Apparently some users have been experiencing forum downtime, and have been unable to connect over the past week. Others have not, including us, and nothing’s showing up in any of my error logs – this makes the problem tricky to diagnose. If you have gotten a blank page when trying to connect to the forum this week, please reply here in the comments with as much information as possible – date, time, if it ever came back up for you. Even if all you can give me was “yeah, sometime Tuesday,” that’s still helpful. The more data I have to give to tech support, the faster we can get the issue cleared up.
Thanks!
Hilary
The problem seemed to happen this last week. When the Forum link is utilised, the screen goes blank. The bottom left of the screen reads (in no particular order, as it pops up *really* fast;
Connecting to yafgc.shipsinker.com…
waiting for yafgc.shipsinker.com…
collecting data from yafgc.shipsinker.com…
Done
Then it just sits there (screenshot http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/4370/forumattempt.png ) Sorry, 99% blank.
As suggested, I tried clearing by browser cache, disabled any firewall and also McAfee and pop-up blockers. I tried both Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer 7, and also tried the link from the yafgc site to the forum with the same result. I have tried numerous times to jump to the forum at various times of day, but to no avail.
I hope this is of some help
Sorry, I neglected to mention that the first time I was aware of this problem was approx 0900hrs (GMT) on 25th March
I just started to get on yesterday and it was off. >>
Just tried via the forum link on the comix blog. i get a blank page.
Date + Time. Sunday 29 march 2009 13.54 (GMT+1)(british summertime)
The forum link http://yafgc.shipsinker.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=15 produces a completely white page. (Well, it’s orderly, I guess … )
29 March 2009 15.36 GMT
I pretty much havent been able to get on since my last post there – the page wont load, I’ve tried a couple of different browsers and no go. (I thought it was another Opera browser mess up at first)
Sorry, not a forum comment, but did you notice that the calendar is off? The 29th is a sunday, not a saturday. It’s been off since January, but I never had the opportunity to mention it.
kimberly: The calendar is entirely correct – it counts from Monday to Sunday, not Sunday to Saturday.
Thanks, guys – I’ve submitted a support ticket, so please keep the data points coming.
I’ve been getting that same blank page for a couple of days now. And I clear out my cache every time I shut my browser down.
I just checked, and it’s also happening in Safari.
(Running Firefox 2.0.0.11 in OSX, by the way.)
Excuse the double post. I just remembered an additional piece of info: I got a 500 Internal Server Error shortly before I started getting the blank screen. (This was Friday night, I think. Yes. I have no life.)
I’m pretty sure the page loaded for me at least once in between.
Forum is down right now.. local time 10pm, sunday
That’s so weird – I’ve had no service interruptions at all and people are still posting on it. [sigh] I’ve tried a fix – can someone who’s not been able to access, give it a shot?
I’m getting the blank forum page today. I got it about a week ago too, I think (I’ve been really busy & lost track of time lately). The Firefox tab doesn’t even get far enough to show the right name; just the web address. And it quits trying really fast.
Lessee now…I’m a Gaia Beta tester, so I’ll just toss my computer specs at you.
That’s something we do when reporting bad stuff we find on the site.
Operating System:
Windows
NT 5.1 (Windows XP)
Current Browser / UA:
Mozilla/ Firefox 2.0.0.20
ProductSub: 20081217
Engine: Gecko RV: 1.8.1.20
XHTML support: Yes
System Language
Primary Language id: en-us
Primary Language:
English (United States)
Current Screen Resolution
1280 x 1024 pixels
JavaScript
JavaScript is enabled.
Cookies
Cookies are enabled
If it would help for others to do this, here’s the link where I get my stats:
http://techpatterns.com/downloads/php_browser_detection.php
The info comes up in a box on the left.
Oh yeah–and I have dial-up internet. Really SLOWWWW dial-up.
The same as mentioned earlier, I’m afraid. I followed Whatsit’s recommendation for stats. Hope this is of help.
Operating System:
Windows
NT 5.1 (Windows XP)
Current Browser / UA:
Mozilla/ Firefox 3.0.8
ProductSub: 2009032609
Engine: Gecko RV: 1.9.0.8
XHTML support: Yes
System Language
Primary Language id: en-gb
Primary Language:
English (United Kingdom)
Current Screen Resolution
1280 x 800 pixels
JavaScript
JavaScript is enabled.
Cookies
Cookies are enabled
Bugger. That would have been nice and easy, too. I still haven’t heard back from tech support, but it is the weekend. Keep it coming, guys.
OK, gang – how about now?
link via comix blog. 6.55am (gmt+1)(british summertime) All working now.
It looks like one of your dns servers is timing out.
And it looks like that’s because you have ns2.dreamhost.com listed as a dns server but also have its ip set to 66.201.54.66 … which appears to no longer be valid (it’s currently resolving as 66.33.206.206).
Transient problems that only affect some people are almost always dns issues, in my experience.
Silly internets.
Hope that helps! Feel free to email me if you’d like to discuss further.
Working now (0955hrs). Thanks Hilary!
Kaolin: In this case it was a corrupted cache file that the guys at Dreamhost caught for me. Thanks, though!
Yep, I get the Forum today!
And transient issues that only effect some users are sometimes corrupted caches! Argh. I’ve been there. Glad it got sorted out despite me.
I got a blank page for a couple of days then three days ago it was back but I couldn’t
login. Day before yesterday I was finally able to log in again. That’s all I can tell you.
Yep, corrupted cache makes sense. When you get blank pages, it’s always best to clear the cache. Older versions of phpBB are notorious for this. Still the best forum software, if it integrates well with your other software.