Site Issues

[steve25805 126,116]

Is it at all conceivable that some malcontent from the past with tech know how could have hacked in and somehow sabotaged my account?

[Admin 14,790]

37 minutes ago, steve25805 said:

Is it at all conceivable that some malcontent from the past with tech know how could have hacked in and somehow sabotaged my account?

I don't believe so. I don't think there is anything that could be done on an account level to cause the problems you're describing. If something was hacked it would effect the entire site. 

[Scot_Lover 1,877]

I couldn't log in yesterday, the site would load, but after entering username /  password, everything failed with error 522. Tried on 3 different devices, Alienware, desktop and iPad. 

Seem ok this morning.  

[steve25805 126,116]

I was getting Error 22 and Error 24 messages as well when it wouldn't load at all.

And Pete2304 sent me a PM saying that it wasn't working for him either.

Thus far things seem a little more responsive this morning but I have only just got here and it is very early days so far

[Admin 14,790]

4 minutes ago, steve25805 said:

I was getting Error 22 and Error 24 messages as well when it wouldn't load at all.

And Pete2304 sent me a PM saying that it wasn't working for him either.

Thus far things seem a little more responsive this morning but I have only just got here and it is very early days so far

Where were you getting that message? Pete also sent me a message and was describing a different issue. 

[Admin 14,790]

Here is my response to Pete: 

1. As far as things not working, all of the prior data has been successfully ported over. The software is arguably the best on the Market, and is used by companies such as the NHL, Bethiesda, Live Nation and others. I personally use this same software on two other forums that have a combined membership of over 80,000, and rarely receive complaints about the functions, features, or otherwise. This was admittedly a big change and will take some adjustment, but in the long run this is a much better platform. As to the issue of replies being submitted half way through by themselves, I've literally never heard of that happening in the 3 plus years that I've been using this software. There is a feature that remembers what you typed into the reply box so that if you accidentally leave the page without submitting the post it will reappear, when you go back to it. I am not sure if that's what you're referring to. In terms of mobile issues this software is actually designed to be responsive to mobile devices, where as the other one was not. You'll notice that the menu and formatting changes when you visit the site on a mobile device. 

2. We have a "shout box" not a chat room. Shout boxes tend to vary in their feature set. I was actually a proponent of using a chat but when I asked most people indicated that they prefer a shout box. 

This is first and foremost a forum. I understand that people enjoy the ShoutBox, but really I consider it an extra feature. If people truly want a Chat room there is a builtin chat feature that I can easily enable. As far as participation dropping that is normal after doing a change like this. It takes people a while to learn the new features, create new bookmarks, and figure out where everything is. It also takes Google a while to re-index everything. The two weeks of downtime didn't help either, but a drop in traffic after doing something like this is expected. Aside from Steve's apparent issue with posting I am not aware of any persistent issue with the forum software. As of late I've been spending a lot more time on here and I have yet to run into an issue with responsiveness or features not working. I appreciate your input and we are working to resolve issues as they arise, but its rather difficult to fix something if I am unable to replicate it. 

[steve25805 126,116]

7 minutes ago, Admin said:

Where were you getting that message? Pete also sent me a message and was describing a different issue. 

Every action was taking an age and sometimes it just seemed to time out which is when I got that message.

But after a day or more of problems everything seems fine again now. Just have to test if pics are working......

[Admin 14,790]

I want to make clear that I am not trying to deny that you're having issues. The problem is that i am thus far unable to replicate them. There also appears to be a few different things going on that may not actually be the same thing. It would help me immensely if you could post a screen shot of the errors you receive, or paste them in to the reply box. Here is a break down of the issues from what I understand: 

1. The shout box doesn't have the same features as the old one did, and it doesn't function very well on Apple devices 

2. The site occasionally gives a 502 error and is unavailable, this is consistent with the server being busy or the host having some temporary issues. However, thus far we have not come close to over utilizing the available resources so I tend to lean on it being a sporadic hosting issue. 

3. The site is slow and some people are unable to post or login, but the site is reachable. I have not yet experienced this issue and I would appreciate if people would screen shot any errors related to it. I am on here A LOT and I haven't had this happen, I've tested the site on various machines, and even a VPS in another country and not seen this happen. 

[steve25805 126,116]

Yes, all seems fine again now. Whatever the problem was, it seems to have resolved itself. But with none of us knowing what caused it we cannot know when and if it will recur. I wondered if the problem was geographically limited to my part of the world, but Scot_Lover reporting lack of access from Australia siuggests not.

[Admin 14,790]

1 minute ago, steve25805 said:

Yes, all seems fine again now. Whatever the problem was, it seems to have resolved itself. But with none of us knowing what caused it we cannot know when and if it will recur. I wondered if the problem was geographically limited to my part of the world, but Scot_Lover reporting lack of access from Australia siuggests not.

I have setup a monitoring service to notify me when the site is unreachable. It checks every 15 minutes. Hopefully if it continues to happen I can diagnose it based on the down time pattern. 

[steve25805 126,116]

Unfortunately, the screenshot I have is stored on my old laptop. I will have to find a USB stick or something to transfer it onto this one. My attempts to get the old one back online were not immediately successful. I have work very soon so might not have time to fetch the screenshot this morning.

[Admin 14,790]

16 minutes ago, steve25805 said:

Yes, all seems fine again now. Whatever the problem was, it seems to have resolved itself. But with none of us knowing what caused it we cannot know when and if it will recur. I wondered if the problem was geographically limited to my part of the world, but Scot_Lover reporting lack of access from Australia siuggests not.

I am glad it's working for you and I appreciate you trying to help figure it out. 

[steve25805 126,116]

This was the screenshot I captured. Goota go now. Running late.....

 

 

 

[Admin 14,790]

Thanks here is the cloud flare description of that error: 

A 524 error states that CloudFlare was able to make a TCP connection to the origin, but the origin did not reply with a HTTP response before the connection timed out.

Our edge will typically wait for a HTTP response from your server for 100 seconds.

If no response is sent by your server in that time, we close the connection and serve a 524 error page.

This error is commonly caused by a long-running process on the origin server, such as a PHP application or a database query which the web server must wait on before responding to a request.

A 524 can also be caused by your origin server being overloaded- if you see this error it's a good idea to check your server's available resources, including CPU and RAM, and overall traffic levels. If your server has a high CPU load, or is low on memory, this could indicate a resource problem.

 

I will keep an eye on it, hopefully the down time notifier will help diagnose it. I think this is actually server issue rather than an issue with the software itself. 

 

[steve25805 126,116]

I will say that I didn't always get an Error 524 message. Sometimes it was an Error 522 message, but I never got a screenshot of it. Don't know how they differ.

Screenshots and what have you seem to be totally different on my new laptop and so I haven't figured out how to do them yet.

[Pete2304 36]

On 16 October 2016 at 4:50 AM, steve25805 said:

I was getting Error 22 and Error 24 messages as well when it wouldn't load at all.

And Pete2304 sent me a PM saying that it wasn't working for him either.

Thus far things seem a little more responsive this morning but I have only just got here and it is very early days so far

I couldn't load the site at all around the same time and was just getting a blank screen. Like everyone else, I'm finding it's loading fine now most of the time.

[F.W 5,734]

I liked the "hot,dislike etc options".What does quote mean?Why cant we just like or dislike anymore?

[Scot_Lover 1,877]

"Quote" copies the post you are answering, and includes it with your post,

The "Dislike" was not included, it was being abused, people disliked a post just for shits n giggles, it got way out of hand.

The new software may not have that function, not sure, but no one liked the old "Dislike" anyway, just way too negative.

 

[likesToLick 10,216]

On 16/10/2016 at 5:20 AM, steve25805 said:

Well, it's bad news then.

I have just bought a brand new laptop which works fine everywhere else.....but this forum is still virtually unusable in exactly the same way. So it cannot possibly be my computer. So I am at a total loss to explain it or know what I can do about it at my end.

Hi Steve.  

You are definitely not alone in this.   The forum has been close to unusable for me ever since the change over to the new forum software.  Threads with pictures take AGES to load,  and the browser freezes while they are loading.   I am using a quad core processor at 2.5 GHz,  the latest Firefox update and a 12 Megabit broadband connection.   Everywhere else I go works fine, but this forum is so slow it drives me batty.

I find myself coming here less often,  and doing less when I am here, since it is so frustrating to sit and wait minutes for a frozen screen to come back.

[steve25805 126,116]

2 hours ago, likesToLick said:

Hi Steve.  

You are definitely not alone in this.   The forum has been close to unusable for me ever since the change over to the new forum software.  Threads with pictures take AGES to load,  and the browser freezes while they are loading.   I am using a quad core processor at 2.5 GHz,  the latest Firefox update and a 12 Megabit broadband connection.   Everywhere else I go works fine, but this forum is so slow it drives me batty.

I find myself coming here less often,  and doing less when I am here, since it is so frustrating to sit and wait minutes for a frozen screen to come back.

It turns out that I and a number of others only had this kind of problem for a very temporary period and it seemed like a server issue. It works fine for me now. That you seem to be having real permanent problems is concerning because if there is an issue it is unlikely to be affecting only one person. Potentially, others affected could simply have ceased coming here. I would suggest sending a PM to Admin.

[Scot_Lover 1,877]

6 hours ago, likesToLick said:

Hi Steve.  

You are definitely not alone in this.   The forum has been close to unusable for me ever since the change over to the new forum software.  Threads with pictures take AGES to load,  and the browser freezes while they are loading.   I am using a quad core processor at 2.5 GHz,  the latest Firefox update and a 12 Megabit broadband connection.   Everywhere else I go works fine, but this forum is so slow it drives me batty.

I find myself coming here less often,  and doing less when I am here, since it is so frustrating to sit and wait minutes for a frozen screen to come back.

Sorry you are having problems, can I get some more info on what version of Windows you are running. Clearing the DNS cache may work, sounds like your PC is not resolving the address correctly.

 

[likesToLick 10,216]

11 hours ago, Scot_Lover said:

Sorry you are having problems, can I get some more info on what version of Windows you are running. Clearing the DNS cache may work, sounds like your PC is not resolving the address correctly.

Just to be clear,   I am not getting the http error codes and time-outs that have been mentioned in this thread.  All I am seeing is very poor (slow) performance.  This has been of a consistently bad standard ever since the new forum software was installed.

If I sit and wait for 5 or 10 minutes after opening a few threads, eventually they will all populate and the browser screen stops freezing.  I have not seen any time-outs or pages not found.

I am running windows XP.

I notice that the new forum encrypts all pages (https://), while the old software sent the pages in clear.  Is it possible that poor SSL decoding performance on my PC might be the problem?

[likesToLick 10,216]

 

 

Just tried connecting with Google Chrome instead of firefox to see if that improved performance,  but received the following interesting message:

 

Chrome will not allow me to connect to the site at all.

 

Edited October 30, 2016 by likesToLick

[uniloo 98]

Both on my PC and Android phone, Chrome connects fine and reports the SSL connection to https://peefans.com as using AES_128_GCM and ECDHE_ECDSA. Which is an up-to-date secure protocol.  The Qualsys SSL Labs server test gives it an 'A' rating, If anything I would expect more problems with older browsers (such as IE 6) which do not support the 'modern' protocols and cipher suites than a modern browser such as Chrome.

Edited October 30, 2016 by uniloo
Fixed typos

[steve25805 126,116]

11 hours ago, likesToLick said:

 

 

Just tried connecting with Google Chrome instead of firefox to see if that improved performance,  but received the following interesting message:

 

Chrome will not allow me to connect to the site at all.

 

Clearly, Admin needs to take a look at this. The technical jargon is over my head, but my fellow mod - Scot_Lover - seems far more knowledgeable in this area.

Nevertheless, it is something Admin needs to know about though he is probably busy these days trying to figure out if there is a way around banning watersports and golden shower material whilst still at least making enough money to break even.

But I will send him an email to alert him to your problem.