In recent weeks we've been under assault by spam registrations (not just us; every phpBB website).  The Russians have had a breakthrough in implementing AI into their spambots, which as one admin put it, "are now generally smarter than your average legitimate user".  The bots can easily pass captchas, question-and-answer (which we use here), etc.

As a result, I've blocked certain countries from accessing the site at all:  Russia, Romania, Ukraine, Latvia, Singapore, China, India, Pakistan, Moldova, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the entire continent of Africa.  Those countries combined are averaging approximately 4,000 registration attempts per day.  Once successfully registered, the bots will post a message (usually with Russian phrases) trying to get someone to click a link or purchase whatever nefarious goods and services.

There may be some legitimate users living in those countries who are caught up in this (though more likely, they are using a VPN connection that passes through one of those countries).  Fortunately, the Cloudflare block message that's displayed gives instructions on e-mailing me about the problem; with the user's IP address, I can allow them through the firewall.

Even with these blocks up, I'm still getting one to three successful bot registrations per day, which is at least manageable.

Foul

misterspock wrote in 403 and 503 error messages:Damn, that sucks!

Well said!   PDT_Armataz_01_02

If I had to guess, Cloudflare didn't like something about that link that has ".php" in it.  Just a guess, because similar links haven't triggered anything.  Cloudflare has rules that help prevent bot attacks, and for some reason, it triggered on something in your post.

Since the post did eventually go through, it's possible Cloudflare just implemented a delay before allowing it through.  *shrugs*

I assume everything is okay now, and what you wanted to post has now gone through?

Foul

Quick observation:  the seller in the auction post at Lost Caverns of Tsojconth isn't accurate.  It should be BlackGate.

Allan.

Hi foul

Getting an error this morning for the past 4 hours, which won't allow me to post a reply to Aia.

Says server is under maintenance or has exceeded capacity.

Al

It's something in your message that one of the firewalls doesn't like.  This happens every once in a while, and is hard to diagnose.  If you send me the text of the message in a PM I might be able to offer advice on what may be causing it.  Failing that, try re-wording your message and see if that passes muster.

Foul

Something is wrong with the Rulebooks and Sets page.  When I click on a book title on the index page, it just takes me to a mostly blank white page with money related symbols.  :(

Foul: I'm not sure if you are aware yet or not, but there is a very weird formatting issue going on with the forum portion of the site.  I initially thought it was just an artifact on my tablet, but it's happening on my desktop as well. Every page now loads with a massive space on top with just the background textural image and all of the content is being pushed way down the page as a result.

In case it matters, my tablet is on Chrome and my desktop is on Firefox.

Ahh, that did it.  Thanks.