Two Problems

[Ego Slayer]

I don't know about everyone else but there have been times were I type a post hit the "Post" button and and page never changes yet it posts. After the loading bar is about half way finished (loads really slow) I can hit one of the tabs [General], or [Board Issues] so on my message had posted but the pages doesn't change until I redirect somewhere else.

Also, I've got the site bookmarked and someone it's takes forever to load and then ends up on an AOL type thingy search engine.

[Wukei]

I've had both of those problems, too. I've yet to figure out how to fix it, however. All I do is close the page and bring the site back up again and any posts that I have made are counted as a "new" post.

Sometimes, it also takes me to a 404 page. Again, I just close the site and reload it.

[GreenWarden]

Yeah the happens to me sometimes as well. The page won't load, but when I reload the page the post goes through.

I find it usually happened when their are more than 110 people on the site at a time.

[Samiam303]

This type of problem has been discussed before I believe... It's just server strain. It can only serve the page to so many people before it slows. The search engine thingy I have no idea about though.

[RawBearNYC]

The Order of the Stick has made GiantITP.com far more popular than we ever thought it would be. Some of the decisions we made about the site, we would have made different if we ever expected this success. As it stands, we have what we have and we expect to be able to fiddle with little things, over time, to make things better. Bear with us please.

As to the two specific issues mentioned. The message board software is very unkind to the server, and the amount of traffic hitting the message boards sometimes overwhelmes it.

When you fill out one of these forms and hit "Post", the data is packaged up by your browser and sent to the server in a POST operation. The server receives the package and deals with it. We're not yet sure which yaBB process is causing our server such problems, but it seems to occur AFTER the POSTed data has been written to the file system, but BEFORE new information is sent to the client. That means that 8 out of 10 times, when you hit the post button, regardless of what outcome you see, the data will have gone through.

This can create some funny situations. If you get an error (404, or a browser error) your first instinct might be to refresh the page. However, the browser isn't smart enough to know that the data that was sent to request the page the first time doesn't need to be sent again to get the page again. As such, it will re POST the information it POSTed before (which more than likely went through) creating a double post. When these problems occur after posting, hitting refresh is a bad idea. However, not many people are conscious enough of the process to stop themselves from doing that. So, I ask every to please be extra extra extra patient and tolerant of double posts (if someone does it, don't even bother mentioning it, if they or a mod sees it, they'll remove the double post).

As for the problems with your bookmarks, well, that's the same issue, it's the message board software overtaxing the server. Bear with it, please, we hope to make it better in the future. Also be aware of the following things. The later the comic is, the more people come back to this site more frequently to check it. As the day progresses, if there's no comic, the load on the server increases and increases. So, understand that days when Rich doesn't have the comic up early, the server will be slow. If the comic is really late, as soon as he puts it up, the server will really struggle for a couple of hours as word gets out and EVERYONE comes running to view it (and then go to the message boards to comment on Belkar's latest shenanigans).

I've got alot on my plate, one of them is to upgrade this software to a newer version. I'd rather use different software entirely, but we'd lose all of the existing messages (because you guys don't pay me enough to write conversion scripts for it all :P), but the newer version promises fixing a few of the more glaring issues that we have with this version. Again, bear with us.

Thanks

[Bears With Lasers]

It may be worth it to make a sticky in the Board Issues forum containing that kind of information, that way people will see it and not create a new thread or they will post on that thread with their problems if they relate and if you leave the thread unlocked.

Just a thought...

[RawBearNYC]

yeah, I thought of that as I was typing that. I think I also need to explain to people how I handle password and registration problems as well.

[Zherog]

The AOL search page thing wasn't addressed too much yet. If AOL is your ISP, disregard this - in that case, things are probably working the way they're supposed to on a "page not found" error (crappy as it may be).

If you do not use AOL as your ISP, you might have a Spyware problem - specifically one that hijacks the search function of your browser. If you've never checked your PC for Spyware, this would be a good time to do it. I recommend using more than one tool to search, as I have yet to find one tool that's perfect. Here's three I like:

AdAware (http://www.lavasoft.com/) by LavaSoft. There's a free version on their site, and it works really well.
Spybot Search & Destroy (http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html)
Spysweeper (http://www.webroot.com/) from Webroot. This is my favorite of the three; unfortunately, the free version expires after 30 days. That should be enough time to get your PC nice and clean, though.

I've also heard good things about Microsoft's Windows AntiSpyware (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=321cd7a2-6a57-4c57-a8bd-dbf62eda9671&displaylang=en), but I've never used it myself.

[Ego Slayer]

Yeah, I probably should run the AdAware and Spybot. I've got it but I haven't done it for a while because I lost it, redownloaded it and then never did it 'cause I'm lazy. :P The weird thing is though is that this is the only site it's given me the "Page not found" error.

EDIT: Scratch that! :P I got it from other sites too..