Network Issues 28th Feb

[roddy]

Hosting company is having some network problems, and the site is not always accessible at the moment. Hopefully be ok in a couple of hours, but keep copies of anything you post in case it doesn't get through.

[roddy]

Still problematic, but nothing I can do about it I'm afraid. Please sit in front of your computers blindly pressing F5 until the problem resolves.

My email access is also difficult at the moment, so if you've sent me anything in the last 24 hours I might take a while to reply.

[zhwj]

I couldn't get through at all yesterday, and was in the dark as to whether it was legit tech problems, or if the server had just up and vanished.

Do you think there's any way you can rig the Forums to return a message saying "Network Problems" - or point to this thread - if access is interrupted?

[roddy]

If there's a problem, then your requests won't even get to the server to be redirected anywhere. I could just close things down when problems start, but I might not be online to reopen them Best solution I can see is put a note up warning of potential problems for those who can get through.

Incidentally, you shouldn't be able to post in this Announcements bit. Begone!

[roddy]

Moving into Bug Reports - I'm currently able to use the forums fine via proxy,but with major problems if I try to access directly. Would appreciate it if people could check in and let me know if they're having any problems, and where they are.

[liuzhou]

I've been in and out a few times today without problem.

[zhwj]

No problems at all throughout today - Beijing Netcom here.

Guess my attempt at humor failed up there...

[roddy]

Whoops. In my defence I've had my laptop die (it resurrected itself though), webhosting go belly-up, and the lifts in my apartment building (22nd floor!!!) break down today, so I'm not very humour-sensitive.

I'm still having trouble with the forums. It looks exactly like what happens when the banned word filters kick in, but I'm on Netcom too, so if you're not having trouble then there's no reason why I should be. Plus it happens on every page. Wait and see I guess.

Although I have just realised I haven't paid the phone bill, so will probably be cut off tomorrow anyway. Great.

EDIT: And I just got told the forum isn't accepting new posts. Go figure . . .

[roddy]

Anyone who's still having trouble (and can somehow read this)

Avoid the home (portal page). That seems to be triggering filters for some reason. I'm currently removing various posts to try and sort it out, but I'm damned if I know what it is. If anyone has any ideas, EMAIL me.

[adrianlondon]

I'm posting this here just to prove a point - I'm having no problems at all with this site. Whatever I click on works perfectly, including the home page and straight into www.chinese-forums.com. Also, it has always worked; no problems yesterday either.

I'm accessing everything from the UK.

[roddy]

You must be lucky then, because yesterday the webhosting company got into such a mess they didn't even have telephones. I assumed that the current problems were a part of that, but I'm now convinced there's something currently on the front page that is triggering internet filters here in Beijing.

I'm going to start trying to remove bits of content one by one now, if only to satify my own curiousity.

[adrianlondon]

Of course, there's an 8 hour time difference (it's 3:10pm right now) so your problems may all occur when I'm alsleep :-)

[roddy]

For reasons I really cannot figure out, this entirely innocent post seemed to be the culprit. Did some random editing and it seems to be fine now.

[skylee]

Oh I thought it was Dutch ... how silly ... blush ~~~