An update on where we're at

[mark]

Howdy everybody.

Now that we're entirely off of Cloudflare, I figured I'd give an update on some of the sharp edges and things we're still working on.

First of all, we've had to push a few changes out to update some configurations and this has had the side effect of pushing out some changes (like an overhaul of the Inbox.) Normally we try to give advanced notice of site and code changes, so I apologize that this change is coming as a surprise. We'll keep an eye on feedback here so we can iterate on things as needed. This has been reverted.

Now, on to the other things.

• (TBD) VPN. I know that some of you use VPNs to access Dreamwidth and you're now getting overly familiar with the CAPTCHA solution that AWS offers. It's, well, not a great solution. It solves the robot problem fairly well but it is pretty suboptimal for our users, we hear you. We are investigating other solutions here to see what we can do, but it will not be an immediate fix, unfortunately.

• (Investigating) 403s. Secondly, I'm seeing some reports of 403s on commenting. We're investigating this, but nobody on the volunteer team has reported it / can reproduce it, so we're still trying to figure this one out.

• (Done) RSS feeds. Thirdly, when I set up the CAPTCHA, I did forget to add rules allowing access to RSS and ATOM feeds. alierak fixed these up, so you should be able to access your feeds again via IFTTT and similar services. If not, please let us know in the comments.

• (Done) IP logging. Fourthly, the config change we pushed (that deployed updated code) did fix the issue where IP addresses were showing up as 'via' or not as your own IP. This was a proxy misconfiguration on our end and is resolved now, so you should be able to see real IP addresses again.

• (Done) Inbox. Going to update the default so that messages that are unread are expanded. I rolled it back to how it was. No more unneeded code push!

I think that's the list of things I'm aware of. Please comment if you see other issues -- and again, thank you so much for your patience here. We've tried to keep the disruptions to a minimum, but we have effectively replaced a significant set of technologies that we use (CDN, proxying, WAF/DDoS protection, anti-robot, etc) and it's never apples-to-apples.

Comments

[glocka]

I wonder, how soon are we going to see another fork of the livejournal codebase, which would return this community to CloudFlare, as a matter of principle? Or is it a dead end, and the time is ripe for Distributed Web Hosting?

[azurelunatic]

It would almost have to be a labor of love if someone did that; while the code base is in significantly better shape than LiveJournal left it, the setup has a lot of ways to trip up. Assuming it's stood up successfully, the next major problems are funding and imports. I'm sure some people would want to start fresh but for a number of people in the jump from LJ the deciding factor was ease of import plus a critical mass of their friend group. To jumpstart funding, Dreamwidth offered a purchase of highest-tier paid accounts for a large lump sum. The tradeoff there is that your most dedicated users may go for that and then no longer be a reliable source for monthly or yearly payments. Many of the people hesitant to jump from LJ to DW wanted a guarantee or at least good odds to have the site survive at least as long as LJ had to date. There are still surviving forks like InsaneJournal but a lot of less well known forks only lasted a few years if that. My friend Kit really believed in Inksome but at the end of the line he couldn't keep paying for it out of pocket. It was a lovely little site and that was a sad end.

[kwithay]

This. There aren't a ton of the forks of LJ left these days, and even less that are as stable as DW. I can't imagine there's a group of folks so loyal to Cloudflare and ~free speech~ that they'd make their own fork, and it'd be successful enough to sustain itself.