We've had to take time over this past week to track down and implement some performance improvements on the McKinley Park News, including reconfiguring our database setup to enable a newer internal "engine" to more quickly and efficiently access, write and update data. This was identified as a big bottleneck for our service as requests piled up, waiting to be processed, and slowing down access for everyone.

We also identified and locked out abusive bot activity that's been scraping and plundering our website nonstop, slowing down access for everyone and harming our service.

We're going to look for ways to keep improving the performance of our service: all of which is created and operated by humans, for humans, with zero AI use or services.