Forum Not Loading On FireFox

[PhaPriSpa]

Forum Not Loading On FireFox

Hello Astral Pulse Tech Staff.

I'd like to place on your attention that since November 11 or 12, the Forum stopped loading on FireFox; it happened while I was posting one of the topics that I posted that day; an error message appeared while trying to post the topic and also while trying to preview it; I had to switch to Opera to be able to continue trying and discovered that the last part of the text of the topic was causing the post not to be previewed of posted, (¿do you have perhaps some application in the topic/post creation that prevents certain posts that have certain amount of repeated words at the end of the message from being posted? ¿perhaps something got installed that is preventing my FireFox from accessing the Forums, as perhaps the Forums having detected my posting as spam for the repeated certain amount of text at the end of 2 or 3 of them?); finally, after detecting the part of the text (only words) that were causing the error, I changed/simplified those texts and managed to post the topics.

Back then, the Forums on FireFox became completely not accessible, and on Opera I had to clean all the History of the browser and on windows restart or close the session to be able to access the Forums a little more; each time that on Opera they became not accessible I had to repeat the previous process. Today they are more stable but from time to time the pages don't load and I have to reload them for the pages to load.

Back in those past days, I also detected that on the forums and topics, from time to time the words of the tables that conform the forums were incomplete and had errors, that were being corrected one moment and failed the other, (¿where you performing some changes on the forum software in the past days?).

As I detected what seemed the technical configuration of the Forums, I waited until today to see if the Forums became accessible again on FireFox; I already cleared again the history of FireFox but the astralpulse.com web site is still not loaded on that navigator, but only on Opera; I don't have chrome to test if is available on that internet navigator.

It'd be nice if you can please check if your Forums are accessible on the different navigation software available (FireFox, Opera, Chrome, and others, and also from the different Mobiles Operative Systems and Tablets) for you to know that your users that have those navigators will be able to access them.

My best regards.


Pha Pri Spa (Phasing Primer Spanish/French)

[Szaxx]

This is a problem when buffers in your machine fill. It's also a problem if you somehow have control characters inside the text file. These are outside the normal alpha-numeric range and will be seen as an error. They also don't occupy any space so they can't be seen as a strange letter in the text.
The cure is to clean the cashe and delete the cookies for the site. This solves 99% of the problems where the displayed error occurs. If you copy and paste the erroneous text, the hidden characters are also copied.
You are not on your own with this problem and the sites software has been checked in the last day or so.

[Xanth]

We don't dare change anything about the software on this forum, else it crash and be lost to the nethers forever. 

[Subtle Traveler]

Xanth:

I was going to start a new thread about my recent problem, but instead I'll just place it here. About 4 to 5 weeks ago, I was online posting my last comment here and the site looked like it went down. After being told by Lumaza that the site was working for him, I have since figured out that the problem is on my end.

My Ooma device, which I keep connected in a home office with the modem and router, appears to be blocking the Astral Pulse site (singularly). I get to any other site on the Internet, and I have been testing these premises for about a month now. I removed my Ooma this morning so I could log on and post this message.

Do you know of any particular conflicts between Ooma and software underlying the Astral Pulse forums? I am asking because I have already searched the Simple Machines forum and site for answers ... which did not provide any. Thank you for your consideration.

[Szaxx]

Hi ST,
I wonder if your IP address is blocked, you'd see some kind of message I'd guess if so. Xanth will know more, if it's an old banned one and your router is setup as dynamic it may have stumbled upon one. A switch off and disconnect from power for a few mins sorts this.

[Subtle Traveler]

Hi ST,
I wonder if your IP address is blocked, you'd see some kind of message I'd guess if so. Xanth will know more, if it's an old banned one and your router is setup as dynamic it may have stumbled upon one. A switch off and disconnect from power for a few mins sorts this.

Probably not the IP address of my PC ... I have 10 or 11 devices connected to the home network all the time. None of them were able to access the AP site (several computers, tablets and even a Wifi Phone).

I am typing here now from the PC I normally use. The only change that I have made today is to take the Ooma device out of the network configuration in my home office. So, I am fairly certain that the Ooma device is the 'problem point'. It does have its own IP address, so maybe that single IP address is being blocked somehow now by AP.

One thing that might help here is understanding that my Ooma device gets the Internet traffic and signal first (before it goes to the router and broadcasts to the other devices on the network). This is done, so phone calls get priority (and get to the right place).

[Rakkso]

If you have been trying to access the site through one device in your network while having logged on to the site from another, your router will detect duplicated packets of information trying to access different devices in the network and consider this an intrusion therefore blocking the IP adress from the client. This happened to me and I thought it was the NSA or something, just reset your router and if it doenst work go into its main configuration interface in your prefered online navigator and clear the black list sites to remove the problem.

[Subtle Traveler]

I got it fixed. Thanks for the suggestion.

[Szaxx]

Yeah, I know this kind of stuff. I have a 2nd degree in Computer Information Systems. I separated each instance (and device) when I tested for where the problem was. That is how I figured out it was the Ooma device.

Does the Ooma have a different IP address? If so it can be at least checked on the Pulses database.

[Subtle Traveler]

Does the Ooma have a different IP address? If so it can be at least checked on the Pulses database.

Yes, I think so. The network gives a slightly differing IP to each device on the network. It is difficult to get this information, so I was planning on doing this work over the weekend.

I know the Ooma has a different MAC address. Does the AP software system block MAC addresses?

Thanks for your consideration and response, Szaxx! I will collect up my information and forward it to both you and Ryan privately. I will make sure to provide both the MAC address and IP address.

[Szaxx]

 You're welcome ST.

If the MAC address has anything to do with it it's outside of moderators jurisdiction lol. The IP may be a new addition if used by spammers, I'd think this unlikely though as you will already know, however we do have a few notorious IP adds that are covered by a blanket ban. It's this aspect I was chasing as it can be easily solved.

[Subtle Traveler]

You're welcome ST.

If the MAC address has anything to do with it it's outside of moderators jurisdiction lol. The IP may be a new addition if used by spammers, I'd think this unlikely though as you will already know, however we do have a few notorious IP adds that are covered by a blanket ban. It's this aspect I was chasing as it can be easily solved.

I fixed it. Everything is working now.

[Xanth]

Excellent! 

[Phildan1]

I could not load the Pulse for 2 weeks in a row, using Forefox, but other engines couldn't load it up too. So I'm now using hide.me and typing in the site name or link.

Started with a post reply, wrote it, wanted to send and I tried to do it with a dead-end page which indicated me a dozen times that Pulse is somehow "down". I see not the users are the problem or were like me. I can now only reach the Pulse with that hide.me proxy thing.

[PhaPriSpa]

We don't dare change anything about the software on this forum, else it crash and be lost to the nethers forever. 

The program mysqldumper allows web masters to backup their MySQL databases completely. Back when I had a vbulletin board/forum this was the only program that helped me make a complete and trusting backup of my forum database, which I made every couple of days, and served me in several occasions to restore the entire database when some technical problems presented (and even hacking via a vbulletin app that was vulnerable and that some playful hackers used to hack hundreds of forums back then). Via CPanel the backup is not entirely trustable and also in my case wasn't restorable, so mysqldumper is of great help for you not lose the most important thing in the forums which is the information in them.

http://www.mysqldumper.net/

The files of the forums, in your case Simple Machines Forum (SMF 1.1.21), you can compress the entire forum files using the CPanel software to administrate them (or WHM if you own the server), using the File Manager utility. This is also important to do every time an application is installed in the forum's software that adds files in the server in order to be able to restore also the entire set of files along with the MySQL database in case of server crash or hacking.

With both previous instructions you'll Never lose anything in the Astral Pulse Forums and the administrator and owner will be able to keep updated copies of the entire files and databases to restore it anytime. Of course, the files generated by mysqldumper and the ones compressed via CPanel > File Manager, should be downloaded into the administrator computer using ftp and also keeping them on an external hard disk drive in case also of computer crashing.

My best regards.


Pha Pri Spa (Phasing Primer Spanish/French)

[PhaPriSpa]

I could not load the Pulse for 2 weeks in a row, using Forefox, but other engines couldn't load it up too. So I'm now using hide.me and typing in the site name or link.

Started with a post reply, wrote it, wanted to send and I tried to do it with a dead-end page which indicated me a dozen times that Pulse is somehow "down". I see not the users are the problem or were like me. I can now only reach the Pulse with that hide.me proxy thing.

This is the problem I have with the forums not loading on FireFox. I described what happened in my case in the first post of this topic.

I've also tested the access to the forums with a mobile phone (Samsung Galaxy S3 with Android), using the navigators FireFox, Chrome, and Opera Mini, and the only one that allowed me to access the astralpulse forums was Opera Mini, in the case of FireFox and Chrome the navigator keeps trying without success to load anything at all, but with Opera Mini the access is immediate.

In the case of the desktop computer, I already described the problems in the first post of this topic; with Opera navigator, when the board becomes inaccessible, I have to delete the history of the navigator (cookies, and everything else), and even close the windows session (or restart the computer), to be able to access again the forums, as only deleting the history of the navigator for some reason is not enough, you have to close the windows session or restart the computer too.

My best regards.


Pha Pri Spa (Phasing Primer Spanish/French)

[PhaPriSpa]

When I was writing a Comment on Mike's YouTube Channel where he shared a list of Books, I've checked the FireFox navigator and again the Forums are available in it; if you or the server administrator have done something it worked; in past days I checked with the computer of a relative and in that FireFox the Forums were working with no problem (while at the same time in my FireFox not), so, something activated the Forums again in my FireFox.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lqo4TF0YvTs
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClctDkqcjIHSR30Br32DB6A/discussion

I'll be reporting in this Topic if the Forums are again Not accessible on my FireFox navigator.

My best regards.