Switching to hCaptcha + Beta Inbox available

[mark]

Hi all,

Since we moved off of Cloudflare last month, I know there have been some sharp edges around captchas and 403s that some of you have been experiencing, particularly if you're using a VPN or similar.

As of today, I've moved us over to a Dreamwidth hosted hCaptcha solution which is -- hopefully -- a much, much better experience. Please let me know how the experience is and if you're seeing any problems. I tried to keep it pretty non-invasive and flexible but hopefully still effective at keeping out spambots.

Second big thing: As part of the big effort to modernize our code (to bring it into the last decade, at the very least), we have a beta version of the Inbox ready to play with! Please head on over to the Beta Features page and feel free to turn on the Beta Inbox.

Please drop any comments or feedback on this post, thank you!

Comments

[assholic]

Whatever push you did also fixed the huge stretch out of the page number block at the bottom of large page number posts as well as the huge gap between parenthesis in the (post a new comment) portions and the weird stretch that was happening between the userhead graphic and the username if one was put in a ul/il format table. Thank you. That was driving me insane every time I saw it.

I also tested commenting around with a VPN and haven't had any of the human slider/car dot tests.

[lexicalcrow]

Well, I'm a VPN user, and one thing I've noticed is that my DW-hosted mood theme is now loading again, as is the image in my profile. I also no longer get captchas every time I open DW pages from my pinned reading page in firefox.

However, all embedded media is now displaying captchas with the DW page embedded into them, but they are not resolving no matter how many times I do them correctly. I don't know if this is intended behaviour or not, but it is very annoying. This is not affecting pictures/photos, just embedded media like youtube videos and spotify playlists.

[wolfy_writing]

I know that the level of Captchas I get varies from day to day, and today was a lot. Sometimes it doesn’t seem to get that I’ve already confirmed I’m human from the VPN address, and it expects me to reconfirm it multiple times in a row, or I’ll go from my inbox to my reading page and it will require me to reconfirm.

I know you’re doing your best and I appreciate the work you’re putting in!

[andrewducker]

I wasn't getting captchas, just a 403 almost every time I left a comment. Fingers crossed that doesn't happen any more!

[trobadora]

I haven't had a 403 yet today, after having them constantly since the switch away from Cloudflare, so it looks like at least for me this worked! Thank you very much.

[mark]

I bet I know what that is -- I just pushed a speculative fix. Can you tell me if the embeds are still doing a captcha thing? It's definitely not intended.

[mark]

Today -- before my post? Or even in the past 90 minutes?

[mark]

Oh good! Yeah, we made some fixes to the CSS that happened to go out when I was pushing out updated Captcha logic. Glad it got nailed!

[wolfy_writing]

It was before your post today.

[mark]

Please let me know if the 403s continue!

And to be quite honest, I still have no idea why they were happening... but when in doubt, add one part 10 ton excavator and two fifths of something strong and just rip it out...

[mark]

Got it, thank you; yeah, please let me know if it's still happening at all going forward. The new system should be much, much better.

[mark]

Victory! Well, hopefully. Please do let me know if anything continues to be bad, and apologies for the length of time that took.

[lexicalcrow]

Ahh nice, glad I mentioned it. :D Everything seems fine now except the spotify one, idk if it being in a locked entry or what is affecting it though.

[mark]

Hmmmm... let me see if I can get a repro, I'm not sure why that would be diff. It may just be a caching thing?

[lexicalcrow]

Just checked with Edge and it does seem to be a caching issue, it shows up fine there. Just firefox being silly it seems. :D

[mark]

Whew, thanks for confirming. I wasn't able to figure out why Spotify would be doing something different, so this saves me a whole group of work! Bless!

[lexicalcrow]

np! <3 Glad I could save you the extra time then. :D All working fine so far on my end now. I'll let you know if I run into any other issues.

[nestra]

First thing in the morning I'd get a captcha when trying to access DW, then when clicking on my Reading List, and then when looking at comments on an entry. So far this morning, no captchas. Thank you!

[laireshi]

I'm on VPN and I haven't seen a captcha since this post was made! And before that I kept having captchas all the time (and captchas that refused to let me in), so this is great news. Thank you!

[ilyena_sylph]

+does a Dance of Joy+

Oh, thank gods.

The Captchas were about to make me cuckoo!

[morrow]

ooo exciting news re: the inbox!

[trobadora]

No need to apologise - given their appalling behaviour, getting away from Cloudflare was absolutely worth the inconvenience.

[innitmarvelous_og]

So far so good with me. I have not had to do any Captchas today. LOL I was getting used to them and had even learned that if I didn't do the test correctly, I needed to reload the entire page before trying again.

Thanks for the fix!

[ayebydan]

A lot easier access to the site in the past 7 days. Thanks guys!

[dalmatians]

Hey there, this update looks great so far! I'm not sure if anyone has raised this issue yet (and apologies if this is a duplicate), but since tightening up the DDOS protections in the May 15th update, Dreamwidth has been pretty much scrubbed from Google results.

As an example, searching "Dreamwidth Layouts" turns up a single result from Dreamwidth (directing to the Interests page) and then a ton of InsaneJournal and LiveJournal results. Previously, such a search would have returned popular layout communities hosted here on Dreamwidth. Searching for specific roleplay games that exist on Dreamwidth is now more likely to turn up Plurk results or player-made wikis than the game itself.

Has something been blocking Google's (and potentially other search engine's) web crawlers?