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Trojina

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Is anyone getting the problems I have been getting since the site went down yesterday. Pages take so long to load or don't load at all so that I have to just close the site and reopen where it might work for 5 minutes before it all freezes up again and the only way to move is to close the site again. I've just spent 45 minutes simply trying to send a PM and in other areas just haven't been able to post at all. The screen isn't showing all the tabs or they aren't loading. Am I the only one who is having a really hard time using this forum right now ? I wonder if I will be able to post this...let me try
 

Trojina

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Since posting that I have had to close the site 4 times ! Had to close it 4 times, re open it log on again....it just is not functioning as usual. If it is just me I can't see why...but it is more or less unusable...once this is posted I will have to close the site again log on again and it may allow me to navigate around for about 5 minutes then it will just freeze and I will be back to square one. the site has been down a lot lately but since it was down yesterday it is now completely unusable for me...well as you can see I can use it but not without shutting the site reopening and re logging on about 10 times.
 

test64

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It loads normally for me (Hilary) with my usual account. So here I'm experimenting with logging in as a regular user to see if that changes anything. In theory it might, as the admin account is different. No problems so far... will browse around for 5 minutes or so and try not to post absent-mindedly as test64.
 

test64

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OK, still no problems for me.

This is a mystery - not many possibilities come to mind. Here they are -
  1. something to do with the Amember database, that would affect regular users but not admin users
  2. a virus on your computer
  3. an internet connectivity issue

Well... I think I have ruled out #1 by logging in as test64 and having no difficulty.

You wouldn't expect a virus to affect one site and not others, at least I can't see why it should. Though you might run a scan anyway.

Internet connectivity... yes, I know you're accessing other sites OK, but maybe the disruption is just between your ISP or your part of the world and where my site's hosted (in the States). In which case there is probably not much anyone can do about it except wait for the problem to go away, though you could ask your ISP. 'Look, this woman in Oxford can access this website with no problem but I can't, why not?'
 

Trojina

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It can't possibly be a virus since i have the same problem on different devices, phone and laptop. My internet connection is perfect so it definately is not that. This has happened only since the site was down last night. That is when the site was put back up i have had nothing but trouble. No idea what ISP is but think this problem is due to the people/system who keep on making this site unavailable ...how many times this week has it happened ? 4 ? Anyway certainly not virus or internet connection.
 

Trojina

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You can't mean internet service provider......? I ring Virgin because Clarity is hopelessly slow and freezing ? That would be bonkers surely. I can access the site its just i have to keep closing and reopening to get 5 minutes access. I think the problem is with the site not with me especially since it is repeatedly crashing.
 
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butterfly spider

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Just to add here that when I was in London (not far from Oxford) everything seemed to be fine. When I was on the bus getting out at a major City in the south-west I could not log in as a user - a short typed message appeared in the top left hand corner. Again further deeper into the woods of the south-west, I could not log on. Yesterday was difficult most of the day.

Maybe, just maybe it is to do with area, although I have no idea at all about anything like this...
The site is fine this morning.......

I tried on a work computer on Saturday - and again, had problems with that short typed message about authentiification.......so whilst my computer is very very old, has a broken screen and a keyboard that plugs in as the one on the computer had hot chocolate spilled on it by the previous owner - it is not, I think, the reason why I cannot log on at times. I am with BT by the way.

xxxxx
 
O

oceangirl

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Yes sometimes I have weird problems trying to go to different pages but not all the time.
 

hilary

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Hi Butterfly,

Thanks for the detailed feedback! Can you tell me what the typed message in the top-left hand corner says, if you see it again? Though I can guess - this sounds like you trying to connect while the databases were down. I have a developer working on preventing that from happening again.

You say the site is fine now - everything happening at a normal sort of speed and so on?

Trojina, I'm just writing you a long email of suggestions. I imagine email is easier than wrestling with the forum at the moment.
 

Liselle

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I haven't had these sorts of problems with slowness, freezing, or complete inaccessibility (thank goodness), but there are a few other, more minor oddities. Such as the screen will sometimes tell me I'm logged out even when I just navigated or posted a minute earlier - but then if I simply refresh that login request page with F5, without entering username or password, I'm logged in again.

Also, sometimes (not always, but often enough to be noticeable), clicking on the "Latest posts" link in the menu takes me to the forum index page instead. I don't think I'm clicking on the wrong link by accident, since they're not next to each other.

Also, Hilary, remember I emailed you about not getting thread update notification emails, and you thought it might be something gone wrong with my email, not Clarity? That may be true - I'm still trying to find help or suggestions with my email provider - but I thought maybe I could band-aid the problem by giving Clarity my alias email. ("Alias" meaning I have two different email addresses attached to the same email account, & emails sent to either address end up in the same inbox.) Can't tell whether or not that would work, because apparently you can't just change the email you have registered with Clarity? When I tried, at the url http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/amember/profile, it wanted to make me change my username, too. And I can't just pretend to change it to "lisa" since usernames now have to be six characters? Unless I'm doing something wrong somehow, it seems odd you can't just change your email by itself.

Anyway, these problems are nothing like Trojina's problems fortunately.
 

hilary

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Hi Lisa,

You should certainly be able to change your email on its own. Hmph. Perhaps if it wants 6 character usernames, that's why it wants you to change that while you're there. Well... email me with the change you'd like and I'll do it. (And seek out that 6 character minimum, as I certainly don't remember setting any such thing...)

However - there is news on the email notifications front: this site's IP address has been blacklisted by Hotmail. I have someone trying to work out why (because there's no point trying to get off the blacklist if the original problem persists), but she hasn't been able to find any problems at all. Maybe someone clicked the 'this is spam' button instead of unsubscribing - I seem to remember the way outlook.com's set up encourages that.

So... hopefully sometime I will manage to get off the blacklist. In the meantime, you would need to change to a non-hotmail-related email address, so nothing @outlook.com or live.com either.
 

Liselle

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I'm glad a reason has been found, and hopefully they'll soon fix it for you. In the meantime, as long as it's just thread updates & PM notifications I'm not getting (vs. Friends' Notes, Answers updates, and the like), I won't complicate things by setting a new email. I have trouble enough keeping up with one.

Thanks :)
 

hilary

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Hopefully. There is no guarantee, though - it's entirely up to Hotmail/ Microsoft.
 

Liselle

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It does make me wonder how anyone could ever get any mass email (say, from retail stores), if all it takes to blacklist a sender is one person clicking on "this is spam"...it doesn't seem to make sense, as an explanation.
 

hilary

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True - normally it would need to be many more people. My guess would be they probably calculate it as a percentage. One person for a big retail store would be 0.0001% of the emails they sent. One person out of the emails sent from Clarity's servers... on a normal day, at least 1%.

(I once got blocked by a credit card provider and my funds locked because such a high % of my recent sales had been to stolen credit cards. Most of my sales had gone through Paypal, leaving about five to go through this provider over the course of 6 or 8 months. I think two of those were from a single crook using a stolen card.)

But yes... in general, never click the 'this is spam' link unless you actively loathe the person sending the email and want to do your bit to put them out of business.
 

Trojina

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Okay, tentatively everything seems to be back to normal. I say that with fingers crossed and touching wood. Thanks for the email list of ideas Hilary. The way I seemed to fix the issue this time was to go out for the day so whatever it was must have sorted itself out. Maybe it was local
 

rosada

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As of about a month ago I'm no longer able to access this site through Safari or Firefox. I use Tor Browser.
 

hilary

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You might be able to cure that by clearing the browser cache in Safari and Firefox. Or you might not... I can't talk, if I put Firefox anywhere near this computer the whole system dies and I have to reinstall Windows, and Chrome now can't load any pages. I'm using Vivaldi. Browsers are weird.
 
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peterg

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I haven't used the site for a while and today I had problems using IE. Some pages are very slow or freeze or wont open or the menu at the top of the page is not displaying properly. eg Blog , I Ching Readings, the login page with the remember option.
The other pages open normally. I thought it might be due to cleaning cookies, cache, temp files etc. recently.
Everything is OK on Chrome.
In the past I found the best cure for login problems was to click on the Remember option. To find it click on login but leave name and password blank. It always kept me logged in until I clicked logout.
 
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rosada

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I can't get on with Firefox or Safari but am able to access with Tor Browser.
 
P

peterg

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Compatibility View Settings

Today I was still getting those same problems on IE with the Blog and I Ching Readings pages.
I remembered an old thread and checked Compatibility View Settings (in Tools top right or Page top left). Two boxes about Microsoft Lists and Intranet sites were checked and I left them checked.
This website was added to the list, and must have been so for quite some time, so I removed it, and the IE problems loading the pages disappeared instantly.
I see Chrome also has a Compatibility tab at right click Chrome>Properties. You can run Chrome in Compatibility mode for whatever version of Windows. On my computer this box is unchecked with no problems. The page has a program compatibility troubleshooter.
Edit To troubleshoot just rightclick the browser shortcut.
 
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Liselle

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Oh Happy Day! :D

I just noticed that the very next day after we discussed this - Tuesday the 15th - I started getting thread update notifications again!! and also the other things I wasn't getting. (And yes, my "noticer" doesn't work very well.)

Thank you, Microsoft, and don't do this again. *wags finger*

:bounce:
 

hilary

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:bounce:

Also I've just upgraded the web hosting again, and the clever web developer did clever things, and spending all this money
:eek:uch:
should mean no more downtime.

:bounce:
(I'd include a concussed green character bouncing in circles if I could.)
 

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