CloudFlare

Post Reply New Topic

My access to WrongPlanet is sometimes interrupted by messages from 'CloudFlare' - they appear to offer some kind of protection against interference, but I would prefer not to have my WrongPlanet access interfered with by CloudFlare. Any suggestions?

I'm getting the same thing. It appears to be some sort of system that ttys to sort out denial-of-service attacks and keep them from hogging the server. But, it could be a server hack, so I'm interested to know if it's intended to be there.

It's entirely intentional, providing improvements in performance and additional security:
https://www.cloudflare.com/

It's just DDoS. Nothing to really worry about.

It was nice while they weren't popping up, but it's nice that the feature is there.

Same here I kinda find it cool in a way to prevent people from DDosing the site but also slightly annoying because it takes longer to log in.

Eh, I'll get used to it in time. This site, as I said before, is in dire need of an update.

How do I get rid of it?

It is causing severe annoyance - when I click on a link in the emails sent from WP to alert me to a reply, the Cloudflare screen comes up saying "Just a minute, 5 seconds" etc and then freezes, it goes nowhere.

Please explain answers very simply as I am not computer savvy at all. Thanks in advance.

You don't. CloudFlare is a hosting service, and WrongPlanet is hosted by CloudFlare. For a few days I wondered why I was getting those screens, and thought it had something to do with my browser having an unusual user agent (I'm on Pale Moon, for the record), but it turns out everyone's getting this.

No.
No.

CloudFlare is both a distributed cache and a protection mechanism for any site using its services.
It sits between the site and whatever attempts to access it, so is able to provide a faster distributed access to the site's content and filter out various types of attack.

Access without and with CloudFlare:


From: https://www.cloudflare.com/overview

Is everyone getting this "Checking your browser before accessing wrongplanet.net" page regularly? What's more annoying is that I get "broken" images because of it (eg. for post and forum icons), because my browser doesn't follow that redirect page when loading an image. Is everyone else getting this, too?

I ask, because I suspect this might be like the infamous CAPTCHA page that was supposed to appear once per user, but actually appeared on every post.

I get the "Checking your browser" page on the very first access of the day and at infrequent, and random, intervals during the day.
At a rough guess the random occurrences are no more than five times a day - not enough to become annoying and absolutely nowhere near as frequent as the CAPTCHA nonsense from a while ago.

The broken icons problem seems to have started around the same time but I'm finding more than the usual number of page reset errors and other odd delays with sites that are normally well behaved, so I'm inclined to blame my ISP for at least a part of it.
They have previous form in this area...



Gah, typo.

Last edited by Cornflake on 16 Jun 2014, 2:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I would guess that WrongPlanet earns money from allowing CloudFlare to advertise itself on the site. And who are we to complain about that?

But the suggestion that we are in some way 'protected' (free of charge) by the CloudFare input does not ring true - if that were the case, then why do we not enjoy its advantages on every other forum-based website?

That page (and a couple of others) is displayed to inform the user what is happening. The alternative would be a delay with no explanation at all.

It's not a "suggestion" and the protection provided is very real; I don't think it's free of charge either. WP costs money to host, run and maintain - that's simply not passed on to the membership which continues to use the site free of charge.
I can definitely assure you it had an immediate effect on several attacks WP was subjected to which were running myself and another administrator ragged with trying to handle and keep the site accessible. The access speed to the site and its availability has also improved considerably.

I am having the same experience as FMX, and it is continual, daily, and very negatively impacting on my WP experience.

For my part, I'm happy to put up with the inconvenience of the delays, if it keeps the site up and affordable to run. Bandwidth costs money, so stopping the DoS attacks is good in more ways than one. So, no complaint from me.