For the past week of so I have been getting more and more of this:

Not Found
The requested URL /forums/ubbthreads.php/ubb/activetopics/range/1/type/p was not found on this server.

I get this both from home (DSL) as well as at the University. If other people have issues too then we should notify the webmaster

Also, sometimes my silly penguins are replaced by a question mark, while others were ok including animated gifs. (Which is quite strange but not really important...)
M

Markus - I've been getting the same thing too and thought maybe it was an issue with my computer. I actually rebooted my home workstation this morning to see if it would help....It started a week or so ago, and seems to be very random. (unless it's a Georgia only problem )

Unless you are also using a Mac OSX 10.4/Intel/Safari it seems to be at the server side or a general network bandwidth issue...
(This better not be a GA problem!!)
M

Happened to me for the first time in a long time this morning. I figured it was because I am testing the new BETA 4 version of Firefox.

Guess I am going to have to turn on the logger....

It's happening to me also both from home and the office. I also sometimes get threads not found when I click on them. Comes and goes and can happen several times a day.

Take care,
Eileen

Mark,

You're probably consuming to much memory by constantly pushing that poor penguin in the water. Just my opinion.

Hey,
I always figured I am the one going diving....
Size wise it (the file) is actually quite small. But if mine is bigger so be it.

M

Same problem here...started about a week ago. If I log off and then log back in again, the problem goes away. However, this shouldn't be this way and I'm sure that Chester will look into it.

Jerry

This is a database. It is possible that the database is becoming corrupted and we will have to rebuild it. I was also having these same problems but also thought it was my computer. Glad you guys brought this up. My solution was to quit by browser (Safari or Firefox) and start a new log in. Everything would work fine. That made me think it was unique to me. But now seeing this post it is something more and we better catch it before it gets completely out of hand. Forwarding this thread to Chester tonight.

Please everyone post what browser and operating system you are using if you are having problems. I want to eliminate problems at our ISP server as well.

OSX 10.4.11 (MacBook, Intel core 2 Duo), Safari 3.0.4
connecting via airport -DSL, or airport-University ethernet backbone

...you do not have to log out (at least I do not have to). Just wait and hit the refresh button a few times, it should recover eventually. Once in a while the page format is screwed up when you do that but will recover as well.

Same problem lately
I thought that perhaps the site was being updated but it seemed too random

Vista IE7

Hope Chester can shoo this bug out the windows before it infests the apples
Malka

I usually use my home computer with Vista/Firefox and have also been experiencing the same issue.

Same problem for about a week. I use Internet Explorer 7 and Windows XP Home Edition Version 2002 Service Pack 2.

Ive had the same issues and use Windows XP.

I have the problem on both Firefox as well as Internet Explorer. Whenever one acts up I just log in on the other but I have found it usually resolves itself within a minute or 2 so most of the time I just wait especially if I have just finished a reply and don't want to loose it.

I just had it happen again. I am using IE V6.02 and Windors XP Home edition on my home computer

Error code :HTTP 404 - File not found
Internet Explorer

Winders XP SP3 Firefox 2.0.0.12, Firefox 3 BETA 4, M$ IE 8.0.6001

Getting 401 and 404 errors intermittently and I saw the first 405 error this morning. I've seen this before in multiple machine environments where the webserver couldn't or wouldn't talk to the database (or DNS?) machine.

I'll keep watching


Kevin

Me too, Vista IE7 or alternatively AOL browser.

Chester says that it is not the database, but the connectivity to our servers in Canada. He is going to load an update that is available for the board software tonight or tomorrow night, but he does not think that will make any difference. I think that because all I have to do is quit my browser connection and sign back in and things fix themselves, that tells him that this is not related to the board itself but to the connections to the server. Since we are all in different geographic locations it has to be somewhere in the backbone near Toronto.

Brian,
I had similar trouble for a couple of days. I'm running XP pro and use IE explorer to access the internet. I originally thought it was my computer and after I discovered it was not I contacted my ISP. They told me that it was a band width issue.
Long story short, from Toronto ISP's purchase band width from major service providers (the ones who own the cables). If you are with a very small ISP who has limited band width you will likely have slow downloads and other problems.
Fortunatly my ISP has upgraded their band width and all has been fine.
I hope this is a little useful to some.
Cheers,
Mike

We are hosted by the largest ISP in Canada. But for sure this is on their end.

It's still happening even when I'm already in the board. A second ago I couldn't get to three threads on Intro board, then clicked on forum list and couldn't get to that. Tried agin and it worked.

I'm Windows XP and Explorer in office.

Take care,
Eileen

I have talked to our ISP. They are going to try and move us to a server that has less demand on it so this does not happen. This is a problem with the demand on the server being higher than what it can deal with. So that is why if you hit reload, reload, reload, or leave the site and come back to it, the page will eventually display. The other giveaway is that peak hours create the most problems. This is demand issues not a problem with your machines or the web site itself. They probably will not be able to address this till monday, please bear with us. The truth of the matter is that OCF needs to be on a dedicated server by ourselves wince we use so much bandwidth with the millions of hits the site gets, but we do not have the money to pay for this.

I'm glad to see this is being addressed. Thank you Brian and Chester and server people. At first I thought this was a problem with my computer system at work (which has been having some issues) but it has continued and I just noticed this thread about it...

Nelie

Hi,

Haven't been on the website for about a week and when I went into introductions got the same URL/ubbthreads message. I use Mozilla Firefox. I closed out and reopened and so far haven't had any problems (last 5 minutes).

Nancy

I think this is going to only be resolved by a move from our current ISP to our own dedicated servers. The traffic to the OCF site is more than we would have ever expected. We originally decided on the big firm in Canada because we got to pay in Canadian dollars which saved the foundation some money. Next month we will be moving to dedicated servers in California. At least one day the site will be down, but we will let everyone know in advance. This is expensive but there is no simple fix. I apologize for the inconvenience this is causing people. It is also affecting other parts of the site. Even our home page sometimes will load with just the links and HTML with no graphics. This is definitely a factor of the server being to busy to "serve up" the graphics.

We will correct this soon. Know that you just have to hit "reload" the page several times, or leave the site and come back and it will self correct. The NYU walk will raise $ for OCF mid next month, and we will make the investment in this very important aspect of OCF from those funds.

Thanks Brian,
and yes the site is still very much useable, despite the minor inconvenience. The main point is that people know where the problem is ... otherwise once might get the idea reloading Os'es and have "fun with that".
Perhaps if this continues for some time Chester could put up a login message (motd or whatever that is called these days) informing people that there are issues with the site and that repeated reloads may be required.
Where does the traffic come from? Certainly not from the board, there are at most 10-12 concurrent users.
This would lead the main site? Is the traffic due to excessive "false" hits?

M
currently trivialities is all I have to worry about

Over 15 million hits per month, mostly on the main site. We use Google Analytics to monitor visitors, page views, and more. People that come here usually mean to come here. When you are the number one find in Goggle for oral cancer... it refers a lot of people to us. Combine that with the tens of thousands of other sites that link back directly to us (from the NCI and CDC to ACS and private sites) the RSS feed subscribers, and other referrers like MSN, AOL, Yahoo, and you can see how we get so much traffic. You cannot see it on your board, but even our message board is spidered all the time by the major companies mentioned before. As I am typing this there are 6 spiders on the message boards cataloging what they find.

Brian

I am sure that you have done your homework, but from someone who is in the business, might I suggest Layered Technologies.

http://www.layeredtech.com/

I am in the process of switching all of my servers over to their operation. The hosting business is not as straight forward as it was when I started back in '95.

Please note that one thing that is eating a surprising amount of bandwidth are all the animated gifs that we use as avatars. Until we get the issues with the load on the site dealt with, the avatars are going to be turned off. Just posting this so you all know we have done this intentionally and it is not an error in the board.

It seems to be working much better now that the Avatars are off.

I for one would rather have the board run fast and get no error messages than go through what I have been doing just to read posts.

Thanks, Brian.

Jerry

Avatars, animated and unanimated are still on for my screen?

On a laptop running Macintosh OSX v.10.4.11 -- below the names of the people who had avatars, there are now no avatars at all in Firefox (v.2.0.0.12) and little blue "question-mark" boxes in place of the avatars in Safari (v.3.0.4) -- so on this page of posts there are "question-mark" placeholders for avatars for Brian, Jerry and David. But just in Safari.

And the message about pages not loading are still showing up in Safari, but only intermittently. No problems in Firefox.

Hope this info helps.

-- Leslie

Now I am at work, using Internet Explorer v.6.0.2900.2180 on a computer running Windows XP (Service Pack 2) -- Brian's (drops of water moving on a window) and David's (fox) avatars are showing up, but Jerry's is not (just a box with only a small red X in it).

-- Leslie

I still see the avatars...Vista, IE v.7.

You are looking at things which your computer has cached. Just dump your browser cache and look at the pages again or reload them again without the purge. They will go away. The server is not "serving them up" anymore that is for sure.

I emptied the cache in Safari, closed the browser, reopened it and called this page back up. There are still the little blue question-mark boxes in place of people's avatars, as if the page is trying to load a picture but can't find it. They remain even after the page is reloaded.

Firefox loads the page with no indication that any avatars ever existed, which is presumably what you want to be happening.

And when I hit the button to submit this posting (using Safari), I got this message: The requested URL /forums/ubbthreads.php was not found on this server. The message was posted, though.

Just thought you should know...

-- Leslie

[quote=Leslie B]I emptied the cache in Safari, closed the browser, reopened it and called this page back up. There are still the little blue question-mark boxes in place of people's avatars, as if the page is trying to load a picture but can't find it. They remain even after the page is reloaded.[/quote]

This is ummm "normal". Safari is rendering the page a little differently than IE or FF. This is the kind of stuff that drives web developers nutts.

LOL, now you know I should have remembered the cache...of course, that's why I see the avatars. DUH! And I can't even blame it on drugs.

Thanks, Kevin. Will ignore the blue boxes (and start using Firefox more regularly).

-- Leslie