Thread: What went wrong

Same for me

Same here, I investigated and opened a whole new can of worms, PM me if you want to know.

I would like to contact the site owner if anyone knows how?

Everyone seems to have had the same problem Martin.

An SSL certificate (Secure Sockets Layer certificate) is a digital thingy that authenticates the data encryption between a website and its user's browsers to keep the connections secured from hacking. More details would be brain busting techy stuff but the important thing is that it has to be renewed yearly to maintain the security of user's connections to the site. It actually lasts for thirteen months so there isn't a short break between one certificate expiring and the new one taking effect.

I need one for my Manky Sanke website to keep my visitor's connections secure and renewal costs me about five quid in addition to the hosting costs. The whole hosting and SSL costs are paid automatically like a direct debit so I don't have to worry about forgetting to pay them on time and my site going down until people start shouting at me.

Being only a visitor, I obviously don't have the full details of this site but my understanding is that this site had trouble recently with a huge number of bogus visitors; possibly AI bots or a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) hacking attempt to flood a site with bogus traffic and overloading the server. To counter that, the ClouFare security network was added and worked well apart from the annoying delays while it kept checking to ensure whether we were human.

The CloudFare system checks a site's SSL validity so I assume there was either a software glitch or the certificate had expired.

Really glad we have gone back to normal,I thought that was it,Extreme koi finished.
Dont understand all the tech but so glad to see all you guys back

Originally Posted by ohfortunate1

I've just managed to get back on . Not sure how much to trust the info that comes back from FB pages . Its all about changing water and scrapes

Don't trust "FaceBook Experts". The threads are full of people guessing or recycling myths they've heard somewhere - probably from another "Expert".

There are quite a few people I know who have a good understanding and try to help people on a few groups but we are often outvoted by guesses and personal opinion dressed up as fact. After 40+ years in water sciences I would humbly suggest that I know a little bit about water chemistry but recently, when I tried to explain something basic, one person arrogantly challenged me and said I was completely wrong and that I "should Google it".

Originally Posted by Manky Sanke

Don't trust "FaceBook Experts". The threads are full of people guessing or recycling myths they've heard somewhere - probably from another "Expert".

There are quite a few people I know who have a good understanding and try to help people on a few groups but we are often outvoted by guesses and personal opinion dressed up as fact. After 40+ years in water sciences I would humbly suggest that I know a little bit about water chemistry but recently, when I tried to explain something basic, one person arrogantly challenged me and said I was completely wrong and that I "should Google it".

You should have, and then posted up a link to your own website.

I can't suffer the Facebook groups either. Too much re-hashed shite as others have suggested.

Originally Posted by Alburglar

You should have, and then posted up a link to your own website.

I often give a brief answer followed by a link to an appropriate article on my site which gives more detailed information and, usually, it goes down well judging by the number of "likes" I get.

However, after a fully comprehensive answer to a question by me or someone else who knows their stuff, there are sometimes several posts from "the who needs facts when you have opinions" brigade who ignore good answers and post things like "I don't do water changes" or "I top up with tap water and don't use dechlorinator" and other ridiculous ideas especially about salt or using cream crackers to soak up DOC foam then allowing their koi to eat the DOC laden crackers and think that's healthy. Ugh.

Yep, it appears the CloudFare antispam system was removed because it was stopping legitimate users from logging in due to the SSL certificate problem (as I explained earlier in post no. 6). Now it's gone, the spammers can get in and clog the forums with their junk.

test, ignore

Yeah, there’s a huge amount of spam these days with AI bots auto-generating it. All forums are affected by this, not just us.
Forum software catches an awful lot, but will always be a step behind the newest IP addresses sending it.
I do delete a few every day pretty much.
The only way it could be controlled faster would be to stop new members posting anything at all until mods approved it, but ultimately that would stop people needing to join and ask for urgent advice being able to use the forum as intended.

I'm lucky - my son keeps my PC in order for me, atm running uBlock Origin lite on Chrome with no ads or pests at all, link below;
https://chromewebstore.google.com/de...cmpfh?hl=en-GB

@Feline,

There used to be ways to prevent intrusive ads in the VBulletin settings, but those options have disappeared.

I've always assumed the intrusive ads are by design from the forum administrators, but lately I'm not so sure.

Using Chrome browser this forum is littered with intrusive Temu ads that scroll up from bottom of page and cover content etc, and then the big banner one along the top of the page.

Now, on other Koi related websites, I see Koi related adverts. I've never used or search Temu, yet all I see on this forum is Temu ads, and coincidentally all of the spam you keep blocking links back to Temu.

So I am now wondering, are the sponsors / ads all over this forum actually meant to be there, or have they been injected into the site maliciously?

Easiest way to answer this would be if someone comes along and says, no, I don't see Temu ads, I see X,Y,Z ads, since the adsense algorithm will produce tailored ads to each individual. But if everyone agrees they are all seeing Temu ads (on chrome browser), then I suspect they have been maliciously injected into the site and need to be dealt with.

Here's a screen grab just from the bottom section of the home page, and these things come out from the top and sides of the page as well - I can't imagine any forum administrator is that desperate for a few advertising pennies that they'll trash their site like this. Any option to restrict them that you would find on any normal forum is completely missing from this forum - I know this because I recently produced a tutorial on here to help others block the intrusive ads, but the options have now been removed.