Search function

[joel68]

The search function has been down for quite some time. It says it's overloaded. It has not happened like this before. Usually after an hour or so, it can be utilized. What's up with this? And are the powers in charge aware of it?

[afagehi7]

The search function has been down for quite some time. It says it's overloaded. It has not happened like this before. Usually after an hour or so, it can be utilized. What's up with this? And are the powers in charge aware of it?

We have limited resources based on the hosting plan. It would cost more money to make this feature more widely available and we run on donations instead of membership fees and advertising. Best time to use it is off hours.

Search is expensive as far as computational resources to perform a search. Imagine if you had a 1000 page phonebook that was not in alphabetical order and were asking to locate the phone number for brad pitt. It would take you a long time and you'd probably give up but we could hire 20 people to help you.. so the cost would increase... Money we just don't have and we think staying free without advertising is more important.

[joel68]

Ok. Thxs. So does it still work at all if the board is not too busy?

[afagehi7]

Ok. Thxs. So does it still work at all if the board is not too busy?

Normally if its not too busy and you don't try a large search it should work.

[joel68]

Ok. Thxs.

[kaskap79]

Ok. Thxs.

You are always welcome to become a sponsor and get your name in green.

[afagehi7]

Ok. Thxs.

You are always welcome to become a sponsor and get your name in green.

Absolutely. A benefactor making a large donation would help us to upgrade the resources available

[BB-Kink]

Normally if its not too busy and you don't try a large search it should work.

Suggestion --- When the displayed warning is that it's too busy, show this instead or in addition:

Server's too busy right now -- Here are some examples that should make searches run faster, use less resources:
-- DO search for
-- DON'T search [often] for "screw" -- By the time the server finishes coming up with 4,000,000 references, you'll be screwed out of getting any results!

---- Lousy examples, no doubt. But, it's easy to ask for the wrong search strings that will send a server into deep space for a long time. Depending of the service provider like AWS, and it can also get very expensive in $$. I bit of guidance might help us, if the guidance was either present when an error occurred, or a link to that guidance.

[Openturtleguy]

I haven’t even been able to load the search page for a week.

[afagehi7]

I haven’t even been able to load the search page for a week.

It works for me during non-peak hours but we should probably just disable it all together. It consumes resources we don't have and don't have a stable income to afford... We don't want ads...

[Intosex]

So do donors get to do search such open the “Active Topics”and it will work? I’ve tried for weeks at all times of day and night and it just won’t return anything but the menu. If donators get priority on search I will donate. Are there any perks for donating?

[MsMsld-1]

The main perks for donating are the fact that the forum continues to exist even for those that don’t !!

There are some perks actually but that’s not the reason most of us have or do donate and they don’t include enhanced searching.

MsM’s ld

[afagehi7]

So do donors get to do search such open the “Active Topics”and it will work? I’ve tried for weeks at all times of day and night and it just won’t return anything but the menu. If donators get priority on search I will donate. Are there any perks for donating?

No preferential search. We donate to keep the site alive, not for perks. We're entirely run on donations and on a shoestring budget. You're welcome for not being exposed advertising . Thank the donors for no ads and mods for no spam (mainly armyguy handles spam and does it well)

[Mark KL]

I am getting the "Sorry but you cannot use search at this time. The server has high load. Please try again later." almost exclusively now at all hours; for at least the last few weeks. I typically use the quick link for new messages since last login, but since that is basically a Search function it is no longer working either. I contributed a few years ago under my old login that was part of the accidental purge. I will donate again also, to help with the funding. It's such a valuable resource here, glad to do that.

[afagehi7]

I am getting the "Sorry but you cannot use search at this time. The server has high load. Please try again later." almost exclusively now at all hours; for at least the last few weeks. I typically use the quick link for new messages since last login, but since that is basically a Search function it is no longer working either. I contributed a few years ago under my old login that was part of the accidental purge. I will donate again also, to help with the funding. It's such a valuable resource here, glad to do that.

We're looking into it but no promises. It might be out of our hands

[Mark KL]

I am getting the "Sorry but you cannot use search at this time. The server has high load. Please try again later." almost exclusively now at all hours; for at least the last few weeks. I typically use the quick link for new messages since last login, but since that is basically a Search function it is no longer working either. I contributed a few years ago under my old login that was part of the accidental purge. I will donate again also, to help with the funding. It's such a valuable resource here, glad to do that.

We're looking into it but no promises. It might be out of our hands

Understood.

[nominal12]

Fingers crossed that we'll be able to search again..

[lanceHarden25]

How do you donate ?

[afagehi7]

How do you donate ?

viewtopic.php?f=23&t=60970&start=75#p1449125

[elina]

Seems to me that the situation just keeps getting worse.
(And it is not only the search function. When I posted this now there was more than 30 seconds with a spinning wheel before it accepted the message. It is the same when you are opening a thread. I am now editing the response I posted just a few minutes ago to point this out, and just to be allowed to edit my own post I have to wait for the spinning wheel for 15 -20 seconds). This is not how it used to be)

It used to be the case (also in March early April) that if I logged on around 10AM European time (all of the US, even the Californians, would normally be asleep this time), this past week the search function has not been available a single time. It is quite frustrating and looking at the list at the bottom of the page provding the login-names of "who is browsing this forum now"; I don't get the impression that there is more people logging in now than what used to be the case.

Have MS$ or somebody else "upgraded" the SW, which normally means that nothing gets better but everything is slower, recently?

Do you have an idea about the investments needed to fix the issues?
If so maybe start asking people to consider donating.
I am willing to make another donation but I don't think I could make the donation that would fix the issue all on my own.

Sincerely
elina

[afagehi7]

Seems to me that the situation just keeps getting worse.
(And it is not only the search function. When I posted this now there was more than 30 seconds with a spinning wheel before it accepted the message. It is the same when you are opening a thread. I am now editing the response I posted just a few minutes ago to point this out, and just to be allowed to edit my own post I have to wait for the spinning wheel for 15 -20 seconds). This is not how it used to be)

It used to be the case (also in March early April) that if I logged on around 10AM European time (all of the US, even the Californians, would normally be asleep this time), this past week the search function has not been available a single time. It is quite frustrating and looking at the list at the bottom of the page provding the login-names of "who is browsing this forum now"; I don't get the impression that there is more people logging in now than what used to be the case.

Have MS$ or somebody else "upgraded" the SW, which normally means that nothing gets better but everything is slower, recently?

Do you have an idea about the investments needed to fix the issues?
If so maybe start asking people to consider donating.
I am willing to make another donation but I don't think I could make the donation that would fix the issue all on my own.

Sincerely
elina

Yes, the search function is not really usable until we can upgrade resources. It works but after a search the system resources are pushed. Searching is extremely resource intensive.

The current slowdown we don't yet know what is going on. There's been no upgrade or change from our side. We don't upgrade unless absolutely mandatory. I've checked and not found anything on the east coast where we're hosted. Example if aws goes down everyone goes down because literally everything is touching AWS in some way, direct or indirect. We're putting in a call to our hosting provider to see if they know what is going on but I don't expect them to be quick on a Sunday afternoon.

I can't say for certain, but i expect it's an issue affecting multiple sites and they're working on it...

Maybe we should just remove the search option from the page all together.

[MsMsld-1]

It would appear from other sites I’m on to be a widespread problem. There are huge numbers of bots etc jamming up the systems. I know another forum I’m on has been getting over 200 spam “new members” it’s had to deal with daily. It’s all on the “guest” side and sometimes you see there’s only 2 or 3 registered members on line and something like 180 guests !! Obviously that is nonsense in a normal situation. So I wish everybody luck trying to deal with it ! Some sites are crashing several times a day as they try and deal with it. Probably somebody that will suddenly be able to provide a “fix” …… for a small fee of course !!

MsM’s ld

[leggysman]

I actually had that problem recently. Anthropic's "ClaudeBot" spider looking for content for its AI chatbot to plagiarize. It was hammering my forums from hundreds of different "guest" IPs at once, for days at a time. I blocked that fucker so it gets 403 permission denied.

[leggysman]

Probably somebody that will suddenly be able to provide a “fix” …… for a small fee of course !!

The fix, courtesty of leggysman, gratis, is: change your webserver config so that it blocks the user agents responsible. If they're legit bots and not trying to be sneaky, that'll do the trick. If your webserver is nginx, the fix looks like this in the nginx.conf or the sites-enabled file of your vhost:

Code: Select all

        # Add more bad bots instead of something_else
        if ($http_user_agent ~* (claudebot|something_else)) {
                return 403;
        }

[afagehi7]

Probably somebody that will suddenly be able to provide a “fix” …… for a small fee of course !!

The fix, courtesty of leggysman, gratis, is: change your webserver config so that it blocks the user agents responsible. If they're legit bots and not trying to be sneaky, that'll do the trick. If your webserver is nginx, the fix looks like this in the nginx.conf or the sites-enabled file of your vhost:

Code: Select all

        # Add more bad bots instead of something_else
        if ($http_user_agent ~* (claudebot|something_else)) {
                return 403;
        }

The good old sites-enabled... Man that takes me back to the day editing those unix config files... IIRC the php.ini was the pita i hated messing with...