Ok I have disabled the sidebar completely for now, and also made sure the hooks were off. LOOK at the improvement in your page load:

BEFORE: http://www.webpagetest.org/result/13..._8R/1/details/

AFTER: http://www.webpagetest.org/result/13..._VG/1/details/


You have never, ever had a bot problem my friend, the problem is your site is way over modded. All the junk you're displaying in your sidebar is killing your allotments.



LATER EDIT: I disabled the sidebar anywhere Mod for guests, unregistered/not logged in usergroup. Guests don't really need it, and this will buy you some time to make changes to the composition of your sidebar.

Hooks are re-enabled globally.

Max Taxable, you are awesome. I had no idea.

Big props to Max Tax, everyone.

Man, this site is so good for me, Lord Of The Noob.

I appreciate all the assistance and advice I've received from the genius individuals here at vb.org.

I wish you all a Rad Xmas and a 2014 packed full of good karma.

Selflessness reigns supreme at vb.org.

Thank you.

Understand - for people who are logged in that sidebar is still going to be making 100s of calls to the db with each pageload. So the problem is not 100% solved. You need to decide how many of your pages that sidebar is going to display on, and what all is displayed in it. First things I would get rid of is the thanks bit and the tag cloud, and the activity stream. Make it minimalist is my suggestion.

Happy Christmas and a Merry New Year to you and yours too!