Hey folks,
Really sorry about the downtime for the last 24 hours or thereabouts - but the server was under what appears to be a continuous DDOS/Scraper attack (18,000 concurrent users online is not a normal number for this forum!). In fact, if you look at the 2026 stats vs 2025, you'll see that the Bots have really been hammering us all year...
I've been adding any networks which seem suspicious to the firewall - around 2000 added today when we were at 18,000 guests online despite the forum being in maintenance mode(!). Hopefully I've not kicked any real users, but I'm working on a way of letting people who do fall into the trap accidentally to at least let me know.
In the meantime, I see we're down to a more sensible number of visitors now, so I'll hopefully be able to leave the site on for the foreseeable future.
Thanks for your patience and understanding.
Ade.
