Network Administration

Those looking for SMF, a forum-based CMS, could not reach SMF's host server the past few days at Simple Machines. SMF's server was down for an extended period of time from July 22nd and 23rd. Thantos, one of the SMF developers, posted a message that only gave vague reasons for why there was a server outage:

The cause of the outage was the result of a non-technical issue involving our service provider. Failings happened on our both our part and their part. We have resolved the issue and are taking steps to ensure it doesn't happen again.

I too have been seeing an increase in blog spam at some of our sister sites, especially those using Wordpress. Akismet, an anti-trackback spam group, is confirming the case in their own stats too. It looks to me that the spammers have declared a new war on many fronts. My theory, there are a lot of lonely servers on the University campus in the United States that are just sitting there now that the students have gone home for the summer.