Site issues

[East Kent Saint]

Ipad hanging / error . Win10 straight in tonight although short hang in the day .

[East Kent Saint]

CloudFront attempted to establish a connection with the origin, but either the attempt failed or the origin closed the connection. We can't connect to the server for this app or website at this time. There might be too much traffic or a configuration error. Try again later, or contact the app or website owner.
If you provide content to customers through CloudFront, you can find steps to troubleshoot and help prevent this error by reviewing the CloudFront documentation.

Todays effort via Firefox . Wait a while then seems to connect OK.

[Turkish]

After a few days of being quite good it's gone back to how it was, probably get on 50% of the time and get the error message the rest of the time. THis has been ongoing for 49 days now so i make that 67p i've wasted on this place.

Edited 15 September, 2020 by Turkish

[Toadhall Saint]

Slow today (when I can get on).

[stknowle]

Taken me all day to get on this thread to complain it’s slowed right down again.

[Pilchards]

Can’t we go back to the old message board?

[Toadhall Saint]

Ok today so far

[Saint_Jonny]

I can never load "The Saints" thread listing, always get a CloudFront error. The only way I can view threads is to click (from the homepage) the link to whatever the most recent post is and jump from thread to thread from there. Given that this is the user experience I am amazed people are bothering to post here at all. 

[The Kraken]

Was mostly a waste of time trying to get on here during game time for me.

But then it was a waste of time paying any attention to the game. So, meh.

[Pilchards]

15 hours ago, Saint_Jonny said:

I can never load "The Saints" thread listing, always get a CloudFront error. The only way I can view threads is to click (from the homepage) the link to whatever the most recent post is and jump from thread to thread from there. Given that this is the user experience I am amazed people are bothering to post here at all. 

That’s how I get in but how do you jump from thread to thread?

i can only read whatever the last post was made like you.

Thats not good is it on trying to get on our message board?

[Wurzel]

Thought Steve may have cracked it but been really bad again the last few days.

Don't know which is more annoying, not being able to get on at all, or getting on but finding no new posts to read since last time you managed to as nobody else has been able to get on either.

 

[Saint Billy]

Cannot get in at all using the mobile, oddly, on the laptop it is really fast if I sign out but slow if I sign in which makes posting a bit of a lottery.

I'm hanging on in there in the hope that the problems get fixed but slowly giving up hope.

[spyinthesky]

Very poor again recently
Give up many a time which is a shame as this has been a decent site over the years
 

[Mr X]

I know every involved with the tech side of the site works hard and possibly volentary too but it really has become bad just says bad gateway half time and had been like this for some months now 

[RobM]

It is definitely getting progressively worse. It's fortunate for SaintsWeb that there is practically no competition, as putting this much effort into accessing a website would ordinarily lead to people giving up and going elsewhere.

 

That said, the SaintsFC Reddit sub has been a pretty good alternative of late.

[East Kent Saint]

Working well today ......

[whelk]

The fucking Lounge is actually working

[Weston Super Saint]

Hope I don't jinx it but whatever change was made yesterday seems to have fixed it - no issues at all right now!

[RonManager]

Same here, smooth as silk.

[stevegrant]

5 hours ago, Weston Super Saint said:

Hope I don't jinx it but whatever change was made yesterday seems to have fixed it - no issues at all right now!

Whisper it quietly, but I've done nothing to the setup for the last few weeks - it's just a weird fluctuation that I can't really explain. There's nothing that seems to actually cause the bad spells, it's not a spike in traffic or anything like that, there's no specific user action that I can see that's taking place, etc.

Summary: dunno.

[spyinthesky]

From my part access has been back to normal for past couple of days

 

Fingers crossed!!

[egg]

3 hours ago, stevegrant said:

Whisper it quietly, but I've done nothing to the setup for the last few weeks - it's just a weird fluctuation that I can't really explain. There's nothing that seems to actually cause the bad spells, it's not a spike in traffic or anything like that, there's no specific user action that I can see that's taking place, etc.

Summary: dunno.

Carry on doing nothing please - it's going brilliantly. 

[Delboy Dave]

Absolutely flying yesterday and today!

[Plastic]

finally finished indexing has it?

Good performance or not, transient problems are a worry because they are likely to return. I haven't been able to get onto any of the match threads during a game due to the timeouts.

[stevegrant]

1 hour ago, Plastic said:

finally finished indexing has it?

I think that took about 10 days, which is fairly ridiculous

1 hour ago, Plastic said:

Good performance or not, transient problems are a worry because they are likely to return. I haven't been able to get onto any of the match threads during a game due to the timeouts.

Yeah, I'm under no illusions here - it's entirely possible that the problems we've had will return just as quickly as they've vanished. I'm around 95% certain that the core problem is the database schema and how everything fits together, because the database uses the InnoDB engine but doesn't utilise some of the things InnoDB is especially good at (e.g. foreign keys linking tables together, etc), which makes the database quite inefficient. I suspect there are more writes/updates to the database on every post than should be necessary because of that inefficiency, which then causes a logjam and it spirals out of control. When I put the issue(s) to the Invision developers, they suggested ramping up the memory being allocated to the database, which frankly is a bullshit suggestion. A relatively simple forum structure shouldn't need multiple GBs of RAM being thrown at it in order to simply function at the most basic level. Basically they've engineered it badly and the "best" way to fix it from their perspective is to make the database so powerful that the inefficiencies aren't exposed, because otherwise they might have to admit they've fucked up somewhere along the line.

There's been a new version (4.5) available as of around 4 weeks or so ago, but they're also onto incremental version 4.5.3 already, so there's clearly still a load of issues which I'm going to wait for them to resolve before we upgrade here - frankly, I've no idea how long the upgrade process might take. Knowing how long it took to convert from the old software, and how long that re-indexing process takes, it could be a matter of days...

[spyinthesky]

Steve,
No idea what you are saying but logging on today has been simples!!

[rooney]

In Heaven today

[whelk]

All seems good now but maybe a number of posters have given up

[Manuel]

On 24/09/2020 at 16:04, rooney said:

In Heaven today

I didn't know you could post from there  What's the weather like?

[Manuel]

Been good for days now.  Is it just me though who can't find a search function anywhere?

[stevegrant]

37 minutes ago, Manuel said:

Been good for days now.  Is it just me though who can't find a search function anywhere?

I turned it off as I suspect that might have been having a negative impact on the database (bearing in mind that we have more than 2.6 million posts on here from as far back as 2008) - will have a play around with it over the next couple of weeks to see how much it actually gets used. It might be that it gets limited to subscribed users or something along those lines.

[Manuel]

Ah, no worries.  👍

Edited 27 September, 2020 by Manuel

[manzo]

On 24/09/2020 at 12:47, stevegrant said:

I'm around 95% certain that the core problem is the database schema and how everything fits together, because the database uses the InnoDB engine but doesn't utilise some of the things InnoDB is especially good at (e.g. foreign keys linking tables together, etc), which makes the database quite inefficient.

Dev 1: "What are relational databases good at then?"

Dev 2: "Er, relational data?"

Dev 3: "Shall we set up the relations in the database then?"

Dev 1: "Nah, f*ck it, can't be arsed."

And by dev, I mean cowboy... 😒

 

[bpsaint]

Getting on has been so easy lately I forgot there were even issues not so long ago.

Reckon you’ve cracked it Steve or are you still looking for the root cause?

[stevegrant]

15 hours ago, bpsaint said:

Reckon you’ve cracked it Steve or are you still looking for the root cause?

I'm not actively looking, I've not really got time at the moment anyway, but while it seems stable it seems silly to potentially poke the bear

I do wonder whether that post re-indexing process might have helped, but it doesn't appear to be an exact science, frustratingly.

[Wurzel]

31 minutes ago, stevegrant said:

I'm not actively looking, I've not really got time at the moment anyway, but while it seems stable it seems silly to potentially poke the bear

I do wonder whether that post re-indexing process might have helped, but it doesn't appear to be an exact science, frustratingly.

Is it tempting fate to suggest it's time to lock this thread?

[Ohio Saint]

6 hours ago, Wurzel said:

Is it tempting fate to suggest it's time to lock this thread?

Not before I thank Steve for his hard work and perseverance while under fire from some very impatient numpties. 

 

P.S. a bit embarrassing this, but I won't be handing over my fiver until the site accepts PayPal.  Its just the way I prefer to do some things.

 

[It's There]

Yes,cheers Steve,for this forum and for your contribution on the TotalSainnts podcast. 

 

[hypochondriac]

Going so well and then I'm getting errors in the lounge again sadly. 

[Lighthouse]

4 minutes ago, hypochondriac said:

Going so well and then I'm getting errors in the lounge again sadly. 

It’s probably for the best, given the latest topic in there.

[Whitey Grandad]

1 hour ago, hypochondriac said:

Going so well and then I'm getting errors in the lounge again sadly. 

Me too. I feel for Steve and his colleagues. They must be tearing their hair out.

[M271]

Playing up today. Slow at times and had my first 502 for some weeks.

[Toadhall Saint]

1 hour ago, M271 said:

Playing up today. Slow at times and had my first 502 for some weeks.

Ditto ☹️

[skintsaint]

Yip its had a mare the last hour or so.

[Whitey Grandad]

Yep.  It’s not been too great today. Home page not too bad, lounge almost inaccessible but a search for unread posts is the worst.

[SaintBobby]

yep, glitchy today again

[stknowle]

The return of the bad gateway. Hopefully temporary but a shame for this to return after a few virus free weeks.

[M271]

On 03/10/2020 at 13:44, Wurzel said:

Is it tempting fate to suggest it's time to lock this thread?

 

Yes it is!

[stevegrant]

You may have noticed there's been a few changes - I've run the upgrade to the latest version. Frustratingly, it seems as though it's knocked out a few settings, particularly with the colour scheme, so I'll be gradually working on bits and pieces when I spot them. If there are any major bugs, please let me know.

[Noodles34]

a bit slow getting on today