A further update: As indicated in my comment #7, this problem was caused by the addition of some text to one of the site’s configuration files last week in an attempt to mitigate the response time issue. It should have been resolved yesterday when the additional text was removed from the file but that wasn’t so. Yesterday evening I suggested to the hosting company that perhaps they had edited the file on the old server, rather than the current one, and that proved to be the case. The correct file was edited late yesterday evening and all should now have returned to normal, though you may need one final manual refresh before it does so.
Update: I spoke too soon! This issue has not been resolved. I have notified the hosting company accordingly and am awaiting a reply. My apologies for the continued inconvenience, I am doing all I can to get normal service restored as soon as possible.
You will be pleased to hear that the cause of this issue has been found and rectified. The site should now be back to normal. My apologies for the inconvenience caused during the last week. The migration to a new server appears to have been a success (eventually!) as I have not noticed any deterioration in response times, even during peak periods. However, if you do find anything else that is amiss please let me know.
That said, this message didn’t turn up on the home page on either Edge or Chrome until I did a refresh.
Although it did turn up on Firefox on the other computer.
Hi Dormouse
Thanks for the feedback. I have only been able to check using IE11 on my reserve laptop. Earlier this morning it was displaying a home page several days old (it doesn’t get used very often!). I didn’t do a manual refresh so that I would be check again after any remedial action had been taken. When I revisited the site, having been told that the problem had been resolved, IE11 immediately displayed the current page as shown on my desktop machine.
It may be that you need to clear the cache/history in Edge and Chrome in order to fully return to normal.
I had to do a refresh in Firefox to get the up to date home page. But having seen the comments above I’ve cleared the cache for all of today, exited 15sq and come back in and this time the page came up correctly. I’m going to exit again now and come back later when, hopefully, the Indy blog will be up so I’ll see what happens then.
What I did find with Firefox was that after I posted that update at 14:46, when I came back to the home page a few minutes ago the home page was still showing only two comments on this thread. Refreshing put it up to four. And coming here, comments 3 and 4 were not visible until I refreshed again.
Which leads me to suspect there might be a timing question. I rarely look at fifteensquared on this computer, the desktop, 8.1, Firefox, and if you look at fifteensquared only once a day (or some other long interval of time) then it gets a fresh copy, otherwise it gets a cached copy.
As an experiment, I’ve cleared the cache in Firefox, restarted it, and come here to post this. I’m now going to close Firefox again, then open the home page and see what the comment count is for this thread.
Back again. The comment count of the home page was four. Refresh put it to five. So I think the problem is still occurring on two computers with three different browsers.
Thanks for the feedback allan_c and for the updates Dormouse.
Between your pc and the server on which the site is hosted is a service called CloudFlare which I use to reduce the amount of spam the site receives. It also caches pages to reduce the server bandwidth. I will clear the cache and we can see tomorrow whether this has made any difference.
The manual refresh problem was caused by the addition of a couple of short lines of text to one of the site’s configuration files last Monday evening in an attempt to mitigate the excessive response time issue. This text has now been removed so the site should be functioning just as it did prior to last Monday evening (though without the long page loading times).
Just come back on again and had to refresh both the home page and this thread. I’ll see what happens tomorrow.
I use a Kindle and I need the refresh button to get the current blog, just as I have since the fault began!
Many thanks for continued work on this, Gaufrid – must be time-consuming and annoying so keep up the good work (and yer chin) up. Fingers crossed for the morrow.
Home page still not updating for me either – thanks for trying Gaufrid
I don’t want to say this too loud for fear of jinxing things, but this morning the home page at least seems to be updating on this computer with both Edge and Chrome. I made a list of the comment counts for the first four messages on the home and then compared them when I looked again about half an hour later, and they’d gone up.
Seems to be working OK for me via Firefox/Windows 10.
I think it may be working now – I have seen a couple of pages refresh automatically this morning.
Certainly seems to be working now for me all morning. Final test, I wanted to make sure that shtting the browser down and restarting it wasn’t clearing the cache, forcing a refresh. I kept the browser open after writing down the comment counts on the front page, went to another site, returned to the home page about 20 minutes later and the counts had changed.
It all looks ok now from where I sit. Your intervention evidently counted! Thanks for all your efforts.
I still have to refresh after opening the page to get today’s puzzles. Using Chrome browser on Android tablet – Samsung Galaxy Tab A 10.1. I had to refresh this page too to see the comments and post mine.
After my operating system was updated to macOs Sierra 10.12.3 with Safari 10.0.3, some of the pictures that help to identify the bloggers on the home page ceased to appear. An unexpected bonus from the recent update is that they are back. Thanks!
All working well for me at the mo – cheers for all work done behind the scenes.