Search results

ModelRailroadForums.com is a free Model Railroad Discussion Forum and photo gallery. We cover all scales and sizes of model railroads. Online since 2002, it's one of the oldest and largest model railroad forums on the web. Whether you're a master model railroader or just getting started, you'll find something of interest here.


  1. bob

    Running Bear's September 2026 Coffee Shop

    Yes, lots of web crawlers! I'm monitoring performance though and it's holding up well. There's a lot of fine tuning needed to not block out the good crawlers yet ban the bad ones. We want to be on Google. But we don't need every bot there is crawling the site. Also trying to block the scammers...
  2. bob

    Human Verification

    It seems to be doing well. I did loosen things up a little bit, I have to let some search bots in or the place will disappear from Google etc. So it's back to having hundreds of "guests" most of which are search crawlers. But... I'm no seeing much lag. We'll keep an eye on things and see how it...
  3. bob

    Human Verification

    I hate those deceptive ads with a passion. But running Google ads is the only way I can come close to breaking even on the place. I've banned the worst ones, like online gambling and crypto, but there's only so much you can do.
  4. bob

    Forum Slow Again

    The initial human verification app worked well for about a day, but then it was met with a DDOS attack. That is a "Dedicated Denial of Service" attack where they simply overwhelm the forum. Given that problem, I went with the industry standard, Cloudflare. Can't keep that one as secret as they...
  5. bob

    Human Verification

    The spammer just kept hammering, so I went one step further. The site is now protected by Cloudflare. That means no more clicking "I am human", though you will see a Cloudflare security checkpoint at various places.
  6. bob

    Running Bear's September 2026 Coffee Shop

    Yeah, some annoyed hacker in Singapore didn't like being blocked and he is/was doing a DDOS attack on the place. Working on blocking him.
  7. bob

    Human Verification

    Hackers are a dime a dozen in that country, and an attack on a little forum like this isn't going to get anyone's attention. Besides all I have is an IP address, which is quite likely spoofed. I'd basically be saying "Hey some guy in your country is spamming me!" Not a lot to go on.
  8. bob

    Human Verification

    OK, now that I'm home, Mr Annoyed Hacker in Singapore has been blocked and the DDOS attack is over. For now at least anyway, we'll see what happens.
  9. bob

    Human Verification

    Meanwhile, it's slow again. Why? DDOS attack from Singapore, apparently locking them out annoyed them. 600K hits today. Hope that counts for google ads! (It doesn't)
  10. bob

    Human Verification

    Yes, it was amazingly bad. Sorry. I wish they’d stop changing crap. It was hard to get rid of them too. At one point there was an ad between every subject in the new posts list.
  11. bob

    Human Verification

    The stupid things were making the mobile version unusable!
  12. bob

    Human Verification

    It wasn’t the browser, I turned them off (until Google Ads changes it again.)
  13. bob

    Human Verification

    Google randomly ads crap and sends an email “we’ve optimized your ads” then I have to go try to figure out how to delete them. Ugh.
  14. bob

    Forum Slow Again

    I've also put in a second system, which I won't go into details on. It provides an initial layer of bot protection. Today it stopped 25K hits.
  15. bob

    Forum Slow Again

    Yes, and the place is flying. I'll click to get that.
  16. bob

    Forum Slow Again

    OK, I just made a change and added the human verification challenge. Yes, it's slightly annoying. Yes, the place is now running like it's on rocket fuel.
  17. bob

    Human Verification

    OK, we're only like 10 minutes in, but holy crap. Users online went from 1,000 (999 spammers) to 4. Server load is 10% of what it was and the place is running super fast. I hope this holds up!
  18. bob

    Human Verification

    I've just added a human verification to the forum. It sometimes requires one single click. In theory, it will quell the robot uprising. Fingers crossed it works.
  19. bob

    Forum Slow Again

    "This site isn't owned by VerticalScope" There, fixed it for you. It's owned by one guy, with a limited budget, fighting thousands of spammers. I also have a day job since this place has never turned a profit yet. Today alone, over 10,000 hits from spammers were rejected. Many more got...
  20. bob

    Can you identify this track cleaner?

    I mean it kind of was, LOL. Home/small shop made, not mass produced. But they did sell well from what I recall. Would certainly be easy enough to knock together a copy.




Affiliate Disclosure: We may receive a commision from some of the links and ads shown on this website (Learn More Here)

Back
Top