I have no idea about tech stuff and you do.
Ive never come across any other site that has this cloudfare error at all yet a lot would use it.
I recall the settings could be dialled up or down in some way, not sure if that's the case.
I can’t really inform you much more on this than what you already seem to know. I don’t know what Cloudfare services BL has implemented, do you?
Bl has been ddos attacked in the past, dont think that often tbh. Still can't figure out what it really is except for too much traffic at once and the losers have to have some type of dodgy assistance from many accounts to do that?
They don’t need any bluelight accounts, if that is what you are asking. Speaking generally, a DDoS attack is distributed, meaning it comes from many devices at the same time, making it harder to detect, control, and mitigate than if it were to originate from a single source.
I dont get bothered by it but did a while back, this could be a massive issue for newer folk who won't bother with bl if they have no luck when finding the place.
Well, what I was trying to point out in the response, was that Bluelight itself has been out of service many times in the month or so I have been using it. When it is out of service, web traffic isn’t being redirected to another web service that can broadcast an “Undergoing Maintenance” message as well as other responses, i.e http status codes, that would inform downstream services like Cloudfare to respond correctly.
IOW, the issue you are concerned about, new visitors seeing something besides bluelight’s forum application, is really a Bluelight problem, not Cloudfare’s, which is doing the best it can given the situation.
Is it overkill having a cloudfare, what alternatives are there to this even if it means manually giving spam the flick?
Again, IDK what role Cloudfare provides for BL, there are several possibilities. Akamai is probably the leading player in the types of services Cloudfare offers, and may be a viable alternative, but it isn’t clear to me that anything is lacking in the service we have.
I hope that is helpful?