FYI - People are getting a server 500 error when they try and make a new account on the forums. I've informed Dan and he is looking into it. If you already have an account this should not have any affect on you, I'm posting for new people trying to make an account.

All better!

The anti-spam mod we use checks a bunch of spam services, and apparently one of them went offline. The code was just hanging up waiting for that site to reply, got no reply, and then crashed on a timeout. For some reason, the PHP wasn't written to handle that sort of error, so it ended with IIS just shrugging its shoulders and giving a 500.

Anyway, I yanked out the section of code that checks that particular site, and everything seems to be working normally again. All of the other spam services are firing normally, so hopefully our spam influx will still be kept under control.

The "view active topics" link does not seem to be working like it used to. Last night it didn't list any and today it only lists a few, and some are very old.

It's driving me buggy, because that's what I use to keep abreast of ... active topics! I rarely ever search through all of the sub-forums looking for active threads ... I just click on the "View Active Topics" link and scan through what threads are being currently discussed. Anyway, when this doesn't work it makes me sad.

I'm wondering if something went wonky with the database that holds the posts? Does an index need to be rebuilt? I noticed yesterday that no searches were working, not just this one ... and that sounds like the DB isn't being queried correctly or something happened to it and it's not returning valid results.

If you don't fix this, how will I do an 'ego search' for my own username and note down everyone who's discussing me? How?


[seriously, just trying to help by pointing out symptoms you may have missed. good luck.]



[i keep finding stupid typo's and wrongly inserted words. This has got to be my worst post ever.]

Also the post counts seem a little weird. My profile says my post count is 518, but I know it's closer to 800ish. Some people with posts have a post count of zero!

The post count issue was caused by me trying to fix Runester's issues.

Just to provide a quick update, the post counts should be back to normal. I'm still looking into the active topic and search issues. I'll post again when I know more.

Something is seriously wrong here guys. The guy who transfers Chris's posts from chisel and stone to computer is asking for a raise. I say we call his bluff.


Oh and the post count is funky, I've seen big posters that are suddenly listed as "Spambot?"

Jeff, do you see any such users right now? I know the post count went weird for a few minutes, but it should be correct now. If you see someone that's still off, give me a name so I can use them as a test case to figure out what's going wrong.

In other news, I'm rebuilding the search index right now. It's a long process, so it may not be ready for a bit. Once that's done I'll look into the active topics issue.

All looks back to normal now. That was rather weird; like going back in time for a while.

This is my timey-wimey detector. It goes ding when there's stuff.

OK, good. A few people may have lost a couple of posts, because the counter reset would remove credit you had for posting in threads that ended up deleted. But I'm glad to hear things are otherwise back to normal.

I may have to interrupt the search indexing to relocate my computer, but I'll be sure to start it up again when I reach my destination. Should be finished at some point today. In the meantime, forum searches may not return any results.