RAILROAD.NET

First, let me take a moment to thank everyone for their patience tonight. I was able to get the forum upgraded from PHPBB version 3.0.11 to version 3.2.7. Keep in mind that 3.1 and 3.2 are both major releases. Originally the goal was just to address some outdated server dependencies but it just cascaded and instead of patching file after file, it was just easier to do the upgrade.

I am working with Jeff to determine if we keep the default Quicksilver theme or upgrade. One thing you may notice about this new theme is that is responsive and scales to mobile.

The persistent but intermittent 503 errors. I've talked with the web host and they have suggested some changes that should hopefully address these, and those changes have been implemented.

Moving forward, we have a list of technical improvements that we want to implement.

Lastly, you may have noticed that the main homepage has been repaired.

SSL/HTTPS was added site wide to Railroad.net tonight.

Ladies, Gentlemen, Railroaders and Railfans, thanks to Greg, it looks like we have a working site! Knock on wood, I haven't had a 503 error yet this morning due to a new "firewall" (I'm not sure what else to call it) that helps manage bots indexing the site (I think I have that right). Greg's also got https in place. Your browsing experience should be much better now, both desktop and mobile. We'll be working on a few other things to enhance the site.

Thanks all for your patience.

I can't believe anyone asked to have last post date and time removed, but I certainly found it useful to know if there were any new posts in a forum and would like to have some way to tell from the list without needing to click on the forum and see the individual post list which still shows the last post date and time.

I'm not aware of any requests to remove it, so it might be a setting that was knocked off during the upgrade, or even some custom code.

I'll see if I can get it re-enabled in the next couple days.

Hey everyone... I just wanted to keep you updated on upgrades and issues. Greg is working really hard on these. I know we've been getting the dreaded "503" issues. Greg is working with the site host, Google on improving these. We've added server capacity to try to lessen the impact. We appreciate your patience as we try to get the site to its optimal performance.

Test

DIsabled Nginx Caching to see if that helps with anything.

As Greg just noted, we're aware of the CAPTCHA issue. However, the performance of the site is much improved over the constant 503 errors. There was a hiccup last week, but we hope you're getting better performance.

We THINK we have identified the issue causing the captchas.

For those interested, the server as rewritting everyone's IP as the server's IP, so everyone had the same IP and that appeared to be causing a good login for me to count as a bad login for everyone else and so on and so on.

Greg has eliminated a lot of the issues, but we're aware of other issues still occurring (phpBB debug, 502) which usually clear on their own just by clicking back, then resubmitting the action. For the most part, the performance has been a lot better. Greg's developing a plan. The site has needed quite a few updates; we're still sorting out some of the previous issues.

We thank you for your patience.

After working with a second set of eyes this weekend; I am more optimistic than ever that the forum is on the right track.

The forum is loading faster than ever, the error log isn't showing errors, and the captcha has gone away.