Support Request Template
What version of phpBB are you using? phpBB 3.3.11
What is your board's URL? http://n/a
Who do you host your board with? Amerinoc
How did you install your board? I used the download package from phpBB.com
What is the most recent action performed on your board? Update from a previous version of phpBB3
Is registration required to reproduce this issue? No
Do you have any MODs installed? No
Do you have any extensions installed? Yes
What version of phpBB3 did you update from? phpBB 3.0-B1
What extensions do you have installed? Board Announcements 1.2.1
Collapsible Categories 2.1.0
Media Embed 2.0.2
Advanced BBCode Box 3 3.3.7
Thanks for Posts
Set Forum Width
External Links Open in New Window
Google Analytics (deactivated)
What styles do you currently have installed? SE_Gamer
What language(s) is your board currently using? British English
Which database type/version are you using? MariaDB
What is your level of experience? Comfortable with PHP and phpBB
What actions did you take (updating your board; installing a MOD, style or extension; etc.) prior to this problem becoming noticeable? Nothing in particular. It just started happening.
Please describe your problem. A few weeks ago, I (and my users) started getting the "User has exceeded the 'max_queries_per_hour' resource (current value: 100000)" error.
I know that the answer to this problem is usually "get a bigger hosting plan" - and in fact, that might be the solution here, but I find that hard to believe, and if it is the solution, I'd like to get confirmation that I am indeed legitimately growing against my limits. But I doubt that.
The traffic to my site has not considerably grown in the last few months/years. At least not judging by the amount of activity I can see. If anything, it might be dwindling. The "most users visiting at the same time" value is still 24, and has been since April 2021, the height of the Pandemic. I have about 6000 registered members, and a much (much) lower number of active users. So if there is indeed a spike in the number of queries it must be because of bots, or something I don't know how to check. So that's what I'd like advice on.
In previous responses to similar questions, people are advised to check the server access logs. But which logs are those, and where do I find them? Is it the admin log in the ACP? Because I've checked that one, and I'm not seeing any anomalies there. Or are they in the control panel at my host? There is a logs category there, but the links in it don't work. If that's where I should look, I'll check with them, but perhaps you guys know I should be looking somewhere else anyway.
Besides more users or bots accessing the site, could it also be the activity of the users within the forum that's causing this? For example one users starting a lot of topics?
Unfortunately, I don't have much insight into the traffic coming into my website. I used to have Google Analytics, but since their overhaul, I haven't been able to get that to work. With the latest upgrade of the forum, I just deactivated the Google Analytics plugin.
When this first started happening, I hadn't updated my forum in a while. After I did, it seemed to get a little bit better, but now it's much worse again. I changed my spambot countermeasure from Q&A to Captcha V3, but that hasn't changed anything.
I had two other websites on the same server (which I never officially launched). I took those offline (that is, I deleted all the files from the server) as I thought maybe they were attracting bot traffic, but that didn't help either.
What else could I do to find the cause of this sudden traffic surge? Or even better, get it to stop?
What version of phpBB are you using? phpBB 3.3.11
What is your board's URL? http://n/a
Who do you host your board with? Amerinoc
How did you install your board? I used the download package from phpBB.com
What is the most recent action performed on your board? Update from a previous version of phpBB3
Is registration required to reproduce this issue? No
Do you have any MODs installed? No
Do you have any extensions installed? Yes
What version of phpBB3 did you update from? phpBB 3.0-B1
What extensions do you have installed? Board Announcements 1.2.1
Collapsible Categories 2.1.0
Media Embed 2.0.2
Advanced BBCode Box 3 3.3.7
Thanks for Posts
Set Forum Width
External Links Open in New Window
Google Analytics (deactivated)
What styles do you currently have installed? SE_Gamer
What language(s) is your board currently using? British English
Which database type/version are you using? MariaDB
What is your level of experience? Comfortable with PHP and phpBB
What actions did you take (updating your board; installing a MOD, style or extension; etc.) prior to this problem becoming noticeable? Nothing in particular. It just started happening.
Please describe your problem. A few weeks ago, I (and my users) started getting the "User has exceeded the 'max_queries_per_hour' resource (current value: 100000)" error.
I know that the answer to this problem is usually "get a bigger hosting plan" - and in fact, that might be the solution here, but I find that hard to believe, and if it is the solution, I'd like to get confirmation that I am indeed legitimately growing against my limits. But I doubt that.
The traffic to my site has not considerably grown in the last few months/years. At least not judging by the amount of activity I can see. If anything, it might be dwindling. The "most users visiting at the same time" value is still 24, and has been since April 2021, the height of the Pandemic. I have about 6000 registered members, and a much (much) lower number of active users. So if there is indeed a spike in the number of queries it must be because of bots, or something I don't know how to check. So that's what I'd like advice on.
In previous responses to similar questions, people are advised to check the server access logs. But which logs are those, and where do I find them? Is it the admin log in the ACP? Because I've checked that one, and I'm not seeing any anomalies there. Or are they in the control panel at my host? There is a logs category there, but the links in it don't work. If that's where I should look, I'll check with them, but perhaps you guys know I should be looking somewhere else anyway.
Besides more users or bots accessing the site, could it also be the activity of the users within the forum that's causing this? For example one users starting a lot of topics?
Unfortunately, I don't have much insight into the traffic coming into my website. I used to have Google Analytics, but since their overhaul, I haven't been able to get that to work. With the latest upgrade of the forum, I just deactivated the Google Analytics plugin.
When this first started happening, I hadn't updated my forum in a while. After I did, it seemed to get a little bit better, but now it's much worse again. I changed my spambot countermeasure from Q&A to Captcha V3, but that hasn't changed anything.
I had two other websites on the same server (which I never officially launched). I took those offline (that is, I deleted all the files from the server) as I thought maybe they were attracting bot traffic, but that didn't help either.
What else could I do to find the cause of this sudden traffic surge? Or even better, get it to stop?
Statistics: Posted by rommeltje — Sat Apr 27, 2024 11:42 am