Dear friends,
Chip and I are trying to puzzle through two emails we received from readers complaining the MFO was blank when they tried checking in during the last day or two. One reader (using Firefox 3.5) said that all of the text was pushed off the side of the screen, leaving the body of the screen blank. I suggested updating to the current Firefox 20, if only for security's sake. The other reported that only the top banner was visible and the rest was blank. He was running Chrome on an Apple machine.
We did not make changes in the underlying software on the first, though there was a WordPress update a couple weeks ago. Chip has been running diagnostics (there are programs that run your site through up to 150 browsers at once to see if it's compatible) but hasn't discovered anything.
Here's the request: if you've experienced any unusual symptoms, please drop me a note and let me know what and when. Chip will monitor the thread to see if she can find a pattern. I'll also send a version of this note to the folks on the conference call mailing list, asking them to glance in if they haven't already.
That said, Monday was our biggest single day ever - 2900 folks dropped by to read the April issue and join in the discussion board. It's possible, though improbable, that that was sufficient volume to cause the occasional hiccup. The Pingdom monitors shows 100% site availability since the day last week with the 22 minute outage.
Thanks, as ever, for your support and willingness to help out.
David
Comments
Where do they have problems - viewing wordpress blog, or reading the forum??
On the user side:
Have you asked the users who report problems - what type of connection they are using wireless from a coffeeshop, dialup, or cable, etc., etc.
Do their computers run updates of software in the background.
On the server side:
Do You have a neighbour on your database server that's overloading it. How is this allocated with your provider?
Do you have enough resources on your database server to handle the forum.
Personally - I don't see a problem with viewing the forum.
I think you will be chasing this till the end of time and never find an answer,
maybe if more people see a consistent problem, especially people who know what is going on with their own computer, and have up to date browsers.
http://www.mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/index.php?p=/discussion/comment/6320#Comment_6320
Someone (deleted user) suggested I use the old link eliminating the banner:
http://www.mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/index.php?p=/discussions
So I use the link above to link MFO. This problem only occurs on one setting however - my favorite brower setting and so when MikeM had a problem with Kindle Fire, I suggested he try changing text size. He did and it apparently helped:
http://www.mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/index.php?p=/discussion/comment/9475#Comment_9475
The behavior is similar though with the same right size of screen text effect. At the time I reported it, I was the only one with a problem and IE 8 was going out of common use so it didn't seem like a big problem. Are IE 8, Kindle, and the current problems due to the same problem? The fact that the number of browsers is increasing with time seems to point to something that is being added to the browsers and not to MFO but it's hard to know. Or is it something to do with the banner? Has it changed lately or the way that it loads changed?
Regards,
Ted
Regards
Ted
I only use Firefox and have no problem logging in and out of MFO. There must be some setting in your Firefox that is preventing you, but I can't imagine which one.
Mona
Regards,
Ted
>Whatever it is there is something wrong with your setup.
exactly and nothing to do with bells and whistles.
Ted, should uninstall firefox completely from his system, and re-install. If he is interested in solving his problem. But it might take some convincin'.
However, I a lot of problems would most likely go away, if the forum wasn't embedded and just had links to the wordpress blog. But that too, would take a lot of convincing.
I run MFO on Firefox with no problem, unless I have the zoom setting set too high on the No Squint app.
Thanks for all your feedback.
That is why I think that the scaling, when this occurs, is readjusting the page to an empty area which just happens to be out of bounds. I could be very wrong but I can't test it nor can all of us send our individual computers with the settings that cause it to Chip to study.
I'm using XP so I would either need to move to another browser or buy another computer to fix it. But, in my case, the solution is so easy and smooth (don't load the banner) that as long as the option exists I don't even think about it.
@Chip and @Anna
Two things. Anna. Can you post a link to an image (or send it to chip and she can post it) with the area circled in red where you think the problem occurs.
Also I could look into changing the font size specifically for you when you log on to the forum, if that would be ok with chip.
Let me know both of you if you want to test and when. also if you could include an image of what forum details you want enlarged and what font size
I don't really need the screenshots unless chip wants me to change something. I view the same way you do unembedded - faster on slow connections and all I have to do is click home to get to the blog and more viewing area.