Some readers have experienced problems with the Heck Of A Guy blog loading slowly or failing to show up at all. That these hassles are transient is small comfort. The cause appears to be the site’s growth in popularity; unfortunately, a major source of that popularity has been the spam community.1 It may be that few legit readers care to plunk down comments here, but in the past three weeks or so, literally thousands of spam comments have made it through the defenses of my server host (which claims to knock out almost half of all incoming messages) to be trapped in this specific blog’s anti-spam machine. Currently, there are over 3,000 spam comments in the Heck Of A Guy spam jail, none of which is more than five days old.
Since these things often arrive in massive batches, it seems that when they hit, the site’s resources are consumed with spam entrapment to the point that responding to browsers trying to access content are ignored. This is not the official response, but every time I’ve been cut off, there has been a simultaneous spam storm. Also, I’m certain the actual process is far more complex and sophisticated, but I am only an end-user sort of geek wannabe. There are other issues as well, but, again, I’m convinced that the spam seems is the major contributor.
Implications For Readers
For the few, the brave, the proud that make comments, the possibility of your comments getting lost among the drug ads is significant. Moreover, now that the bulk mail numbers in the thousands, I can no longer shuffle through it to find misplaced genuine comments. The message, I guess, is that if you left a comment and it doesn’t show up within a few hours, try again or email me with enough information to find your comment among the garbage.
For those having problems accessing the blog (that would include, for example, me), my host assures me they are “looking into it.” If they can’t resolve the problem, my only choice will be changing hosts. While it’s always fun to watch Shane re-develop those tics when he supervises such expeditions, moving is otherwise a major pain. Until the folks at my host do their magic or we pack up our troubles and move on down the road, I can only apologize for the site failing to appear on your screen and advise waiting a few minutes and trying again, which is frustrating but usually works.
Footnotes
- The numbers of real readers are significantly up as well; I’ll elaborate in another post. ↩
