Is this the worst functioning site ever?

[shunter]

Constantly having to re-log on, non-stop error messages, search function works only 50% of the time - do you ever go on sites that work worse than this one?abd it's impossible to register as well.

[muthafunky]

Every time I try to log in to my cable tv account I get caught in an infinite redirect loop. That's worse than here. I also pay them about $150 per month.

[Bill Barilko]

Constantly having to re-log on, non-stop error messages, search function works only 50% of the time - do you ever go on sites that work worse than this one?abd it's impossible to register as well.

Personally it's been better of late of course I live in a modern country with high speed internet not Dear Olde Englandstan.

[temporaryhandle2]

Possibly the rudest and most graceless OP ever.

Shunter why don't you pay for the site. I am sure you can do much better.

[erkat]

Constantly having to re-log on, non-stop error messages, search function works only 50% of the time - do you ever go on sites that work worse than this one?abd it's impossible to register as well.

Yes. The australian government site. I get caught up in an endless loop saying I have to register online for medicare stuff -when I go to do it, I am told I am already registered. Go to log in, get told I need to register. Means I can't do anything online. Ringing to try to troubleshoot this leads to the response of 'oh yes, this is a common fault' and no suggestions on fixing it at all.

[mad hatter]

I think we get great value for money.

[erkat]

And basically what Temp said - this isn't a site we have to use or that has to be provided for us.

[VinnyD]

The site that Shunter has set up for us to use works much better, if I am not mistaken.

[NorthAmerican]

Just for kicks, try the web site of the New York Times.

I've had the newspaper delivered for about 20 years, and they send e-mail to me offering me various subscriber benefits. A month ago, they said I could name two people to receive the digital version free for 8 weeks. I put in my brother's e-mail address as one of the recipients, then pressed Submit and received an immediate acknowledgment.

My brother received no notice of any kind over the next couple of weeks, so I went back to the e-mail I'd received from the Times making me that offer and sent a reply explaining the situation. I received an e-mail saying they had no record of me as a subscriber. Worse, the next time I tried to log on to their web site I was rejected.

That paper is not cheap, but they seem to have incompetents on their on-line staff.

Edit: This posted fine, without any error message.

[shunter]

Every time I try to log in to my cable tv account I get caught in an infinite redirect loop. That's worse than here. I also pay them about $150 per month.

That must drive you nuts.

Why doesn't this site work? Isn't it off the peg service - you pay and they don't deliver? What's that about?

[shunter]

Possibly the rudest and most graceless OP ever.

Shunter why don't you pay for the site. I am sure you can do much better.

Oh fuck off twatface. Who provides the board? They get paid.

[muthafunky]

Why doesn't this site work? Isn't it off the peg service - you pay and they don't deliver? What's that about?

None of the things you mentioned are an issue with the webhost, they are issues/ features of the board software we use (which is free).

The login thing seems like a bug but is a feature - if you log in too many times from different ips in a certain time period it logs you out. It's a security feature, the assumption being that you can't/ shouldn't be logging in from multiple different ip addresses at the same time unless your account has been compromised and someone else is logging in as you. This is probably a feature that will get changed (it may already be changed in the current version) with the rise of people using so many different devices (which often have different ip addresses) to access the internet.

The 500 error is probably some corrupt data in the database, at least it was last time this behavior manifested. I'll have to connect to the server, turn on extra logging, and troubleshoot it though. Just a matter of putting aside the time to do it.

Searches usually time out the first time you execute them. These free bulletin boards often seem to have problems searching large amounts of data, probably because the queries are poorly written and not necessarily optimized for a large dataset. Since we have a decent sized forum (2 million posts) and run on a relatively small server the searches take quite a long time to execute. The results are cached for a period of time though, which is why if you re-execute the search a minute later it usually returns very quickly.

[5waldos]

Don't often use search but generally have no trouble with this site. Ok yes there are the times when we all get the error message and have to fiddle around but absolutely for sure it is better than anything I could come up with. And even the error messages just make it feel personal (sort of) and like we are all in this together.

[Bill Barilko]

One thing about older version of forum software like this-at least 'known issues' are just that.

One popular forum here in BC upgraded to the Newest/Bestest/Greatest version and had nothing but problems-readership crashed hundreds of posters walked over the idiotic 'features' that were useless.

It turns out there's SFA for support for the version almost no one else has gone for it and the owners/mods of the site have been driven right 'round the bend they're well into their third month of dysfunction with nothing but promises of more of same on the horizon.