It is rather unfortunate but I have had to remove my maxsolar php script from my website because it is being misused by a small number of people and I have seen excessive use of it and excessive use of my bandwidth. It seems that some folks have been using it to calculate their solar readings every 15 minutes during the day and this was never intended.
I will try to find time to re-wirite it and allow only limited access to people for diagnostic purposes. However I can give no guarantees when or even if this will happen.
Stuart
Stuart,
Perhaps somewhere along the line you could consider releasing a version for those with a need for that kind of thing?
Trouble is I don’t own all the code so I’d need permission from the owner. Also being php it is not possible to compile to prevent copying the code.
Stuart
Ah, I understand. It was just an early morning thought.
That’s bad news Stuart, seems there’s always someone who will abuse the generosity of another :roll:
Almost on this topic I recently found pveducation.com which has a lot of solar calculations, and graphical calculators, under the Properties of Sunlight menu item, there’s a lot of other useful solar related info too.
Thanks Niko I’ve bookmarked that for reading later.
Stuart
Checking today I see over 34000 404 errors on the script so rather than let that continue I have put a page back with the same name saying it has been removed and why.
Stuart
that’s a lot of hits were you not able to block the ip doing it
Well I have blocked folks before but I guess some at least have dynamic IP so it changes. I suspect the 404s were a program retrying to get the data because when it was up and running although the hits were excessive they were nothing like the number of 404s, at least now they will get a simple page but no solar data.
What I might do is to limit any single IP to one run calendar day as the data provided is for one day there is no need to re-run it until the next day. I’ll think about it…
Stuart
I have finally found time to modify my maxsolar1 script to allow its use for up to 4 calculations in any 24 hour period which should be sufficient for its intended use as it presents the full solar days data. After this time you will see a message saying try again after a certain time. If you continue to try to use the script during the 24 hour period it will ban the IP if it is done excessively and will no longer allow access. If anyone feels they have been banned unreasonably they can contact me via the forum PM and I will consider resetting the ban. Banning is done on the server by IP address rather than using cookies (too easily circumvented), I realise folks with a dynamic IP may get round this but that is the best I can do. If this fails to eliminate the unreasonable use I will remove it permanently.
Stuart
Stuart,
That is great news! I’ve only used it a couple times, but it’s a great asset to have available.