"View New Posts" link funky???

[shirkie]

I don't know how the rest of you visit the KSite boards, but I always click the little thingy that says "View New Posts (number of new posts since last visit)." However, I notice that (since "Covenant," I believe), there's something strange about the link.

It used to say "View New Posts (824)" or "View New Posts (201)" and stuff (depending on how many new posts there were)... Since "Covenant," it appears as "View New Posts ()"-- NOTHING in the parentheses! So I don't know how many new posts are waiting for me.

Is anyone else having this problem, or am I just special? Anyone have any clue how I can fix this? It's not *that* big of a deal, but sometimes it's cool to visit KSite and see things like "View New Posts (2841)" hee.
shirkie

[Tigress35]

You know, it started doing that for me too. All the new posts still show up, but for some reason it won't count them. We'll check and see there's anything that can be fixed.

[shirkie]

YAY so it's not just me!!! It's a minor annoyance. But still!!! :)
Whining,
shirkie

[Azure Trayl]

I'm experiencing that myself Shirkie. You're not going insane. lol

[TWShakar]

It's like that for me too. But you've always been special :D

[shirkie]

Hehe yes... I'm .... "special." :) Did everyone else start having this problem just after "Covenant" like me?
shirkie

[Big Albowski]

Good... it's not just me!!!

Al

[Disco]

I noticed it too after Covenant. Hehe, we killed the board. But all you have to do is click onto the 'view new post' and it will show you how many there are.

[Sharkie]

I noticed it, the board went down for me for about one hour and when I came back the thing was messed up.

[Disco]

don't know if we can fix it. not much we can do about the board going down. we just have to realize there will be a lot of action right after a new episode. the best thing would be to wait until the next day to post.

[shirkie]

But there have been quite a few times when I couldn't get on because the boards were overcrowded... This is the first time I've had the weird problem!!!!!!
shirkie

[TWShakar]

It's a conspiracy! :p

I know what you mean shirkie. Weird indeed.

[Disco]

well you have to consider we had nearly 900 people on for the finale. that's twice as many as we usually get for an episode. must be some connection as to why the new post thingy isn't showing.

[Sharkie]

I agree. That's the only explanation.

[shirkie]

I thought we've had more than 900 on at once? At least that's what the stats say...
shirkie

[TWShakar]

Maybe this time it couldn't take it. :\

[Disco]

I think that was a different scenerio. We were flooded or pirated (not sure of the term) by someone specifically trying to crash the board. I think things slowed down but the board stayed up. The person might have just had a rash of IP's coming here. But in truth I guess it was no different than the other night. Why it had no affect then I do not know.

[shirkie]

What do you mean someone specifically tried to crash the board!?!?!! Ehhhhh!?!?! My brain hurts. Why would they want to do that? Stupid people... Grrrrrrrrrrr. Anyways, I want that to get fixed already. :)
shirkie

[Disco]

I'll let you guys in on what happened. Huffy was the one on the board at the time and this is her story:


Basically, the story goes: we edited posts by kane55686 because he was posting links of downloadable episodes. He IMed me to ask why, I told him repeatedly it was because it's illegal. He then asked me for Craig's AIM screen name, which I refused to give him, and then he threatened me and told me that 'I best tell' him, again I refused and so he threatened to 'have a large group of piraters go to the site'. Which Clari and I basically interpret as a dos attack -- Denial of Service attack.

He made good on this threat and got over 800 piraters to come to the site (hence the reason why we now have a record of 900 or so users on the board at anyone time). To try and see if there was anything we could do about this guy Clari very kindly called nexcess and told them about the threat. She then called Craig, to let him know what was going on.

Craig got in contact with Nexcess our site and board host. We shouldn't have any more problems like that.

The attack never really worked in the first place.

[Sharkie]

Was the board experiances problems then? Do you think that is was caused last weeks near 800?

[Disco]

Nah, this happened last September. The near 900 we got for the finale was legit :)

[Sharkie]

Ah, which is good news! That means it was really popular. People don't post as much if the didn;t like the episode, and the finale is a very active forum!

[Disco]

yeah, that's what i ment when i stated in the LAH/WAH that board numbers mean more to me than actual rating. Although 700 of those people were just guest reading what we thought of the episode. nice to know what we say has some importance.

[James]

Eh, that does sound like it was a DoS attack back in September, but the person won't have really gotten over 800 people to do it. He'll have simply set up a piece of software that makes repeated and simultaneous attempts to access the site, each one from a different (and spoofed) IP address - sadly it's very easy if someone is pathetic and stupid enough to try it.

It take far more access attempts to crash a site in a DoS attack than it does when the page views are legitimate, simply because the DoS attack rarely accesses all of the other files (images etc.) on the page that create such overwhelming (and system-crashing) numbers of http requests.

And by the looks of the missing number on the top of the page, it appears - although I don't have vBulletin and obviously can't view the database structure - that one of the tables in the database may have become corrupted.

[Psyphun]

Originally posted by TWShakar
It's like that for me too. But you've always been special :D

I wanna be special!

I think the post counter thang is hosed at the moment for everybody. Call an undocumented feature.

[shirkie]

800 pirates? Arrr, mateys! These people need lives, I swear. "WOW I'm going to crash a website! WHEE!" Sigh.
shirkie

[superfan]

Originally posted by James
Eh, that does sound like it was a DoS attack back in September, but the person won't have really gotten over 800 people to do it. He'll have simply set up a piece of software that makes repeated and simultaneous attempts to access the site, each one from a different (and spoofed) IP address - sadly it's very easy if someone is pathetic and stupid enough to try it.

It take far more access attempts to crash a site in a DoS attack than it does when the page views are legitimate, simply because the DoS attack rarely accesses all of the other files (images etc.) on the page that create such overwhelming (and system-crashing) numbers of http requests.

And by the looks of the missing number on the top of the page, it appears - although I don't have vBulletin and obviously can't view the database structure - that one of the tables in the database may have become corrupted.
that is very interesting. I have never heard of it.