Recently, this site has become unstable. It is due to a TON of spammers trying to login in as admin, or flooding user registrations with fake ids in the hopes to be able to post spam ads as comments or activity stream items. As a result, the MySQL database keeps crashing due to too many Apache2 processes.
So, I’m instituting a very draconian new security thing. IP Blocking. If you screw up the login too many times, or continue to try to log in as admin or some other account in which you don’t have the password, your IP address is going to be block. Forever. Period. Unless you send an email to me explaining that you are some sort of Noob, drunk off your ass and couldn’t remember your password, or something plausible in your defense.
Unless someone wants to donate or fund a beefier server, that is the way it is. Hopefully the site won’t crash and things will be faster. (for example, I installed the new security plugin and it’s already blocked one person from China. It’s been like 4 minutes since installing it…..amazing).
UPDATE: I also removed the BuddyPress and BBForums stuff. No one was really using either, and they were sucking resources away from the site. I’ve always wanted a lively discussion forum happening here, but that seems not to be. Oh well.
It’s also interesting that most of the flood of IP addresses is out of pretty much ONE area of China…..go figure….