Hi guys,
some of you might have noticed already, I have made a change in the Downloads section.
The main template and update packages can now only be downloaded with a download token.
To get a token, all you need to do is email me and this token will be then valid for 24 hours.
Why this change?
First of all, the main reason is that the main template file is approximately 50MB large. It was unfortunately impossible to filter out all the bots and this large file was downloaded almost every minute, which as you can imagine was putting an extreme load and slowed down the server. Most of these downloads were from IPs from China, India, Ukraine and Russia, but because there could be a user from this country too, I am not a big fan of generally blocking entire country IP range (not to mention that a relatively large percentage was also from the U.S. and EU and these were not real users).
Second, a similar problem was now when a new version was released. There is now over 525 of you and when I released a new version, I could see in Google Analytics that up to 35 people were suddenly trying to download the new file. My server has a maximum of 5 parallel PHP script executions so this is again impossible to handle. Introducing the download tokens will distribute the downloads more evenly in terms of time. The only downside is that you might have to wait a while before I send you the token, but as you know me, I will always try to reply within max 24 hours.
Third, it did happen in the past that after a new version release a major bug was discovered. It was at that moment a big problem because many people have already downloaded the script, I had no idea who and it was all very problematic. The above mentioned distribution in time will help to overcome these issues (which can never be completely avoided) and I will know exactly who has already downladed the buggy file and who I need to contact to apply a fix.
Blocks and plugins will not need any token and will remain as they are now.
You will of course get the download token for free and it will be valid always for 24h. Each person gets a unique token, so it will not work if you try to use it a month later for a new download.
Jachym
Great by me. Anything that helps you, Jachym, is OK by me
Keith
Looks like a perfect solution to avoid all the problems you mentioned. I can´t figure out any inconvenience for this solution and certainly will work for me.
Sounds very reasonable and certainly will work for me.