Story File Out

[sr71plt]

The story file has been out all evening again in my view--again. Another run of days of this. I'm surprised no one else has remarked on it (maybe it's not happening to everyone).

 

[johneb87]

The story file has been out all evening again in my view--again. Another run of days of this. I'm surprised no one else has remarked on it (maybe it's not happening to everyone).

Getting a blank page when viewing the story section too?

 

[slyc_willie]

Getting a blank page when viewing the story section too?

I know I am.

 

[Darkniciad]

I've noticed that if I switch browsers, and sometimes if I click in from other links, and sometimes if I refresh the living fuck out of it, I can get the story pages to load when they start pulling this.

It's really strange.

It was just coming up blank, and several refreshes didn't work, but after coming here and making the first paragraph of this post, I switched back to that window, refreshed, and the main category page came straight up. Clicking through into categories worked without issue, and continues to as I switch back and forth between typing this and blinking between different categories.

 

[sr71plt]

A lot of evenings of trying to read stories on the site and only getting a blank page is going to lead to reader abandonment. I stopped reading on a site for this reason.

 

[johneb87]

I know I am.

Got this yesterday, cleared my browser cache and it worked again. But then it broke again today. Full cookie, cache, offline file clear in my browser and it worked. We getting bad cache files from Lit?

Oh, and running Firefox 21.0. It also worked when viewed in an alternate browser.

 

[slyc_willie]

Just from inspecting the element on the page, I'm seeing some strange coding. My assumption is that Manu is doing some preventive maintenance, as some of the code seems to refer to hotlinking.

 

[sr71plt]

Just from inspecting the element on the page, I'm seeing some strange coding. My assumption is that Manu is doing some preventive maintenance, as some of the code seems to refer to hotlinking.

Laurel told me recently that they are about to roll out a big upgrade. I hope that's what this is serving.

 

[Darkniciad]

There doesn't seem to be any specific browser that works better than others. I've tried in the three main ones.

Wonder if they're serving through some kind of Cloudflare-type service? That could account for a lot of strangeness with the way the public content displays now, such as edits not appearing on the public side until around 24 hours after they're applied.

If so, they need to have a word with those people. Those things are supposed to secure and speed up websites, not frikkin' break them

 

[slyc_willie]

Laurel told me recently that they are about to roll out a big upgrade. I hope that's what this is serving.

If they are, then it would require a lot of pre-rollout work to set the drivers and all that, so periodic shutdowns of part of the site would be expected.

There doesn't seem to be any specific browser that works better than others. I've tried in the three main ones.

Wonder if they're serving through some kind of Cloudflare-type service? That could account for a lot of strangeness with the way the public content displays now, such as edits not appearing on the public side until around 24 hours after they're applied.

If so, they need to have a word with those people. Those things are supposed to secure and speed up websites, not frikkin' break them

If Lit is now running off a cloud (which would make sense; Rackspace, for example, has a lot of opportunities and assistance for online businesses needing to store large amounts of data), this could be a transitional period between server-based and cloud-based hosting.

 

[sr71plt]

I don't suppose I should repeat everything Laurel sent me in a PM on a 6-month implementation of 2 years worth of upgrade programming, but this much seemed meant to be shared:

"If you or anyone else sees something amiss on the story side, please either let me know or use the REPORT BUG things on the page (those notes go directly to our programmer)."

Of course if the problem is that there's no page, it will be hard to hit the "Report Bug" buttons there.

I'm just concerned about the negative effect that outages during evening hours in the States over a prolonged period will have on readership (and story views/voting).

 

[slyc_willie]

I don't suppose I should repeat everything Laurel sent me in a PM on a 6-month implementation of 2 years worth of upgrade programming, but this much seemed meant to be shared:

"If you or anyone else sees something amiss on the story side, please either let me know or use the REPORT BUG things on the page (those notes go directly to our programmer)."

Of course if the problem is that there's no page, it will be hard to hit the "Report Bug" buttons there.

I'm just concerned about the negative effect that outages during evening hours in the States over a prolonged period will have on readership (and story views/voting).

I'll be sure to keep an eye out, then.

I'm getting the feeling Laurel and Manu are gearing Lit up for some kind of major overhaul (which, if it's to place Lit on a cloud, that would qualify). Obviously, that's only a guess on my part. But there's certainly something going on with the website.

 

[LadyVer]

I got a blank page earlier as well so went in via another link.

 

[Saxon_Hart]

It's been an adventure all afternoon.

 

[glynndah]

I just checked. It's fine at the moment.

 

[sr71plt]

The white outs of the story file seemed to have started earlier than usual today (Sunday). Very annoying.

 

[laptopwriter]

I thought it was just me

It's been out almost all day! I feel sorry for those authors whose stories ran today. I know my story that ran yesterday showed no readers today at all. All the stats are exactly as they were early this morning.

 

[Darkniciad]

I've had a few hits and about three votes on mine that came out Thursday, but they may be linking in from my webpage, signature here, Twitter, or Facebook. Most of the time, the individual stories are working, though the indexes to reach them whitespace as often as not.

 

[sr71plt]

Casual readers will just start to think the Web site is unreliable.

 

[RejectReality]

Casual readers will just start to think the Web site is unreliable.

If you can't reach the stories without jumping through hoops, it is unreliable.

Whoops. Second time today I've forgot which browser window I had open LOL Oh well. Guess I may as well sig-file this pen name, now that I've accidentally posted with it.

 

[nakdsub]

Yeah, it's really bad

And it's not just the index; sometimes I can get the index but it goes blank when you click on a category; other times when you click on an individual story...it's all over the map. It's extremely frustrating.

 

[LadyVer]

It's really bad today. I had to settle for a medieval fairy story I found via a member's fave list, and it's 25 pages. Fortunately it's well written and interesting.

 

[laptopwriter]

Here we go again

It's been pretty good all day until now, at 5:45 Chicago time it's down. I suppose it will stay that way for the rest of the night again.

 

[Saxon_Hart]

I hit refresh a few times and it finally loaded.

 

[lovecraft68]

I noticed sometimes when this happens, if you click on an author from your favs you can get to their page and get on a story that way and then if you click on the category under that author name you can go to that list.

But that doesn't work all the time.

I "allow" myself to read a story a night to relax my mind and get me in the mood to write. So if its down at that point I rarely come back and check again, I just move along.

As Pilot says above, I'm sure the readers wander off and if it keep happening they are not going to wander back.

Someone started a thread about this a month or two back as well, seems its getting to the point it should be a concern.

Fortunately there are no contests at the moment so no one is being screwed in that sense.

ETA I never notice the forums being down when this happens. here and there in the past when lit would be unavailable the entire site would be down. This is just a 'story" issue.

I would think that would be alarming to the site as that is where all their paid advertising is located.