What's been going on with the forum then? - Arms thread

[telectrix]

or catching up with the bandit. 10-4.

 

[Admin]

I am now having trouble with managing attachments/uploading pics but only in the last 30 minutes and everything else is running fine

View attachment 25474


Seems okay but I'll check out the software settings.

Wont be a setting on our part. It'll be DNS cache. Just hang in there. Things will refresh.

 

[Octopus]

Is there any reason email notification of thread updates arne't working?

 

[Admin]

Is there any reason email notification of thread updates arne't working?

Yeah, we haven't configured that end of it yet. You might find some come through eventually. But in the most part, this last few days has been about getting us back online, if I'm honest.

 

[shanky887614]

Can we pm this to people in forum?

 

[Admin]

Not if they're not in the arms no. Why would you need to?

I have their business details if they're in the arms.

And I don't know anybody from adam in the public domain.

Don't risk the forum. Tell them a bulb broke.

Nobody really needs to know, but I thought I'd be respectful and thankful for you lot putting up with yet again more forum issues, and do the right thing and explain what it was that was going on, so you knew the gravity of it.

If it ends up in the public domain, we risk whoever is attacking us fancying a challenge, and I can't physically afford more security.

 

[Darkwood]

Not if they're not in the arms no. Why would you need to?

I have their business details if they're in the arms.

And I don't know anybody from adam in the public domain.

Don't risk the forum. Tell them a bulb broke.

Nobody really needs to know, but I thought I'd be respectful and thankful for you lot putting up with yet again more forum issues, and do the right thing and explain what it was that was going on, so you knew the gravity of it.

If it ends up in the public domain, we risk whoever is attacking us fancying a challenge, and I can't physically afford more security.

If only someone knew an Electrician! :sosp:

 

[7029 dave]

Thanks for the update. Regards Dave

 

[uksparks]

I used to own a web hosting company for 14 years and hosted over 35,000 sites and 250 dedicated servers so all too familiar with this. This is why I sold the business to one of the uk's largest hosts and got out of it and now commit to my electrical work full time, best thing I ever did. I fully sympathise with you, I honestly can say I really do feel sorry for you and the issues you have had.

 

[ian.settle1]

Not if they're not in the arms no. Why would you need to?

I have their business details if they're in the arms.

And I don't know anybody from adam in the public domain.

Don't risk the forum. Tell them a bulb broke.

Nobody really needs to know, but I thought I'd be respectful and thankful for you lot putting up with yet again more forum issues, and do the right thing and explain what it was that was going on, so you knew the gravity of it.

If it ends up in the public domain, we risk whoever is attacking us fancying a challenge, and I can't physically afford more security.

Thought this was supposed to be a electrical forum not a gardening forum

 

[Admin]

I used to own a web hosting company for 14 years and hosted over 35,000 sites and 250 dedicated servers so all too familiar with this. This is why I sold the business to one of the uk's largest hosts and got out of it and now commit to my electrical work full time, best thing I ever did. I fully sympathise with you, I honestly can say I really do feel sorry for you and the issues you have had.

You'll agree it's not too common for small sites to get ddos'd then too I guess? And quite common for large firms, but also affordable to get around (out bandwidth them, or use on-site routers etc).

I was quoted 10k per month to protect the whole server at one point. Got it down to 6 considering we don't need much traffic when the ddos is over. Still not affordable.

I wouldn't wish this on our competitors who are often on shared hosting accounts (or resellers) in not so high-end datacentres, with software they need external staff to updated and protect etc etc - They'd struggle to quickly get things online I think.

 

[uksparks]

Dan, if you need ny free advice or assistance with getting an affordable stable platform just let me know as I know the industry inside out and have years of experience in it. Plus lots of experience with hackers and DDOS attacks, I'd be more than happy to have a chat with you should you need it, £6k per month is rediculous, I could get you a much cheaper platform.

 

[Paul.M]

As far as I am concerned the forum had man flu for a few days

 

[uksparks]

I have no idea of the pec of the server you are on, but I could get you probably 10TB of bandwidth per month and your own top spec server with Solid state disks for only a couple of hundreds month, with own dedicated Cisco firewall on a 10Gb fibre network, I am sure I can probably help you on this, PM me if you want.

 

[Admin]

I have no idea of the pec of the server you are on, but I could get you probably 10TB of bandwidth per month and your own top spec server with Solid state disks for only a couple of hundreds month, with own dedicated Cisco firewall on a 10Gb fibre network, I am sure I can probably help you on this, PM me if you want.

Since 2006 I've hosted the trade forums we know of. And before that it was tiling related forums, training centre websites, and tiling tools websites. Before that when I was about 14, using AOL dialup (9.99 per month and 1p per minute) I was using a packard bell PC and AOL chatrooms creating scripts that changed the colour of the font in chatrooms (got banned a lot). And hosted car related forums and websites.

I'm quite clued up to a point. But instead of going down the 'hacking' route, I went down an actual business route.

We spend a lot on dedicated servers, clusters of servers for mail and other protection, and have had a lot of attempted hacks over the years as we run vBulletin. Lots of exploits in that.

What I've found is rather than me be super skilled in every field, is to get specialists in when needed. So we're on an awesome server that gets upgraded annually, with SSD's, awesome RAM, always DELL, hosted in DC1 in the docklands on the best connectivity with lots of spare bandwidth and whatnot. And know when I shop around what I'm looking for (I rarely switch but I do haggle when it comes to upgrading - I'd rather stay put than build new relationships).

But this, this was new. Small guys don't get DDOS'd and if it was a script kiddy I have lots of bandwidth spare and they'd find their resources outnumbered. This was massive though. It took down my hosts network and his lines he leased (inc his backup lines). The datacentre went nuts. I can't afford hardware myself. So like with my usual outcome, I've paid an external firm to route traffic through who will update their own gear when needed rather than me needing to keep on top of what's what and keep shopping around.

I appreciate your offer, but I didn't go with the 10k guy who came down a bit to something more than a millionaires mortgage. lol

I'm sure he's never touched hardware in his life and drives a ferarri.

 

[Silly Sausage]

Interesting thread, in several ways!!!

 

[uksparks]

It sounds like you know what you are doing then, well I'm always here for impartial advice should you need it, the last big hit we took, knocked out one of the min links between the uk and the Netherlands... We were really not very popular.

I best go to bed now as hve a shower circuit to put in tomorrow, I did turn up at the job this morning to see that I'd written it on the wrong page in my diary lol.

 

[piccollo]

Thanks for update, much appreciated,

 

[Admin]

Looks like we've been just fine with the new setup.

 

[telectrix]

no problems here since forum came back online yesterday.