Photrio server status: performance tuning, bug fixing and bot wars..

[Sean]

Hi All,

I've gotten through several days of performance tuning, bug fixing and dealing to some massive bot attacks on the server. You should notice things running way better now, and now that I am full time on Photrio again there is MUCH more to come.

We still have quite the todo list, but I now have all the time I need to move forward and give the site my undivided attention.

If there are any issues you think we might not know about please let us know.

As always, special thanks to the mod team for all the reporting, checking and testing. Also to those members who provide bug reports and any info we need.

Sean

 

[koraks]

I think most people don't realize how much work you've been putting in these past weeks @Sean. Since we go back and forth in the background a lot, I go get hints of your activity level - and it's commendable!

there is MUCH more to come

Exciting!!

 

[blee1996]

Thank you Captain!

In the last few days I noticed once "database error", now it makes sense.

 

[Sean]

Thanks.

Today has been another good day..

-I found over 50 broken google bots searching on the same 6 search terms 1,000s of times per minute for some time now (not good!) and have a fix in place to prevent these things in the future. The fix can take up to 48hrs to reset the bots, so once that it dealt to performance should increase further.

-improved our internal search system and tuned it

-Our server/site backup routine has been rebuilt and is much improved now with zero downtime required during backups. 2 full backups daily, multiple geos.

A dev environment is being built now so we can fully test some core patch updates and other fixes/updates. We need to take our core server code from 2.2.9 to 2.2.17 as soon as possible. This will be next weeks major task.

 

[Tony-S]

I wish there were "bot bombs" that could automatically be sent back to the source and wipe the bots out of existence!

 

[Sean]

I wish there were "bot bombs" that could automatically be sent back to the source and wipe the bots out of existence!

 

[Sirius Glass]

Thanks.

Today has been another good day..

-I found over 50 broken google bots searching on the same 6 search terms 1,000s of times per minute for some time now (not good!) and have a fix in place to prevent these things in the future. The fix can take up to 48hrs to reset the bots, so once that it dealt to performance should increase further.

-improved our internal search system and tuned it

-Our server/site backup routine has been rebuilt and is much improved now with zero downtime required during backups. 2 full backups daily, multiple geos.

A dev environment is being built now so we can fully test some core patch updates and other fixes/updates. We need to take our core server code from 2.2.9 to 2.2.17 as soon as possible. This will be next weeks major task.

Thank you for your work and dedication.

 

[Sean]

Thank you for your work and dedication.

Thanks. I am coming out of a 5-year IT contracting stint and unfortunately during this hectic time it has been tough to keep some things here from slipping. I'm finally able to get back to Photrio for a while (hopefully a long while) full time. There's nothing in my way now, and I'm excited for 2026 to make it the best it can be Really looking forward to it

 

[Sean]

Google performance tests are showing huge improvements, and mobile speed has been improved hugely as well. Great to see

 

[loccdor]

There is a ton of work that goes into keeping a site running, even just maintaining its existence. Thank you for your service!

 

[RalphLambrecht]

Hi All,

I've gotten through several days of performance tuning, bug fixing and dealing to some massive bot attacks on the server. You should notice things running way better now, and now that I am full time on Photrio again there is MUCH more to come.

We still have quite the todo list, but I now have all the time I need to move forward and give the site my undivided attention.

If there are any issues you think we might not know about please let us know.

As always, special thanks to the mod team for all the reporting, checking and testing. Also to those members who provide bug reports and any info we need.

Sean

thanks for the great job Sean. From my POV, things are running smoothly.

 

[blee1996]

Hi @Sean , I noticed something odd recently with photrio website pages become blank after some idle time. It only happens on mobile Chrome browser and Android (latest, Pixel 9 phone). Laptop browser is totally fine. This only happens in recent days (maybe less than a week).

- I open some photrio page (e.g. my post), read up
- then leave the browser for other apps
- After some time (e.g. a few hours), I comes back to photrio website, and the entire page is blank. pull down to reload or reload with menu does nothing
- if I go back to URL, and use photrio bookmark, and the page loads normally again

Could you pls check if there is any mobile optimization related issue, or is just me unlucky? Thanks!

 

[mshchem]

Hi @Sean , I noticed something odd recently with photrio website pages become blank after some idle time. It only happens on mobile Chrome browser and Android (latest, Pixel 9 phone). Laptop browser is totally fine. This only happens in recent days (maybe less than a week).

- I open some photrio page (e.g. my post), read up
- then leave the browser for other apps
- After some time (e.g. a few hours), I comes back to photrio website, and the entire page is blank. pull down to reload or reload with menu does nothing
- if I go back to URL, and use photrio bookmark, and the page loads normally again

Could you pls check if there is any mobile optimization related issue, or is just me unlucky? Thanks!

Mine same setup Samsung tablet doing this as well

 

[Sean]

Hi @Sean , I noticed something odd recently with photrio website pages become blank after some idle time. It only happens on mobile Chrome browser and Android (latest, Pixel 9 phone). Laptop browser is totally fine. This only happens in recent days (maybe less than a week).

- I open some photrio page (e.g. my post), read up
- then leave the browser for other apps
- After some time (e.g. a few hours), I comes back to photrio website, and the entire page is blank. pull down to reload or reload with menu does nothing
- if I go back to URL, and use photrio bookmark, and the page loads normally again

Could you pls check if there is any mobile optimization related issue, or is just me unlucky? Thanks!

Mine same setup Samsung tablet doing this as well

Hi, thanks for the heads up, I'll investigate and get back to you.

Sean

 

[Sean]

@blee1996 @mshchem

Can you try this for me? A recent chrome update has caused problems and this should resolve it. Let me know how it goes, thanks!

-Open Chrome Settings on your phone.
-Go to Site Settings > All sites.
-Find photrio.com and tap it.
-Tap "Clear & Reset".
This will log you out, but it should stop the white screen from happening again once logged back in.

 

[blee1996]

@Sean just did the procedure. I will monitor during the next few days and report back if the issue is NOT resolved.

 

[reneboehmer]

Amazing. Thanks for this!

 

[mshchem]

I did this and at the same time there was a citywide electrical blackout. The President has redirected forces from Venezuela to New Zealand. Good Luck!

 

[thinkbrown]

Not sure if there's a more appropriate place for this, but I noticed that there's now a moderation toolbar showing up for me this morning. I don't have permissions to do anything with it but presumably something got misconfigured.

 

[Sean]

Not sure if there's a more appropriate place for this, but I noticed that there's now a moderation toolbar showing up for me this morning. I don't have permissions to do anything with it but presumably something got misconfigured.

Yeah, slight glitch during some work, thanks

 

[Sean]

The bot wars continued, actually got worse. 5-10,000 bots from china, rotating ips and millions of connections smashing us. At this point we had no choice but to block China as a whole. Not ideal, and hopefully if we have any Chinese members they can get to us via VPN.

Also, since the block, our server loads are down 70%.

 

[thinkbrown]

The bot wars continued, actually got worse. 5-10,000 bots from china, rotating ips and millions of connections smashing us. At this point we had no choice but to block China as a whole. Not ideal, and hopefully if we have any Chinese members they can get to us via VPN.

Also, since the block, our server loads are down 70%.

Are you using something like Cloudfront or another CDN? A lot of them have integrated WAFs that can help automatically mitigate those kinds of attack. Something I end up dealing with a fair bit in my dayjob.

 

[Sean]

Are you using something like Cloudfront or another CDN? A lot of them have integrated WAFs that can help automatically mitigate those kinds of attack. Something I end up dealing with a fair bit in my dayjob.

It seems xenforo forums are always cursed with CDNs and systems like Cloudflare. I've dipped into them a few times only to run into a variety of random, intermittent hair pulling anomalies and degraded user experience so always revert back to local, but am open to suggestions. At present the issue has been resolved it's just a shame to have to geoblock an entire region.

 

[thinkbrown]

It seems xenforo forums are always cursed with CDNs and systems like Cloudflare. I've dipped into them a few times only to run into a variety of random, intermittent hair pulling anomalies and degraded user experience so always revert back to local, but am open to suggestions. At present the issue has been resolved it's just a shame to have to geoblock an entire region.

I haven't run Xenforo so I can't comment on that in particular, but I do have a pretty decent depth of experience with AWS and their CloudFront/WAF offerings. Happy to chat sometime, see if that's something that could be of use.

 

[Tony-S]

My work gets bombarded by China every day, all day. No doubt looking for holes to steal IP.