Webmaster's Blog

[mknz]

Yeah the price of having N themes installed is modifying N themes. I'll get to it

I also need to:
-manually upload the renewed SSL cert
-change the login button icon so it's not a power button

Updated the OS the server is running on
Renewed TLS cert
Update the logo to be the club icon

Wasn't able to easily replace the login button icon but oh well

[mknz]

Forum software had another security update

[Rosscar]

I can no longer find the Quick links or The Team ?

[mknz]

I can no longer find the Quick links or The Team ?

They're on the right hand side now with the default theme

[ClanFever]

A database restart was needed earlier (done by Michael), you might have seen the site down. Computers, man!

[mknz]

Took a break from upgrading and testing new versions of the forum software and from working on the website. I spent a few hours settin up HTTP2, a free CDN, and DNSSEC.

The CDN allows us multiple mitigation stratergies for the next time bots decide to hammer the site, it should also theoretically provide some level of base protection without me doing anything. It also should allow a small performance increase for users, especially if not in Oceania (a lot of people look at our forum posts/guides). This may also reduce the bandwidth used by the server and thus our hosting costs.

H2 should provide a very small speed improvement as well as reducing the bandwidth used and potentially our hosting costs.

Don't expect a huge change in cost, this might literally be only a few cents difference

[mknz]

Apologies for the half an hour of unexpected downtime around 12:15-12:45 NZ time this morning. I was configuring the new website software when it decided to rewrite configuration for the root of the main website and thus everything (including the forum and gallery). I thought it was safe because it was contained to a subdirectory, but I assumed wrong. Everything should be fully operational now, and as far as I can see, it is. If you happen to notice something out of place please message me.

[ClanFever]

Thanks for the update Michael, keep up the AWesome work

[mknz]

Had another bot problem today at 6pm, blocked again

[mknz]

A different bot this time, I've taken more aggressive actions; blocking another bot, limiting the max number of DB connections, blocking more IPs, blocking more of IP ranges in Russia, Ukraine, and the PRC.

I've been slowly ratcheting up the aggressiveness to unnecessarily blocking legitimate users.

I'll keep turning down the max number of connections until the DB stops crashing under extremely high load. I can't be too agressive with this since many connections are quite simple. It's when bots try to scrape that they hit expense queries. Again, want to remain highly available.

[mknz]

Sam bot as the last few times, the problem is that it doesn't respect anything telling it to eff off. Again have ratcheted the rate limiting to see if that helps

[mknz]

The Dark reader browser extension will break the forum: https://github.com/darkreader/darkreader/issues/7038

For now the best workaround is to change your preferred theme in your user profile settings. It won't automatically sync with your device, but it's all there is until that bug is fixed.

[mknz]

Made the new website the main one.

You can still access the old one temporarily at: https://mr2.org.nz/oldweb/

Tell me if you think I'm missing anything. I've made sure all the links work, both on our website, and people linking to it.

I'm also keen for some newer events and other articles as we gain freedom to do some more things this year. Hit me up if you think you've got something. It doesn't have to be in the same style as the existing stuff.

I'm also keen for hi-res car images for articles and re-doing some of the other images on the website if anyone fancies themselves a designer.

The new website comes with more than just changes to how it looks, we needed to upgrade for both security reasons, and to unblock ugprading the forum. I'll eventually remove the old website once I'm sure we've gotten everything.

For now, I'm going to focus on some more on restoring what I can of the newsletters from the internet archive. I think we have all of them, it's just a matter of finding missing images and fixing links.

[mknz]

Apologies, looks like the forum went down, but failed to recover after a bot hammering. It's gotten pretty good at self recovery, but not perfect yet

[mknz]

Forum was down from some time morning, probably 5:20am when I got a notification. When I woke up I had to go straight to work and have now fixed it on my lunch break. I haven't investigated what has caused the crash, but it was a pretty bad crash. This time it wasn't a bot, and it might have been a scheduled job, I'll investigate tonight