Site down for maintenance?

[oopsorganist]

Hellooo
why is the ssg website so often "down for maintenance" these days? Or is it my security setting?

[High Peak]

It's not just you - I am often getting that message.

At the Summer School we were informed that one or more of our younger members were working on completely overhauling the site. Maybe it's due to that?

[Dom Perignon]

I'm not aware of any reason why this should be occurring any more often than usual. I log in several times each day to moderate, and haven't noticed any increase in downtime. Whatever the position is, it is nothing to do with the work that Michelle and Daniel are carrying out. They are working on a completely new website (which was previewed at the Winter Assembly) which is hosted entirely separately. I can say that they are doing a great job and in my view, it looks pretty good.

[Southern Comfort]

I would say that every few days there will be a message saying the board is not available, please try again in a few minutes. Normally it is available again pretty quickly. I wonder whether that means that the webmaster is doing something to it, or whether it's a server problem, or what.

That is a different case from being down for maintenance, which doesn't happen very often. Occasionally the server shuts down altogether (I suspect due to a power blip) and then the website goes with it.

In the week before the Winter Assembly, the present website was being moved to a new server, I was told, and the error message that came up (saying please try later) had the date 26 January 2010 ! That did not inspire confidence... When something like that happens, it "sticks" in my computer, and I have to purge the cache in my browser in order to resume normal service. Anyone having a similar problem might like to try that as a solution.

Yes, the new website being developed looks very good.

[Dom Perignon]

I hadn't responded to SC's post as I had thought that our Administrator would deal with it (it's way outside my knowledge base!), but I understand that Administrator has been quite ill recently. I don't think that any serious problems have occurred more recently, but if anything does happen please do post or pm me.

[alan29]

Off again for much of yesterday and this morning.

[Southern Comfort]

Off again for much of yesterday and this morning.

Often, as I said, it's only a few minutes, and I've always assumed this was because a Moderator was fiddling with it. This time it was much longer, as alan 29 noted.

The message doesn't say anything about maintenance, though. Simply says the board is temporarily unavailable.

[Dom Perignon]

We don't "fiddle" with it SC! In fact, the moderators need to have the site working properly in order to use the moderating tools.

I had the same problems as everyone else. I think it was a hosting problem. More news when I get to the bottom of it myself.

[Southern Comfort]

We don't "fiddle" with it SC! In fact, the moderators need to have the site working properly in order to use the moderating tools.

Oh, thanks for that info, Dom P. I sit corrected!

[JW]

Get well soon, Adminstrator.

[Dom Perignon]

The promised update.

I understand that we had a server running amok and cutting out what it decided to regard as 'irrelevant' (ie the Forum!). Quite how that happened is beyond me, but I'm told that it has now been sorted out.

[alan29]

Thanks for the update.