Over there

[Alex]

I just wanted to comment on Raven's fantastic photo of Thurso beach, I've been frozen out !   So I'll do it here - a beautiful photo 

[crabbyob]

how on earth did you get frozen out, were you mentioned in dispatches?

[Michael Rolls]

It is still happening, although nothing like as often - happened to me yesterday morning (or was it the morning before? Anyway - it happened in the middle of trying to post)
Mike

[Scrumpy]

It hasn't happened to me ..

[crabbyob]

so there are some benefits to being out of step..

[Scrumpy]

 

[Dayjo]

I also, was frozen, over there, early this afternoon! 

Over here..... Is everyone receiving notifications? Cos, I'm not.... 

[klondike]

If you mean email notifications of posts I haven't enabled that due to the way I'm piggybacking a Gmail account. My own it fact but I could set one up just for the forum. There are limits on how many emails a day you can send that way.  It's why I had to disable PMs until I could figure out how to patch the code to stop it sending an email every time a PM was sent.

Depending on the hosting it may be possible to reinstate that but don't hold your breath. I did try a free mail service but the forum integration wouldn't work with it for some reason

[zoony]

so there are some benefits to being out of step..

Aye, there are. You don't break the bridge.

[klondike]

HTTP/1.1 522 from 2022-01-01 14:58 to 15:01 - down for 3 minutes
HTTP/1.1 522 from 2022-01-01 15:28 to 15:31 - down for 2 minutes
2 outages with a total downtime of 5 minutes

[Michael Rolls]

better than it used to be - come to think of it - I've been a member of about six fora over teh years - none of them ever had outages like PF did
Mike

[Michael Rolls]

oh - and to be fair - for me those outages are a very recent phenomenon
Mike

[klondike]

Chris claimed a hardware failure.
That would fit the sudden onset  but.... no piece of hardware in a data centre services just one tiny forum that doesn't even stress  a Raspberry Pi. Everything handles hundreds or thousands of websites  and those problems would not have impacted just PF. 

Chris finds out about this place, has the hump, problem fixed pretty much immediately. Again a hardware repair fits but... why did none of those other site owners notice and complain? Why didn't the people running the place notice and fix it. It was up and down on a regular basis for weeks.

Have you ever had anything break down, start working, break down, start working on an endless cycle lasting weeks? It is just barely possible but I think unlikely.

My own view is that his paid hosting contract was coming to an end and he swapped over to free hosting. Usually that would involve a server move.  Inside a data center such moves involve very little downtime. The whole site instance  along with its database are copied over to the new server. The router that handles the traffic routes it to the new server and jobs'a good'un. I've upgraded hosting within a company and that is exactly what they do. It is all over in minutes.

So PF then runs on free hosting with no service level agreement and disinterested support staff (if any at all). So what causes all those outages. I have no real idea. The server it was on was giving good response times when it was working then suddednly it would just stop then start up sometime later. Now being a cynical sod I ask why do companies give free hosting? Well invariably they also sell hosting. Could all those outages be caused deliberately by a script to persuade people that maybe free hosting isn't such a good idea for their business. Most will have paid somebody to set up the website and have no clue how  to go about moving it. Lucky them though - the hosting company can do all that for them if they just flash the plastic.

Cynical? Certainly but it does fit what happened.

[Dayjo]

If you mean email notifications of posts I haven't enabled that due to the way I'm piggybacking a Gmail account.

Yes. That's what I'm missing! I'm used to my daily read of what everone is doing. Just don't have the time to spend scanning.

No problem! Thought I might have broken something..... 

[klondike]

I just click on the...

Show unread posts since last visit. Right at the top
or
Unread Posts on the RHS of the grey bar going right across the page a bit further down.

There is also a big list at the bottom of the page when you first enter the site.