Long Week, Brief Post

Been a long week!

I cleared out the old server on the first days of it.

I'm not sure what the usual personal integrity process is like when you terminate a hosting account - back in the day I didn't care much about such things. Now I wonder if they run a few extra writes on your account data, as to really erase all traces of personal info - or if servers are written to so continually that there is very little risk of any data actually being traced.

Or is this even a consideration with a server-based OS? Does their storage work differently?

I don't think other hosted customers have any kind of access to drive-level data anyway - and certainly no ability to rewrite parts of the drive, but I did my due diligence anyway, and properly cleared out all files that I had there. Settings and databases too. Making sure to go through everything one final time, and see that no new data had been added that I'd be losing, and that the backups on my new server were now working alright.

They are! Updraft is a breeze. Cron's running fine too now, and I still haven't had any downtime since the move.

I have, however, still had issues with the site loading abnormally slow for me in the afternoon, and I'm not sure I can do anything about this.

I noticed my bandwidth was getting eaten away pretty quick, so I went through Cloudflare's security settings and tried enabling bot protection. Suddenly bandwidth usage dwindled, and CF started mitigating around ~50,000 hits per day on the main domain (the only one that really uses data).

I still get the legitimate hits: search engine crawlers and what-not, but hopefully much less of the malicious or just unnecessary stuff. CPGuard (which is new software to me - I had Immunify 360 on the old server) is stopping much less since I activated CF's built-in settings too, so now the bad traffic is getting throttled before it even hits the server, and that's a good thing! Less hits on the site = less overhead and resource use.

Since my site is getting this level of interest though - and it seems it wasn't before the move - I wonder if the reason for the afternoon slowdowns could be that the entire server is then for a time under attack. And that the slowness I'm noticing does not correlate to resource usage specifically on my account, but to the server as a whole.

Either that or there are some other sites on the server that are using an abundance of shared server resources every afternoon...

I hope my host figures it out, and gets notified if it goes overboard. If they don't I reckon I'll ask.

As it is everything's fine for most of the day, yet if I try editing posts later on I have trouble reloading pages; getting images to load; being anywhere near productive enough with my workflow. So I work a bit more with my sites earlier during the day now! And that's alright.

It could of course be that my own IP is somehow throttled. That either server, CF or WP firewall doesn't like me.

I discovered while trying to login from another computer that CPGuard keeps people away from wp-admin entirely if cookies aren't enabled, too.

The page doesn't even load, you just get redirected. So that's... good I guess. I just hope similar things don't happen for legitimate visitors, on other areas of the site...

Like you, dear visitor, how does the site currently load for you? I'd be interested to know. I know playlists are currently broken. Working on that...

Still not sure if the server's the issue otherwise, or if I'm the issue, or if there's some totally unrelated anomaly or complication somewhere along the line that's giving me issues. Like my ISP, or my connection to the IP in Germany that this site is now using...

I had some issues with email forwarding/SMTP working initially too, but that's fixed, which means I'm receiving weekly firewall reports now! Among other things. Seems those send-out's didn't work on the old server.

Guess how many blocks I get each week (or got, before the CF thing - it'll be interesting to compare the next report with this one)? Here's a glimpse:

I'm keeping the full reports to myself. :) Maybe more on those later.

Anyway: Outside the site-related stuff good buddy Andreas has been visiting this week! We've been walking lots, playing table tennis at a country house/manor, sauntering through a nice Spring market that served delicious almond-based gluten-free saffron pancake with whipped cream and raspberry jam, trying obstacle courses, eating rock fish at Bro Park, and overall not getting nearly enough sleep, but it was a fun visit still!

Also been working a bit more than usual. 4/5 days. Extra hours.

Also, did you know about the international Free Comic Book Day?

There is one comic book shop in Stockholm that gives out free comics too apparently! Every year. The first Saturday in May. If I'd have been better prepared for it maybe I'd have gone.

This Saturday I was recouping from the recent visit, low on sleep; possibly a little down from consuming (delicious albeit) Bro Park sourdough bread with gluten, but for next year... gotta write this down.

I've booked a few plane tickets too.

Suddenly prices between Stockholm and Luleå (the national route I need to take each year to get to/from the wild wild North) dropped ~200 SEK per ticket. And they had a sale, with a 20% rebate, so suddenly flights were like half the original price!

Unfortunately I book most of my travel in advance, and already paid double the price for four flights, but the July dates may not have been cheaper now anyway...

My summer now is fully booked. The first trip's coming up quick, in just about two weeks. And right before it I'm headed off on another cruise...

On NG I have a few musical collaborations on route (and this recent one), I'm trying to make time for a little more Eschalon: Book I (new game I'm playing - it's good - I'll have a first impression post up soon), and have been trying to get in a little more exercise and time outside in preparation for this quickly approaching summer, too...

Isn't it strange how when you think you finally have a bit more time to spare, that time just disappears, and suddenly all is booked in and you have not enough time for anything anyway? It keeps happening!!!

Also, new OK GO video y'all. I'm late posting that too.

Speak more soon.