AskWoody site is going up and down

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It looks like demand for the “Windows Update in Win7 doesn’t work” posts has gone through the roof. We’ve redlined the server. Mind you, we have a ver
[See the full post at: AskWoody site is going up and down]

5 users thanked author for this post.

Elly, Noel Carboni, dgreen, JDeC, AJNorth

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I’m just glad Woody isn’t releasing patches. This site is less stable than any product MS has released.

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Well “anonymous” . . . let’s see what YOU got!

Win 7 SP1 Home Premium 64-bit; Office 2010; Group B (SaS); Former 'Tech Weenie'

4 users thanked author for this post.

HiFlyer, dgreen, BobbyB, JDeC

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Sadly, you’re right.

In the past couple of hours we switched over to a new server. Or so I’m told. Let’s see what happens…

4 users thanked author for this post.

JDeC, Elly, HiFlyer, dgreen

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Well, I’ve given some thought to your traffic/bandwidth issue, and I’m pretty sure I’ve got a rock-solid solution for you Woody.

It seems obvious to me that all of the traffic to your website is simply a result of you and the MVPs providing valuable information on issues of great interest to lots of folks, so…

To solve your traffic problem, just change the focus of our site to something, errr, less compelling. For example: “Woody’s Daily Haiku Meditation on the Flora and Fauna in his Front Yard.”

Problem solved! 😉

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIRJMESl4U8

6 users thanked author for this post.

Lori, SueW, Capella, JDeC, Elly, HiFlyer

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Maybe you can try cloudflare? it’s a good way of offloading traffic on to a CDN.

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I don’t think we’ve had a DoS attack in the past week or two. Recent problems all appear to be volume related.

At least, I hope that’s what it is….

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Cloudflare helps lighten the load a lot by caching a bunch of the content on their CDN. Worth a go if you get hammered at certain times.

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The above anonymous (at 4 am) is me dgreen.  I forgot to log back in to make the post.  (rollseyes)

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The past few days I have had a terrible time logging on and manuevering the sight.
This morning, all went very smoothly.
If I haven’t said it before,
thank you for all you do.

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You’re welcome.

I’m in “counting chickens before they hatch” mode. We’ve had some more problems in the past couple of hours – but they should be abating.

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I agree @NoLoki, that’s been my experience too these past few days. Sometimes I can’t access the site at all, Chrome just sits there “waiting”, other times the home page appears quickly but clicking on the comments for any article leads to a long delay or no progress at all. It’s been pretty unresponsive generally, probably for around a week or so I think.

I do, of course, sympathise with Woody and the team  over the problems that have afflicted the site for a while now, and I very much appreciate all the effort being put into resolving things. I’m not technically savvy but if I can help in any way such as providing feedback like this on any specific aspects then I’d be more than happy to do so. Meanwhile, I’ll organise another donation in the next day or two as it clearly is costing Woody a lot to sort this sort of thing and I encourage everyone who derives benefit from the site to do the same!

1 user thanked author for this post.

PKCano

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For what it’s worth, Woody, your site has been available every time I’ve wanted to read or post something, so it’s not THAT bad.

I’m always a bit sad to hear that the site is causing you trouble mechanically – beyond the trouble of gathering and making sense of the actual content information, which you do adeptly… The headaches are an intangible part of the work that is hard to quantify when deciding whether you want to run a popular web site. Silver lining-wise, I hope all the site visits are bringing your ad revenue up above “barely breaking even” at least for the holiday season.

By the way the only minor formatting thing I miss lately, functionality wise, is an easy ability to click my name (missing in the current implementation from the top-right) then follow the “Replies Created” link to my latest posts to see whether folks have responded. It’s not at all difficult to do using a bookmark or shortcut, though, so not a big deal.

Thanks for all your hard work making such an information-rich, interesting corner of the web available, Woody.

-Noel

6 users thanked author for this post.

Lori, SueW, JDeC, Elly, woody, AlexEiffel

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Great idea from Noel. I second.

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I have had problems logging in foe several weeks.  I keep getting the message that I am already logged in and my posts end up being posted as anonymous.  Seems it is an off and on thing, though ot looks as though it worked properly today. I do not check the box to keep me logged in.  Gremlins!

The website has been getting stuck on certain days and does not refresh – I see that other members have reported this.  For a few days it was refreshing (after the shutdown weekend), but it is now back to getting stuck again. Clearing local storage in my browser for your website does not always work.  This works  though (for anyone who is interested)…

“Empty Cache and Hard Reload” using dev tools

I had to do it today as the site was stuck on Dec 3.

1 user thanked author for this post.

woody

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I picked a terrible day to finally tackle all the windows updates I’ve been putting off!

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BTW, when I click on Login, Firefox asks whether I want to open the file with _____ or Save File.  It does not take me to a Login.  If I click on Open With, I appears to download something.

wdburt1

 

1 user thanked author for this post.

woody

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I can log in, but my normal bookmark https://www.askwoody.com/ was doing that to me. I had a bookmark for https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/2000003-ongoing-list-of-group-b-monthly-updates-for-win7-and-8-1/ which let me in, then I navigated to this page.

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I just heard back from the developers. It was a caching problem, which should be fixed.

Fingers crossed.

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Now it lets me log in, but tells me I am already logged in.  That screen does not present any choices.  So I click on Home to get back to where I started.

Looks like the fun and games are not over and include more than just a problem related to too much demand.

wdburt1

 

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