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Tresco
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Just got this when I tried to post :

Server Error in '/' Application.

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The resource cannot be found.

Description: HTTP 404. The resource you are looking for (or one of its dependencies) could have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable. Please review the following URL and make sure that it is spelled correctly.

Requested Url: /post.aspx

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Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:1.1.4322.2032; ASP.NET Version:1.1.4322.2032
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Same message four times tonight Tim, all at around 22.22 French Time

I do feel sorry for you but a large company like yours must find this hugely embarassing. Ask for your money back and move on or better still, just take one of the many cheapies that one can get on the market place and go with that..................I am no expert on the workings of a forum (I know of no others that are as bad or anywhere near it, as this one) but if I bought a motor with a warranty and all the car did, was make me get a taxi home every journey, I would hope the seller would finally run out of excuses and put the old hands up and admit defeat and either replace it totally or allow me to walk away with my money.

There is a lot not being told, you know it and I reckon most of this forum know it. No one would put up with this load of tosh unless there was a very good reason for doing so. It's simply one false dawn after another since the demise of the old forum. It didn't come with the infamous "guarantee runs out when the brake lights disappear" surely ?

Sorry but that's simply how I see it. When it works great, when it doesn't, it's a pain in the backside to say the least.

 

The resource cannot be found.

Description: HTTP 404. The resource you are looking for (or one of its dependencies) could have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable. Please review the following URL and make sure that it is spelled correctly.

Requested Url: /messages.aspx


Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:1.1.4322.2032; ASP.NET Version:1.1.4322.2032
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As has been said on many occasions Archant IS have a IT strategy that MUST be followed to the exclusion of all else. Quality, reliability, user facilities, etc. appear not relevant to Archant’s IT strategy (Microsoft everything).

We have been promised solutions continually. Archant do this, do that do the other and the error messages change but the underlying problem remains (the underlying problem being that it does not work properly). Even if it did work, there is still poor functionality on this forum software.

I personally post questions I have in other forums, though will still respond to threads here (though it is hard work and feel I am persisting where others have given up).

If one takes the example of phpBB (a different forum software system): its free, it supports non-IE browsers properly, its used everywhere (very very large to small forums), it has far better functionality to this software (dramatically so), its fully supported and maintained, etc. IT WORKS. Rather than use something free reliable, etc. Archant prefer pay loads of money for something that does none of these properly (but is Microsoft based !!).

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Sorry, my above post was meant primarily in response to Miki's post, but I cannot edit my previous post (no such button any more).

It is a feature of software development called "creeping featurism” – basically where the developers continually add new nice little features. This forum software seems to suffer from the reverse (what few features it does have are starting to disappear).
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I1,

For your information, we don't have a "Microsoft only" strategy, although parts of our hosting environment are currently MS based.

We aim to select systems that provide the best combination of benefit / performance / resilience / supportability and compatibility while meeting our requirements.

For example, although we currently run Windows based web servers, our load balancers are from F5, the firewall definitely isn't ISA server, some infrastructure functions run on BSD/Linux, and the databases are split across SQL Server and MySQL. The only reason we're running Windows web servers is because our in-house development team are professionally qualified, Microsoft certified developers and we have a large legacy of ASP based code.

This approach extends throughout the business. For example, rather than opting to remain with the established Windows/SQL structure for a new Group-wide ad-sales system, we've opted for the best available solution - which runs on Sun Solaris and Sybase (also on Solaris).

To take your example of phpBB, while it is an excellent system for sites running php, in high traffic environments the more scripting languages you have running on a web server the more problems you're likely to encounter. To opt for a PHP solution would also require cross training of some of the development team to provide support for the system, and introduction of a potentially unstable element across all web servers. These were risks we were not prepared to take given the high levels of availability we need to provide.

Unfortunately there are not many free, commercial grade forum systems available for ASP.NET, which is our preferred platform. The system we have selected has been running flawlessly across our other sites, but for some reason ran into problems when deployed separately to Living France. The France forums have now been migrated to the main forum system, and so far seem to be rather more stable. Other measures have been put in place to help identify / record when errors occur, and to aid us in tracking them down and resolving them. Also, given that this forum engine currently drives forums across something approaching 90 websites, the actual cost per site in terms of software licensing is trivial.

Hopefully this will help explain the reasoning behind the decision to persist with this forum system, even in the face of problems.

Regards

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Quote: “We aim to select systems that provide the best combination of benefit / performance / resilience / supportability and compatibility while meeting our requirements”

I assume you consider this forum system has such features as performance and resilience.

Quote: “in high traffic environments the more scripting languages you have running on a web server the more problems you're likely to encounter”

And we are having no problems here ? The loading on this forum does not represent high traffic. There are far larger phpBB sites around running decently (with decent functionality).

Quote: “To opt for a PHP solution would also require cross training of some of the development team to provide support for the system” – so, learn something new. Its what IT is about. phpBB can be installed an run by non-development people. My own company has a small phpBB system that was entirely installed, set-up configured and is maintained by a non-technical person with no help nor questions, nor involvement from any IT people.

Quote: “available for ASP.NET, which is our preferred platform” AND “we don't have a "Microsoft only" strategy” – you are clearly totally open to other architectures.

A quote from a moderator “Living France's publishers' IT people, who insist that ASP.net (a Microsoft system) is the only way to go”.

A quote from Tim Stephenson: “The Microsoft platform / environment is simply what our company is currently standardised on for software” Clearly no “Microsoft” strategy here !!!
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I havn't had any more time outs.

The edit function is back, but I understand some people still can't see who's posting.

The search 'function' is still terrible

The quote function may as well not exist (because it only allows you to quote the first 3 lines, whether you selected them or not).

The list of people logged in at the bottom of the main living france forums page has disappeared, although they are still 'there' on the individual forums (this isn't a 'problem' as such).

There are probably more things like this going on.

Tim, is this as good as it's going to get?

tresco

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[quote]Quote: “We aim to select systems that provide the best combination of benefit / performance / resilience / supportability and compatibility while meeting our requirements”I assume you consider this fo...[/quote]

Quote: “We aim to select systems that provide the best combination of benefit / performance / resilience / supportability and compatibility while meeting our requirements”

I1: "I assume you consider this forum system has such features as performance and resilience."

For the previous, independent version, no. This is why we've moved it on to the same system driving our other forums, which does offer reasonable performance and is generally stable.

Quote: “in high traffic environments the more scripting languages you have running on a web server the more problems you're likely to encounter”

I1: "And we are having no problems here ? The loading on this forum does not represent high traffic. There are far larger phpBB sites around running decently (with decent functionality)."

This forum is fairly reasonably loaded, in terms of forums. The overall forum engine however, is handling something in the region of 1.3 million posts by around 100K members. In turn, these applications run on a set of servers hosting other rather busier systems and websites generating approximately 6-9mb/s of continuous traffic. For those who work in terms of Gb per month bandwidth, taking peaks in traffic into account that's around 5-600Gb per day.

As you have probably noticed, most of the reported problems (apart from the search) have been resolved.

Quote: “To opt for a PHP solution would also require cross training of some of the development team to provide support for the system” – so, learn something new. Its what IT is about. phpBB can be installed an run by non-development people. My own company has a small phpBB system that was entirely installed, set-up configured and is maintained by a non-technical person with no help nor questions, nor involvement from any IT people.

That's all great. However, unfortunately that's not how things tend to work in most enterprises. Systems need to be accessible to all members of a development team to provide cover in the event of absence or staff changes. We don't currently have any PHP skills in house as our internal development platform has historically been Microsoft based. This is a trend continued to the web, and as a result we've adopted ASP.NET for new web development. This doesn't mean it's the best language, but it is our current language of choice.

Quote: “available for ASP.NET, which is our preferred platform” AND “we don't have a "Microsoft only" strategy” – you are clearly totally open to other architectures.

Correct. Open to, and actively evaluating alternatives.

I1: "A quote from a moderator “Living France's publishers' IT people, who insist that ASP.net (a Microsoft system) is the only way to go”.

A quote from Tim Stephenson: “The Microsoft platform / environment is simply what our company is currently standardised on for software” Clearly no “Microsoft” strategy here !!!"

As I currently represent Archant (Living France's publisher's) IT team for digital media, in this case I would suggest you take my comments in precedence to the Moderators.

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[quote]I havn't had any more time outs. The edit function is back, but I understand some people still can't see who's posting. The search 'function' is still terrible The quote function may as well not e...[/quote]

Hi Tresco,

I always use the advanced search as this is much better than the standard search:
http://forums.livingfrance.com/search.aspx?adv=1
If you need to search on more than one word click the 'ALL of the terms entered above' button.

I agree that the quote function isn't great, the developers of the software are aware of this and intend to improve this for future release.

Some users can't see who is posting due to firewalls they are running, again the developers of the software are aware of this, we did have this problem with the old software as well.

James

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[quote]I havn't had any more time outs. The edit function is back, but I understand some people still can't see who's posting. The search 'function' is still terrible The quote function may as well not e...[/quote]

Tresco, just to pick up your comment about the quote functionality.

This is something that will be resolved in the next major release of the forums engine, which is due somewhere around March / April this year.

Please let me know if anything else comes to light.

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E-mail flooding

E-mail notification takes you to the first page of the topic rather than the post you are being notified about.

No support for message formatting in non-IE browsers

When editing a message the text is a single block with

for line breaks.

No option in personal settings to set default “Subscribe to topic” (or not)

Only option to scroll through pages (in a thread) using next/previous/last rather than e.g. 1,2,3… (once in the topic)

Can only quote a single post in a message being posted (and cannot select which bit of the message is being referenced

Avatar image does not accept .PNG format images or, having lost my Avatar, I now cannot upload a new one (only a browse button and update does not change it, though there is a white space after the browse button - tried .PNG, .GIF, .BMP, etc) none restore my Avatar image.

Just a few off the top of my head. From memory without much thought.

How do LF plan to try to get some of their users back to try and generate some activity back in this forum ?
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Thanks I1,

Alot of these are being instigated in the next forum release. Take a look at their support forum http://support.instantasp.co.uk/default.aspx

As for there being less activity on the forum, this is not true, our recent web stats show an increase in traffic.

"Avatar image does not accept .PNG format images or, having lost my Avatar, I now cannot upload a new one (only a browse button and update does not change it, though there is a white space after the browse button - tried .PNG, .GIF, .BMP, etc) none restore my Avatar image."

IS will take a look at this as I think it is updates from local drives that aren't working, as getting them from the web is OK.

 

 

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 This message twice today 14/01/2005 , time 08:22

Server Error in '/' Application.

Exception of type System.OutOfMemoryException was thrown.

Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.

Exception Details: System.OutOfMemoryException: Exception of type System.OutOfMemoryException was thrown.

Source Error:

An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below.

Stack Trace:

[OutOfMemoryException: Exception of type System.OutOfMemoryException was thrown.]


Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:1.1.4322.2032; ASP.NET Version:1.1.4322.2032
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[quote]This message cannot have happened. We have been told that the software and architecture are resilient and that all the problems have now been sorted.[/quote]

I1, as you work in the software industry you will know that with software products - nothing is certain.

I'm currently reviewing the servers' event logs to identify the machine causing these problems.

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This is getting wearisome, but you asked me to tell you if it happened again.

12 notifications between yesterday afternoon and this morning.

Yes, I have unsubscribed myself from the topics I didn't subscribe to in the first pace, but is there a way of stopping this 'tick happy' gremlin?

tresco

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