Website news

In May 2020 it was noticed that the ffado.org website was frequently failing to render when visited. To maintain access to our releases while this was looked into, a temporary placeholder page was activated. As of today, the majority of the site is accessible again, albeit on a different platform.

Investigations showed that website itself was intact and secure. However, our hosting infrastructure was weathering a high rate of accesses which were attempting to exploit vulnerabilities in CMS platforms: not just the platform we were using, but all the popular ones. Protection mechanisms were triggered when attacks against our specific CMS were seen, which explained why the site was only intermittantly available.

In light of this, the decision was made to roll out a simplified website based on a static generator. With FFADO now largely in maintenance mode (given the lack of new hardware being released) there is no ongoing need for the dynamic platform we have been using previously. A static site is faster, more resilient and requires less maintenance. On reflection, this seemed to be the most efficient way to deal with the issue at hand.

At present the only content which has not been ported to this new website is device list and the user comments. While many of the user comments are no longer relevant, there are certainly some which will continue to be useful references into the future - as will the device list. Work continues on identifying the best way to integrate these components into the new site.

Feedback about the new site can be sent to the ffado-devel mailing list.