[Issue finally resolved on Thursday. See note #2 at bottom.]

I had a couple of reports from readers who said they were blocked from leaving comments today.

So I reassured them that I would post anything that they wanted to email me. I spoke too soon.

When I went to post the comments, I got the same error message.

Here’s what we saw:

Forbidden

You don’t have permission to access /wordpress/wp-comments-post.php on this server.

Anyway, if you’ve tried to leave a comment and found yourself left out in the cold, you’re not alone. I’ve reported the glitch to my hosting service and am awaiting word back from them.

Update: Problems with comments and mail continue through Thursday while techs at my hosting service try to figure out what went wrong when they replaced some equipment a couple of days ago. Pretty frustrating.

Update #2: The issue was finally resolved late on Thursday. Here’s the brief explanation from tech support.

I found that there was line of code in your .htaccess file blocking the wp-comment.php file. It looks like it was added as part of a security implementation to prevent comment abuse on the site. I have commented this line of code out and it seems to have corrected the issue.

If you tried visit here earlier today, you probably got the “server timed out” error or something like it. The site was not loading. I was in the same boat–unable to view or update the blog. I reported the problem to the hosting service, and received this reply:

Thanks for the problem report. There was an xmlrpc attack ongoing against multiple WordPress sites on the server earlier. The server load has since been stabilized and your web site should be working normally now.

I don’t know what an “xmlrpc attack” consists of, but I let them know that the site isn’t acting normally. At last check, about 7:10 a.m., it was loading, but painfully slowly.

Thanks for your patience while the hosting service technicians work on the problems.

As of 8 a.m., they had finished offloading some data from the server, which caused certain services to be cut off.

Hopefully it has now been solve, I’ll be able to upload this notice, and you’ll be able to read it.

Happy Halloween!

It should be easier to post comments here beginning this morning. After receiving several complaints from people who said they had been unable to successfully post their comments in the past few days, I deactivated the CAPTCHA anti-spam software plug-in. This had been added sometime ago in order to combat automated comment spam that was bogging down the entire site. If the comment spam issue recurs, I’ll try a different CAPTCHA solution.

In the meantime, though, you’ll find commenting somewhat streamlined. Hopefully it will all work.

If you continue to experience problems leaving comments, please email me and describe the problem. Thanks!

If you tried to access this site earlier this morning, you may not have been able to get through.

The server at my hosting service stopped responding, and as a result, you couldn’t get through and I couldn’t upload anything.

What I heard back was a bit unsettling. The server, it seems, was attacked.

There was a load issue on the server which hosts your sites, caused by a widespread brute force attack against WordPress installations on the server. At this time, the attack appears to have been mitigated and the server has stabilized. Please let us know if we can be of any further assistance.

I guess I need to worry more about such things.