Puzzling, it is at times, that my htaccess does not always behave as intended. As a computer scientist I expect that my programs and file input should output consistent, stable and reliable results immediately. This is not the case with my htaccess file, hosted on Site5, my internet service provider.
Delays in htaccess Implementation
When I do certain changes to my htaccess, there may be delays of a day or two. This is very odd to me, because supposedly the htaccess is checked for every server request. Maybe there are some caching that I do not know about. Nevertheless it seems like the htaccess has a unique personality. I know that I should not anthropomorphize a computer, much less a security file such as htaccess on an Apache server, but it is difficult to not.
Busy I have been recently, with not much time for my blog, but it was all for a good cause. My internet service provider (ISP) informed me that I was taking up too much CPU time on their shared service and banned me. I am a good guy and generally follow the rules, so getting banned is out of character. After a frantic email they restored my account so that I could figure out what happened. I truly am a “less is more” type of guy, and that includes IT resources, and my online sites are pretty consistent, so a propensity of new content was not the issue. Eventually I took some steps to rein in the numerous bots that were scraping and doing whatever to my site, wasting my CPU usage on my tab, and eventually getting me banned. If your site is suffering the same fate, you may glean some hints and tips for reducing your CPU usage.
