me too , got another one
Yup, just now. Server timeout.
setting up another server as a test bed is the ideal solution but I’m guessing the hosting company won’t do that for free. I once worked at place with 2 different test beds for a project but they had tons of money and spare servers.
I don’t know what others are experiencing … but getting an error here and there (say, with several days in between) is not really a concern IMHO. Only when they start coming in numbers.
I am going to go out on a limb here. I’m probably wrong, but that has never stopped me before.
Its time to start looking at this from a “who’s logged in to our site” when this shit happens approach.
My work’s website starts pulling this shit when we have a lot of Russians or Koreans on the website, according to our developer. When there was a lot of Chinese traffic a month ago, we were attacked according to the IT forensics team they sent from the web hosting company “over a thousand times” by a Chinese bot or individuals. It didn’t work, the bot or individual just crashed the site when they couldn’t get into the merchant terminal.
I know that IP addresses are fairly easy to spoof, but they don’t seem to make efforts to cover their tracks, at least when I get attacked. So far this year we have been “attacked” 7500 times or so from these Chinese or Korean bots. None are successful, but they make the page take forever to load to the point we lose our place in Google due to the loading times.
Also, maybe do a membership drive or something. I would pay another membership if you guys were upgrading the software.
US$160 + $55 annual renewal for XenForo 2, or $200 + $25 annual renewal for Invision Power Board (forums only).
Based on what I’ve seen on forum admin and software sites, message board owners upgrading vBulletin 3 and 4 sites tend to move to XenForo, rather than move to IPB, or update to vBulletin 4 (also past end of life) or 5. (XenForo can import vB 3 and 4 boards, keeping passwords, PMs, and so on. You might lose avatars if they’re now stored in the database, rather than as individual image files in a sub directory.)
Google “vBulletin 5 sucks” to learn why it’s really not a good option.
XenForo and IPB are both pretty good. XF is seen as “what vBulletin 4/5 should have been”, while IPB is more expandable - calendar, content management system, etc.
Heh. I went and had two isolated errors today after I posted this. Nothing showstopping, though.
Since I can’t edit: The Admin Zone threads about moving away from vBulletin
[ul]
[li]Seriously thinking about making the switch to Xenforo from vB4[/li][li]Upgrading From vBulletin 3. Is XenForo Right Choice?[/li][li]Resource usage Xenforo 1.x vs. vBulletin 4.2.5[/li][li]Upgrading From vBulletin 3. Is XenForo Right Choice?[/li][li]VBulletin 4.2.4 to IPS[/li][li]IPS, I think it will replace my VB4[/li][li]vB4 to Woltlab BB4[/li][li]vB upgrade to something else?[/li][li]I run vBulletin 4.x… and I am ready to move on…[/li][li]Recommend me a forum software[/li][li]VB is still a thing?[/li][li]Do very many forums still run on VB3 …if you migrated to something else what was your choice?[/li][/ul]
Build the wall!
Mexico will pay for it. 
Still happening randomly, day and night.
And now, when I click on a link that goes to Youtube, it just hangs there and never loads.
Got another timeout error just now. Bad gateway.
They’ve been non stop today.
Just had a few long page loads without the error screen popping up. Probably didn’t miss by much, though.
Data point on same server error over the last few days (weeks?) here. iPad Pro, but I doubt that means anything, but when I quit and relaunch Safari, connection is fine. (Not exhaustive testing, but seems like it.)
Just another point: the error shows when I’m still signed in, take a bit of time in an edit (under limit) and save chokes up completely. Then I’m history until a quit/relaunch.
Pretty much the same thing happened to me about an hour ago. Right after an edit.
Error: Server Error
The server encountered a temporary error and could not complete your request.
Please try again in 30 seconds.
I got this when posting to the Trivia Dominoes thread game just now.
I see it mostly when I edit. The edit gets submitted, goes to 502 or 504, but has successfully posted if I come back in to the site.
(I really should learn to Preview… Somehow my brain just keeps refusing to do it.)
Three full days now without a server error. What am I doing right?
A quick fix for the Chinese scraper bots that have been plaguing the Web recently. For an Apache HTTP server, add the following to .htaccess:
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Kinza|LieBaoFast|Mb2345Browser|MicroMessenger|MQQBrowser|UCBrowser|zh-CN|zh_CN [NC]
RewriteRule ^ - [F,L]
This will greatly reduce wasted bandwidth, database queries, and CPU cycles from the scraper bots. The bots will keep hitting the SDMB, but the server will respond with 403/forbidden errors.
This won’t fix other problems with the SDMB – end of life for vBulletin ≤ 4.* / php ≤ 7.1 / MySQL ≤ 5.5, server/database optimization, and so on.