Server Errors?

[geoberni]

Message board side of the website been down again this morning, 2nd or 3rd time in recent weeks, with the rest of the site unaffected.

What is going on with the message board hosting?
This morning was just a blank, while previous failures have displayed '500 Error' across the page.....

[Chief]

I was wondering this as well since that's two mornings in a row now it's been giving out error 500's (wasn't blank for me today).

[burnham28]

Second time for me today.

[Des911]

Yep me too, I was lost this morning

[geoberni]

I know it's been alluded to in recent months that a replacement Forum/Message Board is on the cards, but with my limited knowledge of the world of Hosting and Servers, I have one significant concern....
Surely it doesn't matter how good the software is, if it's hosted on poorly supported Servers?

[Des911]

Been off again this morning

[geoberni]

Yep, Looking at posts, I'm guessing it went down between 08:03 when Murrayminor managed to post something and when I first tried at about 9:15, literally come back in the 10 minutes or so.

Isn't it time we had some comment from Mike or anyone in the know, because this is getting ridiculous.
If the system is going to be down for scheduled activity, we should have advance notice.
In the absence of any such information, these all appear to be failures.

[Murrayminor]

I don't know the ins and outs of servers and forums (Fora?) but as a member of a number of different forums I can say this and one other have a lot of down time, the remainder seem to carry on regardless of content.

But having said that this forum is clear and concise to use with an easy to find search facility, some of the other forums I use just seem to be a jumble of words on the screen.

[Admin]

Yep, Looking at posts, I'm guessing it went down between 08:03 when Murrayminor managed to post something and when I first tried at about 9:15, literally come back in the 10 minutes or so.

Isn't it time we had some comment from Mike or anyone in the know, because this is getting ridiculous.
If the system is going to be down for scheduled activity, we should have advance notice.
In the absence of any such information, these all appear to be failures.

I've not chipped in recently because I've nothing really to add - I report the failure to our partner company, and they either (a) just say 'oh it's back now, what's the problem?' or (b) more usually, just s*dding ignore me. See, I'm stuck in the middle of a group of users on one side who - rightly - complain that the service is off yet again on one side, and the MMOC who I regularly tell have a partner who is either grossly incompetent or utterly disinterested on the other. Me, being stupid, sit in the middle and cop it from both sides.
I could say more, but that's probably enough to hang me.

[Des911]

Thanks Mike, but it doesn't really solve the problem for us. Should we complain to the MMOC then when it happens, can you give us a name or address to do this, as sticking with it is not and option for me.

[geoberni]

Thanks for that Mike.

I appreciate your problem. Seems some more formal contact with MMOC is required.

There are a number of people here who are not MMOC Members, but those of us who are will be paying for this ridiculous level of service. It doesn't matter which income stream the money is allocated from, whether annual subscriptions or advertiser income, it's Club Income, being spent on an abdominal level of service.

If it was our own personal or company website which was being serviced in such a manner, I'm sure any of us would have changed providers long ago.

[KeithL]

I agree with geoberni. The Members now need to raise this as an issue with Head Office.

[burnham28]

I've noticed that under my contact details it shows me as not being a member which I have been a fully paid up one for several years. Why is this ?

[Des911]

You have to change that yourself, everyone starts at "no" under Membership

[Admin]

If you'd like to email any comments to me at the usual address - admin at mmoc.org.uk - I'll forward them to the appropriate mailbox - sorry, I don't wish to place individuals contact addresses here on the forum.

I've been playing around with a possible solution outside of our current provision - you can see a demo of it at [EDIT - link redacted]. It's NOT READY for use, but if you'd like to register for an account there to play with then sign up and I'll get you through purely for the sake of testing ideas out.

[Admin]

Our partner has emailed me yesterday and suggested they are changing the routine resets of our board with a view to resolving these latest difficulties and requested that we give them time to see if that makes a difference. As my previous posts on this subject may have intimated, I have very limited patience left with our current arrangement, but we'll give them this last opportunity. Please ensure you report any difficulties directly to me at my admin address should you experience them.

[Des911]

Let's hope they do something this time or face the consequences.

[geoberni]

I can only judge their performance against that of the hosting for the H&S Forum I've been a member of for nigh on 12 years (joined 13 Jan 09). It is on the same phpBB platform, although it has been regularly updated which I fear this one has not.


But our site has been down more in the past few weeks than I've seen in 12 years on the other forum.

[geoberni]

A question for Mike, which is why I did a Quote so he'd get a notification...
Is there a technical reason or perhaps ease of working behind the scenes, that had you try out SMF as the Forum Software, rather than PHP?

There does seem to be some reduction in features compared to PHP.
The most frustrating I've seen so far is the way it doesn't show images in the Preview, so you've no idea if they are there, upside down or what, before publishing it.

[Des911]

This board has been unavailable for 2 days, does anyone have an answer to the problem ?