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I had the same issue as you, Scott, a couple days ago. I copied my post and waited 30 minutes and then pasted it in and it worked ok.
The server error is a host problem and not related to what gscottar is experiencing. When the former hits, everything on the site stops.
Anybody’s software can be updated/improved. I wish you would update/improve yours. The ‘ignore’ function could be useful, although rarely so.
On another thread somewhere (I cannot find it now), a user mentioned being challenged to enable cookies on one device when logging in, but not on another.
I have recreated the problem. While I do not yet know the cause, I have discovered a very easy workaround.
If you are challenged to enable cookies when logging in the first time, simply try a second time and the login will work.
A reminder:
If you have questions or concerns about access or usability of the site, PLEASE PUT IT ON THIS THREAD. I know I have lost other questions or concerns placed in random threads because I do not know where to find them. I want to help, but you have to help me help you. Thanks.
Just so you know, I have trouble accessing the site at least once a day. Usually from anywhere from 5-40 minutes. It seems most common in the morning (around 6AM STL time).
Please provide specifics about what “trouble accessing the site” means. That is not much for me to go on. Thanks.
P.S. I double checked on the ignore function to see if there was anything new. There is not. A five-year old plugin to do this does exist, but it is no longer supported and as I read about it, it has worked for some, but caused problems for others. I do not want to take that risk to forum stability. Sorry.
Sometimes it merely times out and other times I get a site unavailable message. I’ll try to remember to take a screen shot.
Sorry, I should have posted that as a notice. Avatars have been temporarily disabled as part of the diagnostics going on. How gscottar eluded that I find interesting and a bit concerning. I hope I do not receive a ransom note soon… 😉
Update: I looked into this a bit more and users can also manage their avatars through a site called Gravatar. gscottar can speak up, but I am guessing that is what he did, which is separate from the site avatar function which we have temporarily shut off. (You will notice that mine is gone, too.)
I don’t remember doing anything fancy to set up my avatar. I googled a photo of Jack Clark then copied and pasted it into this site. If I somehow used some special avatar site that made it immune to this sites’ diagnostic issues then it was blind luck.
Site Changes Just Ahead
I mentioned earlier that the 500 errors many of you encountered were due to a problem that caused the site to use too much CPU capacity on its shared server. To avoid impact to other businesses, my provider shut down this site until the problems could be fixed. This has happened several times.
To avoid this, I am having the site moved to a dedicated server. That means any workload spikes will not affect others.
However, the way this is done is that a copy is made of the current site and is migrated from the old server to the new. I do not know exactly when that snapshot was made, but I am guessing sometime late Monday 1/28 or Tuesday 1/29. (I have asked for a clarification on the timing and will update this when I get a firm answer.)
From that point until when the new server is tested and deemed ready to go, any of our posts here will be lost because we are still working on the old system – after the snapshot was taken for the new server. (Same for any articles I post.)
I am informing you of this but also suggesting if you have any really long posts or new topics that you may want to hold off until the migration is done.
Thank you for understanding.
Site change update
I have begun the steps to move the site from the shared to the dedicated server. This will take 24-48 hours to take effect. The approximate time they took a copy of the old system to bring to the new one was noon on Tuesday. So all posts between noon Tuesday and when the new site is live will be lost. Again, I apologize for the inconvenience, but this is a necessary step.
Thank you for the reminder. I should have posted an update. We have come up with a slightly different plan that is better. We have developed a mirror site to do testing against and will move off HostGator entirely to a new dedicated server once the testing is done. This approach should be safer and limit the gap time of lost posts between old site and new. This is still a few days away, so in the meantime, we continue on the old system, which we have seemed to stabilize over the last two weeks (fingers crossed). Hopefully all this work will be seamless to you.
OK, here is the new plan. We will move the entire site to the new server starting at 8:00 pm CT this Saturday night, February 16. The outage could be as short as two hours, or longer, depending on any surprises.
But once the cutover occurs, I want and need anyone who sees anything out of the ordinary to post here (or email me if the forums are unavailable), please. We’ve done a lot of testing so hopefully, few will notice.
Thank you.
Brian, is there an email I can contact you at? I tried to send an email through the site regarding my account and it wouldn’t work.
My email address is at the bottom of every article I post, brian at thecardinalnation dot com. In addition, there is a CONTACT US form located in the center of the red bar at the top of the page. I get reader email via the contact form regularly and as recently as this morning. Hopefully I can address your issue quickly.
The contact us was not working as of 7 PM last night or 8 am this morning, but did work when I just tried it.
stlcard25, check your email. Based on your post here, I went into your account and figured out the problem before you ever emailed me. My note explains in detail, though one part of what happened I do not understand.
The site cutover occurred last night. Please let me know ASAP if you see anything awry. Thank you!
P.S. As you may have noticed, avatars are turned back on. If you want to change yours, click on your name to the left of when you post and then “edit”. The avatar selection is at the bottom of the page. It needs to be square or pretty close to it or it may get cropped.
If you go into your profile through the upper right of the page, it wants to take you to Gravatar.com to change it. That will not affect your avatar for this forum. You must do it the way I described above.
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