[Forum] Unregistered users are hammering my site!

[Meestor_X]

Is there any way to stop unregistered users from hammering my site and overloading the mysql server? I have a forum with very few visitors and only a cheap shared host, which is plenty for the 1 or 2 people that visit the site legitimately. However, I keep getting "mysql has gone away" errors, and I'm sure my host will shut the site down soon if the mysql load doesn't get reduced.

So, is there anyway to limit queries or other database load for unregistered users?

[Graham Walters]

Is there any way to stop unregistered users from hammering my site and overloading the mysql server? I have a forum with very few visitors and only a cheap shared host, which is plenty for the 1 or 2 people that visit the site legitimately. However, I keep getting "mysql has gone away" errors, and I'm sure my host will shut the site down soon if the mysql load doesn't get reduced.

So, is there anyway to limit queries or other database load for unregistered users?

There are plenty of anti- spam Mods on VB.org

[Meestor_X]

Thank you for your reply. I have several ant-spam mods installed and do not have an issue (anymore) with spam registrations. Are there some things I can do to keep unregistered users from causing queries?

[donald1234]

How many visitors are on your site when the database crashes?, I looked at the two sites in your sig and you had 23 and 44 guests, even the most basic hosting package should handle that. Anti spam mods don't really stop visitors visiting your site and neither should they, if it is bots repeatedly trying to login etc all you can do is ban their IP's or ranges. ...and be careful not to link to spammy sites as these bots don't find your site from google, they follow links from one spammy site to another.

[Meestor_X]

I don't know, but I have to assume it's too many unregistered users visiting the site. I have had one of my sites shut down due to too much database activity. I moved that site (mindplacesupport.com) as it was a business site. My personal site (checkcheckonetwo.com) is the one I'm having issues with.
Here is an example of the errors I'm getting:

Database error in vBulletin 4.2.0:
Invalid SQL:
SELECT title, template FROM template WHERE templateid IN (0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0 ,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0);
MySQL Error :
MySQL server has gone away
Error Number : 2006
Request Date : Sunday, June 8th 2014 @ 05:58:12 AM
Error Date : Sunday, June 8th 2014 @ 06:01:14 AM
Script : http://www.checkcheckonetwo.com/forum/register.php
Referrer : http://www.checkcheckonetwo.com/
IP Address : 46.249.58.68
Username : Unregistered
Classname : vB_Database
MySQL Version :

Database error in vBulletin 4.2.0:
Invalid SQL:
SELECT template FROM template WHERE templateid = 19464;
MySQL Error : MySQL server has gone away
Error Number : 2006
Request Date : Sunday, June 8th 2014 @ 07:13:26 AM
Error Date : Sunday, June 8th 2014 @ 07:16:21 AM
Script : http://www.checkcheckonetwo.com/foru...3118-GBoucicau
Referrer : http://www.checkcheckonetwo.com/
IP Address : 5.135.209.6
Username : Unregistered
Classname : vB_Database
MySQL Version :

Database error in vBulletin 4.2.0:
Invalid SQL:
SELECT phrasegroup_contenttypes AS contenttypes,phrasegroup_global AS global,phrasegroup_vbcms AS vbcms,phrasegroup_search AS search FROM language WHERE languageid = 1;
MySQL Error : MySQL server has gone away
Error Number : 2006
Request Date : Sunday, June 8th 2014 @ 07:16:25 AM
Error Date : Sunday, June 8th 2014 @ 07:19:51 AM
Script : http://www.checkcheckonetwo.com/forum/content.php
Referrer : IP Address : 74.86.158.106
Username : Unregistered
Classname : vB_Database
MySQL Version :

Database error in vBulletin 4.2.0:
Invalid SQL:
SELECT * FROM navigation WHERE state & 4 = 0 ORDER BY navtype, displayorder;
MySQL Error : MySQL server has gone away
Error Number : 2006
Request Date : Sunday, June 8th 2014 @ 02:51:03 PM
Error Date : Sunday, June 8th 2014 @ 02:55:36 PM
Script : http://www.checkcheckonetwo.com/forum/content.php
Referrer : http://www.checkcheckonetwo.com/foru...38a434a8e3832&
IP Address : 198.100.158.213
Username : Unregistered
Classname : vB_Database
MySQL Version :

Database error in vBulletin 4.2.0:
Invalid SQL:
SELECT searchcore.searchcoreid, searchcore.dateline FROM searchcore AS searchcore WHERE searchcore.dateline >= 1397073319 AND searchcore.contenttypeid IN (1);
MySQL Error :
MySQL server has gone away
Error Number : 2006
Request Date : Sunday, June 8th 2014 @ 03:55:19 PM
Error Date : Sunday, June 8th 2014 @ 03:57:41 PM
Script : http://www.checkcheckonetwo.com/forum/content.php
Referrer : http://www.checkcheckonetwo.com/foru...eb923d6ecbe85&
IP Address : 170.130.58.72
Username : Unregistered
Classname : vB_Database
MySQL Version :

[Lee G]

Paul M has a mod on vbulletin org for tracking guest visits
http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=232182
Set that up on your forum and you can then see who or what is hammering your forum
Then block the ip's accordingly, either via htaccess or in vbulletin

I used it to track a couple ip ranges that was hitting my own forums recently

One was AhrefsBot bot that had been hitting 4,000 pages a day, the other an idiot running a link building program with 1000 different user agents

[donald1234]

Definately a server restriction on the database, if your host is not willing to increase these values, maybe you should be looking at another host for that site too.

[Meestor_X]

Lee, that would require blocking of 1000's of IPs. You can see from the small sample that they are coming from all over. There is no single places that these unregistered users are coming from.

So... back to my original question...

Is there any way to block unregistered users from causing queries, other than making the forum private?

[Lee G]

If you use the mod I linked to above, you might find its a simple case of blocking a limited ip range
The AhrefsBot that was hitting me all day long 24/7 was a simple block 37.58.100.
That was easy enough to spot using the mod

You might be unlucky enough to appear in a scraped list of vbulletin sites and the link script kiddies are hitting hard
If that's the case, you will be dealing with people rotating proxies, which are ni on impossible to block

[Meestor_X]

Sure, I can give that a try, but I already know that all IPs are completely different, as I showed above.

So you know of no way to block unregistered users from causing queries?

[donald1234]

Like you have already said if you are going to start blocking visitors you may as well close your forum, you can however as mentioned block bots as mentioned, bots are programmed to try and register and login all the time, look in whos online if they are trying to register/login with errors block there IP's or the range of IP's but really you need to ask your host to increase the wait_timeout for mysql, that's why it's "going away"

[Meestor_X]

Like you have already said if you are going to start blocking visitors you may as well close your forum, you can however as mentioned block bots as mentioned, bots are programmed to try and register and login all the time, look in whos online if they are trying to register/login with errors block there IP's or the range of IP's but really you need to ask your host to increase the wait_timeout for mysql, that's why it's "going away"

Thank you. I don't think my host will change the mysql settings. I went through my admincp and turned off searching and some other settings for unregistered users and I added a mod that lets me know what bots are hitting the site, so we'll see how that goes.

Thanks everyone.

[Sherrie]

See if they have a common user agent and block them in .htaccess that way.

[Lee G]

Another free option that can reduce unwanted traffic a bit is Cloudflare
Its also fairly straightforward to set up
Use them as a firewall and you can also block ip's to your hearts content
But, when I used them a few years back, I found you loose the option to htaccess block ip ranges