To everyone,

Is anyone else having forum software problems. In the past few days I have been trying to make post, but I'm instead getting blank pages saying that the action is "DONE". I have backed up and tried again to post as many as two dozen times before getting the forum software to allow my post to get through - other times I finally gave up!

I have reinstalled both Firefox and Explorer in an attempt to correct the problem, but it didn't work. I have cleared my history and cookies, but that didn't work either. I would like to know if anyone else is having these types of problems - what have they found to be the cause - and how did they fix it?

Thanks!


Kathy

I access the Forum via Opera and have lots of problems, but different than yours. Since the [upgade] of software it takes a very long time for the posting 'frame' to stabalize and the attchements window to complete. Posts are sometimes not recorded and line breaks are weird often cutting off the last letter. Other than that, and sometimes not being able to upload images, everything is great.

A week or so ago John and I decided to open up new registrations. We were hit by masses of spammers. I have deleted all of them but some of them may have caused some damage. You are not the first person to report this problem and it is being looked into.

Just as a reference point, I'm using Firefox 2.0.0.7 with Win XP (SP2) and am having no problems at all.

Ditto.

Problems with forum speed, blank pages etc. are probably to do with disk space.
Over 800MB's of disk space has been used up by members uploading images and documents with little or no regard to reducing image size before uploading. This is particular marked with the Apollo gang.
We have a quota of 475MB with our hosts. They have therefore been more than generous thus far.
This generosity is unlikely to continue and I will have to start deleting members uploads.
This will no doubt precipitate another wave of hand wringing and accusations of censorship and worse from some of our more excitable members but will have to be done sooner rather than later

Andy it might be worthwhile posting this or similar in the JFK and Political Conspiracies forum.

Do you know Gary I am not sure I can be bothered

I understand your exasperation...but forewarning might be worth reconsidering

All of which could be overcome if members used one of the free image-hosting sites such as Photobucket or Imageshack.

Quite so.
Some members are considerate enough to do as you describe but a great deal are not

Perhaps I could give a heads up to everyone on the PC / JFK sections?

Warn them that on a regular basis (every month?) image uploads that are over 90 days old will be deleted.

If something is only of short term value, then use the upload facility.

If it is of long term value, then consider photobucket / imageshack / etc.

Give everyone warning that this will be happening with the first cleaning at the end of this month?

If you have important images, then photobucket them and replace the current forum tag in the post (using edit) and replace them with an external URL to photobucket.

If it's an important image but you did not post it, then simply save it to your computer.

These are very sound ideas Evan.
Today I have had to delete around 100 uploaded images just to keep us functioning. The criteria I used was age (all posted in 2004 and 2005) and times viewed (all less than 10 page views). I will however have to remove more quite soon

I increased the size of the Memory Paging Swap File and that seemed to help. Do a Google for Memory Paging Swap File.
It was because I just had too many Explorer sessions and pages opened at once and too many applications running at once.
You could also try to add more memory but that costs more money and you have to pop the chips into the mother board.
Or you might try with a freshly booted system with just one Explorer session open... into the Education Forum. See if these
combinations might help you.

Hi John,

I also run Firefox, and normally only have one or two tabs open at once but still get the blank page / done error on occasion.

I find if I hit my BACK button, I get back to the post page. I'll then copy the text (in case I lose it) and hit SUBMIT again.

It normally works on the second go.

If you are writing a fairly lengthy post, it's better to use a text editor then cut and paste it into the post box. That way if the post fails, you still have your text available.

I use the AOL browser with Windows XP home. Sometimes I can see photographs, other times there's just a blank space.

Kathy Collins

I'v had that a few times. If an old post the photo may have been removed [sadly], if a newer post, it is not supposed to happen, but does. I still have formatting of lines problems and letters cut out, using Opera [my prefered program]. I also find that sometimes a typed post gets lost if one swithes to another window to get information, one returns to find all your work...gone. Very frustrating. Double mosts seem common and even triple ones, at times. The window takes a long, long time to load in order to post and that for attachments even longer -and on occassion the attachment window never opens.....ah, well.....

I found that I had to reload the cache to update some photos. I was telling some people they had to update their avatars, and it turned out they had... my browser was just using the cache.

Heheheh - I was just think about saying how we should all save portions of text, so if we lose the post we can repost without having to retype it all... when I thought about one of my old COs. Very smart man, but I couldn't get through his head the value of 'Control S'.

With pitiful regularity there would be an explosion of invective from his office. He is a very big man, 6' 3" or bigger, and he found he was often knocking the power cord to his PC out of the socket under his desk.

ZZZZT! Two hours of typing a status report gone.

$%#**!!!*%$#$!!

He's coming back as my boss next year; I hope he has learnt the value of 'Control S'.

Thanks for responding. I asked Andy Walker to look at this phenomena and he too saw that I wasn't seeing photos and told me, regretfully, he didn't know how to correct it.

Also, switching windows. I now know to save my post onto my clipboard, so if it's gone when I've come back after checking a fact, I can paste it.

There's nothing worse than losing a post you carefully crafted.

Kathy Collins

I find now that more times than not ANY mouse arrow touch [button click on mouse] NO MATTER WHERE causes the advertiser used on the Forum to open its window. This happens when I ask to edit, try to complete an edit or just place mouse elsewhere - NEVER intending to see any advertising and NOT being anywhere near it. Please fix it. It is annoying.