Notice – STW any issues ?

Dunno where exactly I clicked on it, within a thread somewhere, but  https://singletrackworld.com/forum  just goes to Hannah’s hysterical face and “Oops something’s gone wrong”

Ah, scrap that, it was my bookmark, what was working yesterday. No wonder I saw it a couple of times…! I’ll change it to /community :o)

(However, there is a slight issue, when I post this here item, it jumps back to page 21 and not the page I’ve posted on. )

The pagination indexing issue is on our list of things to fix.

@mark

What we suspect may be happening in those cases is that your browser is serving a version of the page from it’s own internal cache that does not have this metatag. That may happen if your browser caches the page before you login and after you are logged in it serves up that cached version of the page without the metatag.

I mentioned this before but it might have got lost in the noise.  I’m seeing an issue with caching, I have to do a hard refresh on every page to get the latest version and even then its (pardon the pun) hit and miss.  Logged in or out makes no difference.

(Also, I appreciate you’re spinning plates on sticks as it is, but it’s still as slow as a tortoise in molasses with its feet nailed to the floor when I’m logged in.  When logged out, if it were any more speedy I’d be getting served pages in a bad Mexican accent.)

The pagination indexing issue is on our list of things to fix.

Anecdotally, what seemed to be causing this back when I had visibility of such things was deleted posts.  It’s counting deleted posts when it shouldn’t, or not counting then when it should, or something like that.  It was particularly noticeable on threads like the Brexit discussion, running to hundreds of pages and a higher-than-average post deletion rate.

Dunno where exactly I clicked on it, within a thread somewhere, but  https://singletrackworld.com/forum  just goes to Hannah’s hysterical face and “Oops something’s gone wrong”

Ah, scrap that, it was my bookmark, what was working yesterday. No wonder I saw it a couple of times…! I’ll change it to /community :o)

I haven’t checked, but has that change just broken every link in the forum which links to another Chat forum thread?

Yes. E.g.

eBay bans private ebike sales

I’ve had this all afternoon, every time I click on the shortcut to the chat forum on my browser top bar.  I just discovered that if I follow the “forum” link on the “something went wrong” page and then go to “chat” it loads OK.  This is happening on my Chromebook and Pixel phone, both using the Chrome browser.  If I hadn’t navigated here via that circuitous route, it would still appear that the site was down.  Dunno if it’s just me?

I haven’t checked, but has that change just broken every link in the forum which links to another Chat forum thread?

I haven’t seen anything broken, but see above. Like we needed to see Hannah’s Hysterical Face again!

There’s a new link, could you whack a redirect on from https://singletrackworld.com/forum/forum/off-topic/ to https://singletrackworld.com/chat/ please admins of the site?

Thanks, changed my shortcut/bookmark to the new link. There are going to be quite a few people wondering why they can’t get on here though.

Yep – that seems like a weird thing to change and not take account of. Very much 1 step forward, 2 steps back at the moment (and that’s being generous).

Yep, I thought it was down for the last few hours…

But hang on, pages seem to load faster for me now… has something magical happened?

But, I just tried to post a new thread and it ground to a halt after hitting submit, and froze.   Going back to the main page shows it’s been posted though, but could well lead to multiple posts as I’ve seen recently.

On my phone, I rely on typing the start of website to visit frequently entered addresses with auto complete.

H to Hotmail, F to Facebook, I to Instagram, S to singletrackworld.com/forum.

Each time I intend to go to stw it’s going to take me via that /forum link and each time I’ll get Hannah. As above, throw a redirect on?

Surely it’s broken all links too the forum from other sources too and all Google search results.

You’ve broken all incoming links to threads from Google!

That’s something very valuable. I think they clear their index now and again at which point most of the site will be wiped off Google along with the high rankings it has earned.

Are you guys struggling?

I want this place to succeed but am baffled by the seemingly random feature breakages on a weekly basis, which then go unfixed.

There’s a few here who build and run web stuff for a living, I’m sure some of us would offer some time to bounce ideas and problems off.

I thought the forum was down all day. I was in meetings at work and I had nothing to look at other than work stuff.

Living hell.

Figured it out now but yeah, my bookmarks and shortcuts take me to Hannah.

Echoing the comments above as somebody who dabbles in web development. It’s a baffling decision to change your forum URLs without a redirect. Alongside Google search results you’ve broken all users’ history and bookmarks. For what benefit?

What Bearback said +1

But look at the upside! ROFL emoji :-]

I’ve just googled “singletrackworld bike forum” and “singletrackworld chat forum”.  Both return the broken links as the top hit.  There are links to the community page lower down which work, though.  Not great for potential new users, as well as current users relying on a now broken bookmark 🙁

Came on here to say I thought the forum was down as I navigated directly to https://singletrackworld.com/forum/ and it gives the hannah face picture. Maybe a redirect is needed?

I want this place to succeed but am baffled by the seemingly random feature breakages on a weekly basis, which then go unfixed.

Same. I want STW to survive. This is the only website I actually pay money to use, by choice, and it’s also the only one that doesn’t work and is always broken.

I think clearly an error has been made and someone will be working to correct it. It’s obvious in hindsight that it was a bad thing to do but it’s also easy to make changes like this with good intentions and not consider all consequences (Speaking with lots of experience breaking things, and writing many documents detailing impact and corrective actions for my mistakes ?).

I’m slightly curious what the impact is to forum traffic and engagement, and then ad revenue?

Another one here where the /forum URL doesn’t work. On the plus side, I got more work done yesterday. 🙂

I set a bookmark to the new forum location but every time I use it, it opens the page with ads despite being a paying member.

Anyone else having this issue and know how to sort?

Hi Everyone,

Apologies for the URL issues, we had noticed a few discrepancies with some URLS and thought we had fixed it, we have reverted the changes, so please everyone if you have any bookmarks, please update them when you can.

Thank you

Great – works again now, thanks. 🙂

ANyone who is a full member getting ads when they shouldn’t, see my reply furthe up this page about how to clear your browsing data from your device.

Is there any realistic prospect of making the site quicker?

Honestly, it doesn’t feel like it’s much of a priority for you.

Honestly, it doesn’t feel like it’s much of a priority for you.

That seems a little unfair. I think from everything Mark has said, they are trying very hard with a small team who have a very long list of issues to fix. I imagine they would love to have a speedy, glitch free site more than any of us!

TBF and as I posted a few days ago, in my case the site is a lot quicker than it used to be. Seems that’s not the case for everyone mind.

Progress with other issues does feel frustratingly slow though. It would be nice to have a periodic update of how it’s going and what the next priorities are. It’s been a while. Not a running commentary to detract from the important work. Just a snapshot every month or so, as to how the raffle money and donations are helping perhaps?

Update coming in tonight’s newsletter. That is due to start delivering at 6:30pm

As for speed, weve had a bit of a eureka moment today but you probably aren’t going to like it.

The users who are experiencing the worst of the page sluggishness are also the users with the highest post and reply counts. As Cougar has pointed out on this thread, when he logs out the site is super quick, even with the ads. Users who have either never posted anything on the forum or have a small number of posts also find the site plenty fast enough. However, I’m sure he won’t mind me saying this, but with 35k+ posts and replies Cougars account is very sluggish.

This no fault of anyones. There is no logical reason why you should have a slow experience just because you engage with the forum a lot. Each page impression should not involve digging through the database of replies for your account.

But now we have made that link it gives us a target. The software we use, Ultimate Member, is not ours but we suspect that deep inside that plugin it is for some reason is causing a long delay with each page load for members with a large number of posts and replies. With the software not being ours it does mean we need to be careful with any changes we make. At this stage we are hunting down the source of the bug. When we have it, then we’ll know what to do with it in order to fix it.

35k? Has he not got a telly?

That’s only about 7 posts a day.

Defensive! I’m only joshing, I would have used a wink emoji but, you know…

@Mark, thanks for the Newsletter update, it was welcome. Dunno about anyone else and I don’t want to appear needy, but a few lines every now and then really does help fuel the goodwill and sense of being part of it. Amongst all the hamster and pound coin wrangling, I hope you manage some quality downtime.  Keep up the good fight!

Thanks for the update. Having an idea of what’s going on is really nice to know. To be honest, I haven’t got a clue about all the clearing cache, workarounds and so, I just want a functional, reliable site and to be told that some progress is happening is a positive thing.

?

How do I get rid of the adverts? I’ve cleared browsing history and data in IOS Safari but they are still there.

[Mod] from Mark’s recent post:

We are now using a metatag rather than a cookie to determine your ad status. For those that know how to check the metatag is called ezoic_ad_suppression

That tag should be present on every page while your are logged in as a full member.

One issue this has brought to our attention is that clearing cookies now won’t fix the problem if you are seeing ads when you shouldn’t. What we suspect may be happening in those cases is that your browser is serving a version of the page from it’s own internal cache that does not have this metatag. That may happen if your browser caches the page before you login and after you are logged in it serves up that cached version of the page without the metatag.

Clearing the stored cache data on your device could fix this. This is how you do this on a mobile device.

On Android in chrome click the three dots and then select ‘Clear Browsing Data.’

On iOS Chrome click the three dots and tnen click ‘Delete browsing data’

Instructions for other browsers on mobile may vary but essentailly you are looking to clear out any stored cached page files from the site. This shoudl result in you getting a clean verion of the page with the metatag present.

Let me know how you get on with that.

Have cleared all history and data again just now, resigned back into STW and still the same ads on the initial forum page. This thread/discussion doesn’t have any ads

**** Dyson air wrap hair curling shite or Panarei watches. At least try and sell me something relevent like a wooly hat or a Casio terrorist bomb timer watch.