403 for the ages

[lucy24]

Awright, administrators, come clean. Who put the catastrophic typo in the site's htaccess?

[engine]

*Fingers pointing in all directions.*

[Dimitri]

At first I thought "I" was banned... so, since this is not the case, I have to go delete all my bad mouthing about WW on Social networks. (joking) .

I am not sure it was a typo in the htaccess, because the error message said the server couldn't find the htaccess, and also couldn't find the custom 403 message. So I think a typo in the main configuration, a wrong path to the root directory, or, the directory missing, or with wrong privileges, things like that.

[lucy24]

The part about the 403 message is a booboo that I’m sure most of us have made over the years: When you have a custom 403 page, you have to poke a hole so that blocked visitors are at least able to see that page ... which is not easy to do when something higher up is generating a universal 403 ;)

[Martin Potter]

Whatever it was, I am glad that you are back.

[tangor]

When things don't work, just try try try again... :)

[mcneely]

Was wondering about that

Was in late one evening and saw the message - kept you in the bookmarks just the same
Next morning you were back up

As an aside, I do have a number of bookmarks pointing to other sites via archive dot org because they had fallen by the wayside at some point over the years

[Treud]

Talking about 403,

I have this error in my Desktop, Phone, but not my iPad !

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access this resource.

Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.



////

I asked a friend to check as well and he got same error, we are connecting from Taiwan, not communist China :D

[not2easy]

I have this error in my Desktop, Phone, but not my iPad !

I would hope that isn't happening here on the forums, that is what this discussion is about. If it is happening here, please let us know? If it is happening somewhere else, I'd guess your iPad has a different carrier than the desktop and mobile phone use?

[Treud]

It’s on the complete website here ! Webmasterworld

iPad is same Wifi / network as Desktop. Phone it’s same and my friend is in the city but different area.

Just tried again and computer still blocked. Phone yes, I turned off wifi, I can have access, turn in back on, no access.

But I shouldn’t have access with the iPad if it was an IP block !

I’ll ask my friend to try again later today.

[Treud]

Same as yesterday, he can’t access on Desktop from office, but on phone with 4G yes.

Me I’m still using my iPad on wifi ! (Only device working on wifi)

[Brett_Tabke]

We are absolutely getting abused by bots here. Not sure I can even keep the site online any longer.
A couple million page views a day. I've got over 50,000 ips in the block list right now - including 15 cblocks.
Send me your ip that is blocked in Stickymail.

[lucy24]

I've got over 50,000 ips in the block list right now - including 15 cblocks.

And a selection of UA- and header-based blocks, right? ;)

[Whitey]

@brett_tabke - In case it helps an internal message from my CTO regarding attacks that brought us down this last week;

Based on recent bot attacks from China that have impacted our servers, we need to implement some general protection, rather than keep blocking ip addresses. The plan is to install Crowdsec & Zenarmor, which compliment each other, to combat these attacks.

Both are paid services, but both offer free options. I suggest we implement both, but only pay for Crowdsec initially. If necessary, we can also upgrade to a paid version of Zenarmor, which ism’t much more than Crowsec.

I hope that helps.

[RubicCubed]

@Brett_Tabke

You're not alone with the server load...

Google Analyst Warns: AI Bots Risk Internet Gridlock By Server Overload

Google Search analyst Gary Illyes warns that the proliferation of AI agents and their intensive data processing demands are set to cause significant internet congestion and overload website servers, potentially degrading web performance for all users.

Story: [winbuzzer.com...]

[Treud]

For now it’s working, plus my IP are shared with the residence, and will change I think. No need to bother. Like i said, what is weird, is Phone with Wifi not working, but IPad on wifi yes.
PC on LAN, no too. And everything sharing same network. As long something is working it’s fine.

If my IP is fully blocked I’ll use Phone on 4G :D