I did some google searching for some old threads and I got these odd URLs. I only noticed because I wasn’t logged in on these versions of the site. Are they legit? Is it safe to log in on these “other” SDMBs? There appears to be a few other versions of the URL as well.
I noticed that also, just a few weeks ago and asked about it here.
The conclusion was that you could go to xxxxx.straightdope.com where xxxxx is anything (except www) and the server will connect you to this message board. And somehow, there are actual oddball links like those getting loose in the world.
Cute! Looks like you really can put anything before .straightdope.com! I tried prepending a certain 4 letter word that starts with f and that even got redirected to boards.straightdope.com. That’ll give me something to work out my frustrations when I get aggravated with the problems with the board. :D:D
Thanks! I almost poted “There is also a senegoid.straightdope.com. What the devil is a senegoid?”
ards.straightdope.com might be a typo, where someone left off the “bo.” Then Google went there (as it did earlier this month when I linked to senegoid.straightdope.com) and saw a big new site that it hadn’t heard of.
Lemme guess: Every time that happens, Google then crawls the entire site to index it.
Voila! Site overloaded, slow response times, on-site searches broken, dead hamsters.
ETA: Good analysis, Lord Feldon and Senegoid! I just tested this: Did a Google search for: [noparse]site:senegoid.straightdope.com colonoscopy[/noparse] and sure enough! They’re ALL there! So Google must have really crawled the entire SDMB site for all that!
Yeah, I wonder if that tends to slow things down around here. ?
Not an expert in this but I don’t think that’s how this works; I’m betting this is more like some sort of basic redirect.
As to the technical issues here, addressed by Ed in this thread, Google has a part in this but not like you think.
The system is overloaded because we have a ton of traffic but the overwhelming bulk of it does appear to be legitimate traffic led by Google searches where TSD and the SDMB shows up in search results.
Google spidering is also a tiny part in this. And spambots too. But the real problem is that we can’t accommodate all the real people hitting the site these days. It is possible to be too popular.
This has happened before, it’s just been a few years since a bigger server was needed. But here we are again.
I was getting boardstest.straightdope.com today on my phone.
Okay, so I didn’t get in at Post #8 as predicted 
– Whatever.
Motivated by today’s thread on this subject, Senegoid broke Google, I did some experiments.
First, suppose I open a new window or tab, and type directly into the address bar:
senegoid.straightdope.com and go there. Exactly as TubaDive suggests, it simply redirects to boards.straightdope.com
BUT . . .
Suppose I click on ANY link within any SDMB post, that points to somewhere else within SDMB. Like this one for example:
Now, go to the address bar of your browser and manually edit the address, changing boards to senegoid, thus:
http://senegoid.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=692312
and go there.
NOW: Look through the thread for links to other places within SDMB. SPECIFICALLY, look at links that are auto-generated by the vBulletin software. For example, all the links with the little link-arrow in QUOTE boxes; all the links to users’ profiles; and all the links to the individual threads (the little numbers at the upper right of each post). Note that ALL these links now point to [noparse]“senegoid.straightdope.com”[/noparse] as well!
(But other links that a user put into the text of the posts point to [noparse]boards.straightdope.com[/noparse] or whatever address the user actually put there.)
So, as soon as Google somehow finds just ONE link that has “senegoid” in it (which Lord Feldon provided at Post #2 in this thread), Google will see it as a “new site” and start crawling it (just as Lord Feldon suggested), and a great many of the links it finds there will also point to the “senegoid” site.
Thus, the entire straightdope message board will end up getting re-indexed as a [noparse]“senegoid.straightdope.com”[/noparse] site, with a concomitant over-heating of SDMB (and Google) hamsters in the process.
Do I have a theory here?
SUGGESTION: If I may do a bit of junior moderating: I would suggest that everyone reading this thread NOT jump in with your own custom SDMB URL’s here. It may be that this really does overheat hamsters everywhere, and it certainly makes a mess of Google searches!
And also: Why do Anonymous User’s posts (sometimes) have a link directly underneath the Join Date, with the text:Send a message via Skype™ to Anonymous User (where the user’s “Location” is usually seen)?
The link doesn’t seem to actually do anything – It appears to simply link back to the thread itself in which that post with that link appears.
In at least one case I noticed (this was just today in the “Senegoid broke Google” thread), when I refreshed the page, that link went away.
There should be a football shaped Skype image there. That image must not be loading for you because what you are seeing is the alternative text for that image.
Also, it should open a new window that allows you to send him a Skype message. I expect you have something that blocks that.
So, what did fish.straightdope.com look like? Or was it fuzz.straightope.com?
exactly the same as film.straightdope.com and folk.straightdope.com did. 
The poor hamsters were never prepared for this!!! They only know how to serve the boards.straightdope.com!!!