Recent web site slowness (Updated)

The plone.org web site is currently being hit with multiple spam requests from various sources (on the level of a DDoS attack), and we're currently cleaning up the mischief.

**Update**: There are now updated versions of "Plone 2.1.4":/products/plone/releases/2.1.4 and "Plone 2.5.1":/products/plone/releases/2.5.1 available (Windows/Mac installers will follow when the release goes final - but you can replace the product directories in your Plone installation using these in the meantime). To update your site and read more about how to see if you are affected by the spammers, we have prepared "an extensive document detailing what you should do to protect your site from this attack and clean up if you have already been affected":/documentation/how-to/clean-up-link-spam-on-your-site. Please update your sites, and help spread the word (contact the site admins if you can) to sites that are being spammed.

**Previous summary**: Several things was slowing down plone.org earlier: - Spammers are trying to use plone.org as a redirection engine (fixed) - After removing the spam, we have an excessive amount of "not found" 404 pages, so we had to disable the helpful error message for a more CPU efficient version (in place for now) - Several individuals had started aggressive download (wget) scripts on the web site (they now get a nice firewall message) - There was a very aggressive RSS aggregation script hitting all our RSS feeds every few seconds, originating somewhere in China (now blocked) - A Russian IP posing as a Microsoft search bot was continously fetching non-existing pages (fixed) When it rains, it pours. ;) We hope to have normal service restored shortly, and apologize for the slowness. If there are short outages, it is because we are adjusting the site configuration to better cope with the current abuse. Many kudos to the people helping out in getting the site up on its feet again: Alec Mitchell, Wichert Akkerman, Geoff Davis, Alan Runyan. — Alexander Limi