XF 2.3 Strange guests...

[Levina]

Yesterday my site slowed down almost to a halt. I had to open a ticket with XF (I'm on cloud hosting).

A lot of the guests didn't seem to be guests at all. I have put a few IP addresses in discourage mode where they are redirected elsewhere. That helped too. The discourage page shows that they still visit all the time but I don't see them in the "members online" list anymore so it seems to work. Funny thing is that these IP addresses were based in Kyiv, Ukraine but not sure if that is actually true.

At the moment I have a lot of guests that are using vps.ovh.net (vps-xxxxxxxx.vps.ovh.net) and they are all viewing the same threads: Wild Birds of Europe, The Photo Chain Game, Ships and Boats. I've put a number of them in discourage mode, redirecting them too. Not sure if that is wise. After doing that the site slowed down for a few minutes with images loading line after line. But then everything went back to almost normal, although not quite. Images load slow.

So I'm wondering, who are they and what do they want? I mean, we are a very small forum, so what's the point?

And is there a way I can see how many requests they are actually making?

 

[Levina]

I had to open a ticket with XF to solve the issue and my site works again now. (Thank you!!)

Still, my question remains: what are they after? What's the point of visiting the same thread again and again and again?

I also have an additional question.

I have some "guests" in discourage mode. I have it set to redirect 100%. But it doesn't because I just saw one of the IP addresses about 5 times in the Members Online list, viewing the same thread again. So what's up with that? Why doesn't it get redirected 100%?