What is wrong with the site? (Please read updated post #1)

PucaMama

Boards.ie: Ronan wrote: »

Hi,

While I realise that it might be an arduous enough task for some to provide the information that Mark specified, the tech team need it to be able to reproduce, diagnose and then fix issues.

Posts like

give us absolutely nothing to go on at all. I accept that not everyone will be able to complete the list of details but as much detail as possible is needed for us to be able to fix.

Countless posts like mine all through the thread. Funny it's only picked up on when you have posters backing you up.

I mostly use the site on my phone. I prefer the responsive site but it's absolutely unusable for 503 errors. If you have the same issues going for so long and can't tell what's causing it then you have a problem on your team.

Boards.ie: Mark

PucaMama wrote: »

Countless posts like mine all through the thread. Funny it's only picked up on when you have posters backing you up.

I mostly use the site on my phone. I prefer the responsive site but it's absolutely unusable for 503 errors. If you have the same issues going for so long and can't tell what's causing it then you have a problem on your team.

Hi PucaMama,

Apologies for the 503 Errors. I understand how frustrating it can be. They were seemingly a Responsive site wide issue, but Ronan has put a patch in place that will hopefully suppress the majority of them. However, it's still something we're working on, so I can't offer you a guarantee that you won't be affected from here on out. But, as I say, it's something that we're still working to rectify.

As for the double posts, I'll be keeping an eye out for them and highlighting them to the dev guys.

AlmightyCushion

Boards.ie: Mark wrote: »

Hi PucaMama,

Apologies for the 503 Errors. I understand how frustrating it can be. They were seemingly a Responsive site wide issue, but Ronan has put a patch in place that will hopefully suppress the majority of them. However, it's still something we're working on, so I can't offer you a guarantee that you won't be affected from here on out. But, as I say, it's something that we're still working to rectify.

As for the double posts, I'll be keeping an eye out for them and highlighting them to the dev guys.

The responsive site has other problems though. It is noticeably slower than the legacy site and that bottom bar with the page numbers on it sometimes takes ages to appear after the page has already loaded.

Boards.ie: Mark

OCEANIC FIZZY POP NINE wrote: »

You know you've been asked whats wrong with the site every couple of weeks for the guts of a year and you've only now bothered to reply. Have ye got stuff going "live" every week for there to be so many bugs?

The devs are actually working on a lot of things at once. And sometimes...it's how coding is.




This also gave me a chuckle

Stheno

The 3ntire site has been taking almost a minute to open threads all day and giving timeout errors, server didn't respond errors and no data received errors.

Some of the url were touch.boards.ie touch.boards.ie/ my threads and my forums, expecting to click on a thread to open it and instead get errors.

All of the actions suggested such as restarting incognito mode have made no difference

I'm on a Samsung galaxy s6 using the android browser. Also tried chrome which was the same

Going on since about twelve o'clock any chance the latest fix was rolled out about then?

OCEANIC FIZZY POP NINE

Boards.ie: Mark wrote: »

The devs are actually working on a lot of things at once. And sometimes...it's how coding is.




This also gave me a chuckle

I like you new guy.

I'd say lack of response to feedback in the feedback forum pisses people off more than the bugs, if ye kept people informed things would be alot better. Updates lad, updates. Sites been buggy for a long long (yup 2 longs, not a typo) time at this stage, we'd be abit more forgiving if we know why...

Help us Help you and all that. (I like that or it's variations as a motto kinda thing in real life. Actually works.)

Sad Professor

Don't know if this has been mentioned already, but Google links to threads are broken.

I keep getting this:

"No Thread specified. If you followed a valid link, please notify the administrator"

The threads are still there, I've checked.

Not happening with all links, mind you, but enough to make searching the site via Google a total pain. It was bad enough already with the responsive site messing up what page I got linked to.

muffler

Boards.ie: Niamh wrote: »

Morning folks.
I understand it is frustrating when you try to use the site and experience errors or cannot access it at all. Ronan was simply explaining that the guys need information when there is an error. It's not an unreasonable request. We don't expect everyone to be able to provide ALL of the information requested but just to give as much of it as possible. The site is huge and there are several different ways in which any one element of it might stop working; this is why we need users help in providing details - what you were doing when it happened, what error you got, what page you were on, etc. all help the team to pinpoint the source of the error. "It is broken" is pretty useless without any further details so we're encouraging users to give as much detail as possible to help us eliminate bugs and other issues.

Muffler - Ronan was simply explaining the reasoning behind their need for extra information in order to help users and resolve bugs. There was no need to get shirty with him.

To address some of your points - the site is large and old and it is to be expected that things go wrong from time to time. This is one of the main reasons we are working on getting off vBulletin. A large amount of time and resource is going into exactly this.

The problem and perhaps answer to your question is we don't have a huge tech team; we don't have huge resources. We test things before they go live but we cannot test exhaustively and sometimes something will go awry and cause some errors. Users always make us aware of these errors fairly early on and we will either roll back the change if possible, or investigate the issue with a view to fixing it. If we don't get enough details about the error and cannot replicate it here, it cannot be investigated. As above, we do not have huge resources and investigating blindly is essentially like looking for a needle in a haystack.

I'm sorry you feel that certain errors are preventing you from modding as best you can; if you can give some of the details requested about those specific issues, we'll add them to the list of issues to be investigated. If you have given the details in previous posts, they'll be on the list already. Thanks.

First of all I was being "shirty" at Ronan as you put it and he shouldnt take it personal.

I posted my feelings on the ongoing issues and asked a couple of questions, which werent answered btw, and I think Im entitled to do this. But your response has just reinforced my opinion that this is not the place for me to remain as a mod and hence my request in the Cmod drop box to be demodded.

TherapyBoy

Ongoing long-term issues. Users getting 'shirty' is to be expected over the time-scale we're talking about, your feelings on this matter Muffler are valid & should be treated as such.

hullaballoo

The new guy is doing good things.

But.

Cardinal error is posting an update and changing thread title to "READ POST #5839241" and not just editing the first post.

/minus 10 points qi klaxon

cee_jay

Unable to access a thread on a private forum - receiving 404 error using Chrome on Android.
I was reading the thread and accidentally hit the responsive button. Then selected Legacy Site. Since then I have been receiving the error on that thread. Tried doing the same on a different thread, and same issue occurred.

d31b0y

Sad Professor wrote: »

Don't know if this has been mentioned already, but Google links to threads are broken.

I keep getting this:

"No Thread specified. If you followed a valid link, please notify the administrator"

The threads are still there, I've checked.

Not happening with all links, mind you, but enough to make searching the site via Google a total pain. It was bad enough already with the responsive site messing up what page I got linked to.

This. All the time. Drives me nuts and I can imagine it drives a lot of potential users away.

EDIT: can't seem to recreate the issue now but will post some examples if it comes up again.

Boards.ie: Mark

Sad Professor wrote: »

Don't know if this has been mentioned already, but Google links to threads are broken.

I keep getting this:

"No Thread specified. If you followed a valid link, please notify the administrator"

The threads are still there, I've checked.

Not happening with all links, mind you, but enough to make searching the site via Google a total pain. It was bad enough already with the responsive site messing up what page I got linked to.

d31b0y wrote: »

This. All the time. Drives me nuts and I can imagine it drives a lot of potential users away.

EDIT: can't seem to recreate the issue now but will post some examples if it comes up again.

If ye can get any examples, that would be a great help. Any Google searches I do seem to work...

cee_jay wrote: »

Unable to access a thread on a private forum - receiving 404 error using Chrome on Android.
I was reading the thread and accidentally hit the responsive button. Then selected Legacy Site. Since then I have been receiving the error on that thread. Tried doing the same on a different thread, and same issue occurred.

Could you try incognito mode please; that's done the job in the past.

Boards.ie: Niamh

muffler wrote: »

First of all I was being "shirty" at Ronan as you put it and he shouldnt take it personal.

I posted my feelings on the ongoing issues and asked a couple of questions, which werent answered btw, and I think Im entitled to do this. But your response has just reinforced my opinion that this is not the place for me to remain as a mod and hence my request in the Cmod drop box to be demodded.

I'm really sad to read that muffler, we'd be sorry to lose you as a mod and the site will be a poorer place without your help around the place.

Sad Professor

Boards.ie: Mark wrote: »

If ye can get any examples, that would be a great help. Any Google searches I do seem to work...

From what I can see, post links (i.e. Google links ending in /thread/post/*****/) don't work.

Example (from searching "snowpiercer site:Boards.ie"):



The first two links work, third one doesn't and results in this error:





Boards.ie: Mark

Sad Professor wrote: »

From what I can see, post links (i.e. Google links ending in /thread/post/*****/) don't work.

Example (from searching "snowpiercer site:Boards.ie"):



The first two links work, third one doesn't and results in this error:





Thanks for that. The guys have taken a look and Google results should work now when you're directed to the thread or a single post.

Sad Professor

Just checked and it's working now. Thanks Mark!

Heighway61

Boards.ie: Niamh wrote: »

To address some of your points - the site is large and old and it is to be expected that things go wrong from time to time. This is one of the main reasons we are working on getting off vBulletin.

Just on this point, is it not the case that vBulletin has actually very few problems compared to the new tech? I guess it's for other reasons you are moving away from VBulletin but it sure dows work well technically.

Boards.ie: Niamh

Heighway61 wrote: »

Just on this point, is it not the case that vBulletin has actually very few problems compared to the new tech? I guess it's for other reasons you are moving away from VBulletin but it sure dows work well technically.

That's not the case here, no. We are using a heavily modified version of vBulletin (having been modified over many years to suit the purposes and size of the site) and it is no longer suitable. When anything stops working on vBulletin it takes a large amount of time and effort to first locate the problem and then to fix it. Similarly when we want to change or update something or add a new feature, it takes a lot longer than on the new site.

Shannon757

Getting an awful lot of 404s at the minute, great quote when you get them though.

Boards.ie: Mark

Shannon757 wrote: »

Getting an awful lot of 404s at the minute, great quote when you get them though.

Are you on the mobile site - and on Chrome? Could you try using Incognito mode and see if that does the trick?

Irish Steve

Not a deal breaker, but I've noticed this morning that the sort order on category menus has changed, for as long as I can remember, the most active forum in motoring and transport , Motors, was at the top of the list. Today, and I can't see a way to change it, it's moved into alphabetic order, so Motors has moved about 6 entries down the list. I can guarantee that this WILL confuse some of the regular users.


Now, to confuse me even more, I've just gone back to the catgory menu, and motors has moved again. Not sure what's happening with this

Taltos

Hi Steve - there's a discussion on this in the Motors mod forum with the cmod team.

Boards.ie: Mark

Irish Steve wrote: »

Not a deal breaker, but I've noticed this morning that the sort order on category menus has changed, for as long as I can remember, the most active forum in motoring and transport , Motors, was at the top of the list. Today, and I can't see a way to change it, it's moved into alphabetic order, so Motors has moved about 6 entries down the list. I can guarantee that this WILL confuse some of the regular users.


Now, to confuse me even more, I've just gone back to the catgory menu, and motors has moved again. Not sure what's happening with this

Hi Irish Steve, should have replied to this but went off to find out what had happened. Hopefully normal order is restored for you - I'd also recommend checking out the Motors mod forum.

hullaballoo

Only motors mods have access to the motors mods' forum!

Boards.ie: Mark

hullaballoo wrote: »

Only motors mods have access to the motors mods' forum!

Right you are!

Shannon757

Boards.ie: Mark wrote: »

Are you on the mobile site - and on Chrome? Could you try using Incognito mode and see if that does the trick?

I'm on the mobile site in incognito on Internet explorer

OCEANIC FIZZY POP NINE

hullaballoo wrote: »

Only motors mods have access to the motors mods' forum!

Can I have access to make sure everything is above board in there?

Hotblack Desiato

Heighway61 wrote: »

Just on this point, is it not the case that vBulletin has actually very few problems compared to the new tech? I guess it's for other reasons you are moving away from VBulletin but it sure dows work well technically.

For me, vBulletin with javascript turned off (for speed) is the only way to use this site which isn't either tortuously slow, unusable (not scaling to screen or window size) or just broken (the so-called 'responsive' site which doesn't even attempt to offer usable functionality.)

boobycharlton

Site freezes on mobile due to ads several times a day. Using one plus two Chrome and Firefox and no issue on any other sites besides here.