Forum Unavailable?

[mbd]

I've been having trouble getting onto the forum in the evenings. I keep getting a "url not available" message. At first I was worried it had down permanently (gasp!) or had been hacked. It's been recurring pretty regularly though. Is it just me?

[Bill]

No problem accessing on this end. And, no error messages from the system that something has gone wrong.

[Commander 147]

I also have not had any problems accessing it daily. Mike it must be on your end.

[mbd]

Happen AGAIN last night. About 9 PM EST. Maybe that's high traffic time on the West coast? Hrmph! (Must be some higher power telling me to work on the boat instead of reading about it....)

[Tony G]

(Must be some higher power telling me to work on the boat instead of reading about it....)
I hate it when that happens!

[mbd]

OK - it's happening like 95% of the time now. And only this forum. I've changed browsers, cleared caches, but nothing seems to work. This is the first time I've been able to get on in a couple of days now. This isn't happening to anyone else? Ideas?

[ebb]

Often after entering Discussion, will go see who's on line.
Will find "There are currently 22 users on line, 2 members and 20 guests." As an example.
(And this will be long after the work day has ended across the country, when we have 'normal' activity.)
Cursor the number of guests and look at the list.

Very often there will be guest after guest all listed as 'viewing thread': Pearson Ariel Association Forms.
Not odd in iteself xecept that when looking at the hour, some share the same arrival time,
and others will show they have signed in sequencially right after one another. 5:05, 5:06, 5:08.

Always wondered if this is a form of hacking.
Fantasized that maybe we had a boat club logging on together on an assignment to look up a certian subject
to later talk about
.....but that's rediculous!
So what is with these block guests? Could their activity be east coast access problem?

And what is the phenomenon?
Because of its regular occurance and form, I thought they must be disquised information hyjacking robots.
Homeland Security computers collecting data on all of us....nautical fifth columnists and free thinkers.

[Bill]

I thought we explained the "guest" situation to you a long time ago. Those are "bots" sent out by organizations such as Google & Yahoo. The bots search the forums for content. Which is why one can, in turn, use Google or Yahoo to search the ACYA forums. (see search "sticky" above.)

[Bill]

Here are some thoughts: your problem could be a content blocking software or firewall issue. Local machine or the router might be blocking access thinking ACYA site is malicious. Could be a proxy blocking access if you have one between your PC and the ACYA site. It might also be the ISP -- try updating it. Also, if your browser security is set super high, try adding ACYA as a trusted site. Finally, checking for system updates may help.

[ebb]

Yahoo and google bots identify themselves as such, as spiders, bots.

Groups of guests, who have logged on together, do not announce themselves as a bot, or group of spiders.

It's news to me that these blocks of guests have always been known also as disguised search engines.

Was only pointing out that the anomaly, which is fairly common on this discussion forum,
altho I don't check it constantly,
seems pretty strange - and could be a form of hacking or other control of access.....?

Just trying to be helpful....

[mbd]

Don't know what has changed, but the forum seems to be working better for me lately. (?)

[mbd]

In case anyone else may be having a similar issue, I stumbled across a "solution", at least it seems to work for me.

When I start getting the "Server not found" error":
1. Start a DOS Window (Windows, Start Menu, Type "cmd" in the Search)
2. Type: < ipconfig /flushdns >
You should get "Successfully flushed the DNS Resolver Cache." in the Command Window.
3. Try to access the forum again.

Incidentally, when this happens, the forum is particularly slow, but I can still get through!