Outage 31st July

[BenM]

Sorry all!

Noticed this evening the site was down, throwing 403 errors. Mucked about trying to fix, but came to the conclusion something had changed at the web host, so logged a ticket with them.

Less than 20 minutes later (at 9pm in the evening) they'd fixed it. There was a line in a config file (probably from years ago when the forum came across from HostGator) that told the web server to use a particular PHP version; it didn't actually work but because that version was the same as the default version on the server, it didn't have any impact. Until today, when the web host updated their default PHP version to something newer and bam - that line in the config file became a problem and broke the site. They had no way to know it was there and neither did I. But it was a quick fix.

Anyway explanation done for anyone that cares (probably zero people) but all good. I'm going to bed

[DCR]

Thanks, @BenM. It’s good knowing that when there are issues, they don’t last weeks like they did years ago. Really grateful for your knowledge and time.

[GlasgowJock]

Nice one mate, glad it's been resolved swiftly thanks to your efforts.

[augeleven]

Thanks @benm

[BenM]

In my day job, if there is ever an outage someone has to front up and give an incident report - not a heads will roll scenario or anything but mostly just to try and figure out root causes, learn from it and take steps to stop it recurring if possible. So I just try and follow that because it seems a sensible process.

Realistically I don't spend a massive amount of time or money to keep this place running. I notice @mgil is still manually approving new registrations and probably doing a lot of stuff to keep this place spam and argument free so I think he's doing most of the heavy lifting day to day (no pun intended) - so thanks!

[mgil]

@BenM thanks for troubleshooting this place.

I’ve been off a bit more than usual this week. Should return to normal soon.

I don’t get that many registration requests anymore…

[DCR]

Speaking of, we’ve got admins who haven’t logged into the site in years. @mgil, if you’re handling everything, (1) might as well just clean that up; and (2) a very big thank you.