The Website seems to have gotten rather slow, and laggy...

[dyarker]

Another thought.
moved to shared user server and/or throttled connections.
or if was shared before, the isp added a new customer that is very popular

[Janitor Tzap]

All day its been double digits. Right now there 317 people and it's sloooowwww. I can't see where that number would slow things down unless we've already hit a limit.

That's what I've got for now.

Hmmmm..................

3/9/2025
Sunday 10:55AM CST

393 people online, but website is responding fast.
Beside myself, there are 3 search BOT's currently online.


Signed: Janitor Tzap

[CeaSaR]

459 and it's flying. Uh huh....

[dacflyer]

As of this morning, the site is quite fast... 3-11-25 7:30A

[CeaSaR]

Yesterday, 434 online, today, 78. Both times lightning fast.

BTW, 7 people browsing this particular forum, an indexing bot, myself and 6 guests.

[Janitor Tzap]

Wednesday 8:05pm CST.

Site is running just fine.
Only 61 users online.
Including myself and three BOT's.

I did some checking on the BOT's, as too what they were doing.
Strangely enough, one BOT{Ahrefs} is watching the site traffic for the website.
And it tries to adjust the traffic flow, to keep the website from crashing.


Signed: Janitor Tzap

[dyarker]

wouldn't have posted again but really slow
3548 users at 05:44 Eastern Friday (site in Central time, 04:44 on post)

[CeaSaR]

Slow as well.
In total there are 2220 users online :: 5 registered, 0 hidden and 2215 guests (based on users active over the past 5 minutes)
Most users ever online was 9261 on 08 Jan 2025 04:27 pm

11:13 AM 3/14/25

[Janitor Tzap]

Monday 12:15 AM CST.

Site is running just fine.
1455 users online.
Including myself and five BOT's.

I tried logging in on Saturday and Sunday.
But it was responding so slowly, that my Firefox was timing out.
Plus, when I checked the number on line, it was 3500 or more.
Only this number doesn't seem too matter.
Because the site was still responding slowly, with only 161 online, when I checked it this past Sunday afternoon.


Signed: Janitor Tzap

[CeaSaR]

I saw that too. Highest I saw was in the 4000's. that was slow, but not interminable. other #'s were definitely lesser. at ~1400, it was molasses slow and at 764, it was even slower. Now it's only 46 and lightning quick. That suggests it's a traffic limit situation or, at worst, a possible infection where outgoing traffic is tying up the bandwidth. I'm suspicious since the influx of guests don't join (we see that in a message at the bottom), and it's a fairly new occurrence.

And these are not previous members who've been banned. They'd still show up as members. They don't.

[Janitor Tzap]

Hail CeaSaR!

I think I found the cause of our website woes.
Semrush [Bot]
Here's an explanation of what it does, and causes.
https://www.searchlogistics.com/learn/seo/semrushbot/


Signed: Janitor Tzap

[dacflyer]

Janitor >> You so smart... I would have never thought that.
Now who's going to block it ? or not ?

[CeaSaR]

Says it's registered, but I cannot find it in any list. Therefore, I am unable to deal with it.

While it may say that it is a possible bandwidth hog, Semrush has been indexing this site for a fairly long time. The huge jumps in online visitors does seem to coincide with the lag issues, but only after a time. It still feels like a limit issue When we have multi-thousands staying on the site for days at a time. For example, over the weekend, we had several thousand constant for 3+ days. If that doesn't cause issues for a small site, I don't know what would.

[Janitor Tzap]

I know I mentioned Afrefs BOT in an earlier post.

Well, I did more digging on it, and found that some SPAMMERS are using it to flood multiple websites.
Normally this can be caught before it causes too much of a problem.
But, I guess they don't have enough staff, to keep on top of what the BOT is doing all the time.

Here's an article I found: https://www.searchlogistics.com/learn/seo/ahrefsbot/

Signed: Janitor Tzap

[CeaSaR]

It is currently 23 Mar 2025 10:54 pm

In total there are 1929 users online :: 6 registered, 0 hidden and 1923 guests (based on users active over the past 5 minutes)
Most users ever online was 9261 on 08 Jan 2025 04:27 pm

Registered users: Ahrefs [Bot], Amazon [Bot], Bing [Bot], CeaSaR, Google Adsense [Bot], Semrush [Bot]
Legend: Administrators, Global moderators

Still quite zippy.