024 12:48 pm

Seems OK for me here.

Just reading thst Owen Coyle has left us for Bolton! Judas!!!

Back up to speed.
Well done, DiB & everyone else.

It's taking a while to look at any posts atm

It's taking a while to look at any posts and to actually post.

It's taking a while to look at any posts atm and to actually post.