Board problems again anyone?

[Rain]

Or is it just me?  Incredibly slow sometimes.  About a third of the time, when I click on a new page or board, it will come up with different errors.

[bluebell]

Same here

[Okrahomer]

Same for me

[Rain]

Thanks!

For Nemesis.  Here is one of the errors.

An error occurred (500 Error)
We're sorry, but a temporary technical error has occurred which means we cannot display this site right now.

User mormondi_db already has more than 'max_user_connections' active connections

You can try again by clicking the button below, or try again later.

Try again

 

[Pyreaux]

Every time a bot visits the site, the code asks the database for a connection. The hosting provider set a hard limit on how many of these can exist at once. Bots often open connections and then hang, leaving the connection open. These zombie processes stay in the database until they time out (which can take minutes or even hours).

ThIs is the price of reopening the signups. The bots are flooding the database with thousands of registration attempts, this keeps the connection open longer, causing them to pile up until we hit the limit. Even if you blocked the bots, many might still be hitting the signup URL. If your site isn't "caching" these pages, every single hit, even a blocked one, might be triggering a database check.

Since it's tolerable now, we have a window to fix it before it gets worse.

Kill Sleepy Processes: Check the MySQL process list (using the command SHOW PROCESSLIST;) and manually kill any connections that have been in "Sleep" mode for a long time.

Optimize the Tables: Run an OPTIMIZE TABLE command on the users and sessions tables. This clears out the "overhead" left behind by the deleted spam accounts.

Check "Persistent Connections": Ensure the forum software isn't using "pconnect" (persistent connections). This is a setting that keeps connections open even after a page finishes loading. Great for speed, but deadly during a bot attack.

Implement a "Waiting Room" or CAPTCHA: If the lag is specifically on the signup page, adding a Cloudflare "Turnstile" or a heavy CAPTCHA can stop the bots from reaching the database in the first place.

Edited January 20 by Pyreaux

[Calm]

17 hours ago, Rain said:

Thanks!

For Nemesis.  Here is one of the errors.

An error occurred (500 Error)
We're sorry, but a temporary technical error has occurred which means we cannot display this site right now.

User mormondi_db already has more than 'max_user_connections' active connections

You can try again by clicking the button below, or try again later.

Try again

 

That is the one for me.   Much prefer it to the spam, so didn’t report it.

[Tony uk]

The only issue that I have been having is slow loading of board. Was not sure if it was at my end 

[Nemesis]

I need to redo a lot of things on the board.  I just haven’t had time and I figured I would do it when the board gets updated.  There’s more than a few things that are not working the way I want them to due to this.  
 

Nemesis

[Calm]

1 hour ago, Nemesis said:

I need to redo a lot of things on the board.  I just haven’t had time and I figured I would do it when the board gets updated.  There’s more than a few things that are not working the way I want them to due to this.  
 

Nemesis

The board has been working great today for me. I assume you did something, so thank you!

[Pyreaux]

Worked fine all day today.

[Rain]

2 hours ago, Nemesis said:

I need to redo a lot of things on the board.  I just haven’t had time and I figured I would do it when the board gets updated.  There’s more than a few things that are not working the way I want them to due to this.  
 

Nemesis

Thank you

[Calm]

Seeing a lot more activity today, so am guessing we weren’t the only ones frustrated.

Thanks again, Nemesis.  And thanks Rain for bringing it up.  I was trying to pretend I was stoic and waiting for it to load didn’t bother me, but now it’s back up to speed, that was a lot more frustrating than I realized, lol

[Kenngo1969]

On 1/19/2026 at 8:29 PM, Rain said:

Thanks!

For Nemesis.  Here is one of the errors.

An error occurred (500 Error)
We're sorry, but a temporary technical error has occurred which means we cannot display this site right now.

User mormondi_db already has more than 'max_user_connections' active connections

You can try again by clicking the button below, or try again later.

Try again

 

Yeah, I got that error too, for a few days.

[Kenngo1969]

On 1/21/2026 at 1:26 AM, Tony uk said:

The only issue that I have been having is slow loading of board. Was not sure if it was at my end 

I'm in charge of "Zoom"-ing my ward's Sacrament meeting.  (I'll hasten to add that I'm not techno-savvy ... at all.  I joke that when I first got the call, I busted out laughing for 15 minutes straight    before finally stopping, looking the counselor who issued the call in the eye, and saying, "Oh.  You're actually serious, aren't you?  Umm ...   ... Okay."

There isn't much I can do when people are having connection problems because I'm not in charge of the software, like @Nemesis is here.  Occasionally, people will message me with the equivalent of "You're doing [x], which is creating problems on my end."  I simply shrug and message them back: "I'm sorry you're having technical difficulties.  Insofar as I am able to determine, things are functioning normally on my end."  (I'm scared to tell them to try rebooting, because if their connection sucks that bad and they try to reboot, they might not be able to get back in.  )  Whaddayagonnado? 

All I can say is, Good luck and God Bless to our "Cyber-congregation" every week!  

Edited January 22 by Kenngo1969