"The connection was reset"

[011235813]

I have been having this exactly same issue.  All my users are getting increasingly frustrated.

It doesn't seem to make a difference on the ISP, browser, OS, or any other individual factors.  I have noticed something interesting, however...

In the address bar, when the site goes down, if you remove the index.php and hit enter... IT WORKS.  Of course that is all fine and dandy until you try to submit a post or anything like that.  And of course after you click a link, the index.php is obviously back in the link and the page doesn't work, again.  And once again, if you go up and delete it and press enter, the page will load just fine and in a snap.

So I suppose it's just a question of if there is something wrong in the actual forum, or if it is strictly GoDaddy.  We've called them and they said everything is just fine on their end.  There are no errors in the logs.  We made absolutely no changes before this problem started happening, either.  In fact, no one had even accessed anything in the back for months.

Any help would be fantastic~

[TheListener]

011235813

I have split your post and made a new topic. I appreciate this being your first but in future please do not piggyback on other users topics. They may not have the same result.

[kat]

Godaddy...

Those people are hell to deal with, I'm afraid.

Just a hunch, though. Try going to Admin>Server settings>Cookies and stuff and rename the cookie.

I have no technical reason to suggest that, though. It really is just a hunch.

By the same token, make sure "Disable hostname lookups", in the "General" section, isn't checked. (Again, a pure hunch)

[Chalky]

Thing is with GoDaddy, they will tell you absolutely any old fairytale just to get you off the phone, and no amount of hysterical female crying will get them to actually offer a solution - believe me I've tried    I still get "connection reset" errors, among others, on my GoDaddy hosted test site.  They say it's because I'm using too many resources and need a VPS, but as my test site it only ever has one visitor - me 

[kat]

it only ever has one visitor - me 

[TheListener]

hysterical female

I know of at least two on this forum.

One's a lady the other?

[Chalky]

Lady?  Where??? 

Sorry, I think the support staff have just completely derailed this support topic - and with a newbie as well!!!  Sorry 011235813, we do want to help you, please don't be driven away by our banter!  It's just, it's Saturday night, and being geeks this is our idea of a party    Please let us know whether either of K@'s suggestions work 

[TheListener]

geeks

Oi no need for the language.

[011235813]

No worries~  I understand the geekdom rather well.

I'm trying the renaming of the cookie first and we'll see how that goes.  If that doesn't work and I still get more complaints, I'll look into unchecking that checked box.  :3

Either way, I'll let you know if anything works or not. 

Thanks bunches~<3

[011235813]

Okay...  Sorry, guys.  No go. 

I did one, waited and still had people having issues.  Then I tried the other, and still nothing.  I was reeeeeeally hoping that one of those would work!

[Arantor]

Link to the site might be useful at this point.

[Sir Osis of Liver]

Look for a file named home.htm (or home.something) in your forum root, and delete it.


Hey, Arantor, good to see you're back.

[011235813]

I'm afraid I'm kind of stupid when it comes to this stuff.  I don't know how to find that.  :/  Our main techie person isn't a part of our team anymore, so it makes it extremely difficult to deal with this kind of stuff.  I'm afraid I'm going to break something.

I suppose I should also point out that this problem happens at random and not to everyone at the same time.  The site will be working just fine, and then someone, or a couple of someones, get the boot. 

The good thing is that we're set to renew our web hosting in less than two weeks.  I've already sent godaddy a letter that states if the problem isn't resolved by then, we'll have to try someone else.

[kat]

I'm afraid I'm going to break something.

That's why it's so important to make backups. (Click my sig for the "How?", on that).

To check for a file named home.html, you'll either need an FTP client http://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/FTP_-_How_do_I_use_FTP or, at a pinch, you can use the File Manager, which you'll find on your site's CPanel.

As Arantor said, too, a URL to your forum might be useful, for us.

[011235813]

Okay, used the FTP file manager to go searching.  I can't seem to find a home anything anywhere. 

Oops~  Sorry, I must have overlooked the request for the link.

http://yaoinightmare.net/index.php [nofollow]

I haven't had any issues all day long, but one of our members has been experiencing the problem for hours.  I'm getting more and more frustrated.  Urgh! 

[kat]

Hmmm... Found a possible clue, at the bottom of the page...

"Powered by SMF 2.0 RC5"

You know that that's, in all but name, a beta version of SMF?

It's likely as buggy as... er... a place where bugs live?

Have you thought of being radical and upgrading to the latest version, by any chance?

[011235813]

That is something that I've thought about doing, switching to a different version to see if that fixes the problem.

The big problem there... as I mentioned before, we don't have anyone tech savvy on our team anymore, aaaand even though I've read a bit on it, it still confuses the you-know-what right out of me. 

;n;

I didn't realize that version was a beta.  But no one else would've been messing around with that for... well, months, if not a year, and the problems have just happened in these last two or three weeks. 

Ugh.  I am so afraid to do it, but I'm running out of other options. 

[kat]

The read-up can be a bit daunting, really.

But, it's as simple as this:

BACKUP EVERYTHING!!!

Get the large upgrade: http://download.simplemachines.org/index.php?thanks;filename=smf_2-0-4_upgrade.zip

Dearchive it, into an empty directory, on your computer.

Upload all the files, to your site, overwriting what's there, now. (FTP is the best way. But, you can use CPanel's File Manager, is you enjoy that kinda thing)

Point your browser to your normal URL, except you'll need upgrade.php, instead of index.php.

Follow the on-screen instructions and you're done!

When you read it, like that, it doesn't seem half as tricky, does it?

Be aware, though, that your mods will no longer be installed and, most likely, won't reinstall. You'll need to get updated versions, of those. Probably the same with the themes that you have, too. (Why people release mods and themes for a beta version I will never understand, to be honest)

If anything disastrous DOES happen, you'll have that backup to revert to, if you need to.

[011235813]

Oh, that does seem much better.  :3  Thank you~

I've been in contact with GoDaddy today.  I have work in a little over an hour, so I'm going to ride today out and see how it goes.

Tomorrow I have the entire day off, and I'll have the help of someone who knows maybe a smidge more than I do about these things, as she has her own site via GoDaddy.  If we need to, we'll venture into the upgrade then.

I'll let you all know the outcome!

[kat]

Be sure that you do, please!

Good luck, where NoDaddy are concerned, too.

[MrPhil]

Why did removing "index.php" work? I dunno. Did you have a mod or something to remove index.php from generated URLs? I think there may have been one floating around, although its use is discouraged. Any other SEO in use? Could your host or someone have changed your /.htaccess file without telling you, invalidating the aforementioned mod or otherwise breaking something? Any other changes your host might have done, which would account for it simply breaking "out of the blue"?

Moving up to the current (2.0.4, with 2.0.5 Real Soon Now) level might fix your problem. If it doesn't, at least you'll in general be in a somewhat better position to work on this. While you're at it, see if there are any files in your site that you can't account for as being placed there by you or by SMF -- that could indicate that you were hacked.

[Arantor]

That's the thing... all the URLs I can find have index.php in them and seem to work just fine...

[011235813]

Yeah, the problem seems to come and go as it pleases, hits various people at different times... can't be tracked.  It's weird. 

As far as all the crazy details, I'm not even sure what an SEO is, or htaccess file...  I don't know anything.  The person who set this all up is long gone, leaving two very ignorant site owners to stare.  And then go and weep violently in the corner while things start falling apart a year later. 

So, as far as finding extra files that don't belong... I'm afraid I wouldn't know.  I just for the very first time looked at the files this week.  I have no idea what is supposed to be there and what is not.  It's a really rotten situation, but we have such an awesome community, and we really don't want to change to a different forum.

But from what I've read, if it is some sort of wayward mod, the total upgrade would more than likely null it out?  Just makes no sense that these problems only just started happening recently, and no one on our end made any changes.  That's why we were so certain it was a server issue. 

Well.  Either way, we'll see come tomorrow when we do the upgrade.

Wish us luck!

[Storman™]

If you are upgrading then might be an idea to check with DzinerStudio and ensure that the theme hasn't received any updates since RC5. Otherwise you could update and then encounter other issues.

Not saying it won't work but best to check first as they have made changes to some of their themes between RC5 and 2.0.4.

[011235813]

Okay, so I'm trying to update.  I made it as far as doing the update.php bit, and now it's saying:

Updating Your SMF Install!
The upgrader found some old or outdated language files, for the forum default language, english.

Please make certain you uploaded the new versions of all the files included in the package, even the theme and language files for the default theme.
   [SKIP] [Try English]

Click here to try again.

I can't seem to progress from here.  If I try to press Skip, it makes me log in.  The other two options don't seem to do anything at all.  I'm stuck in a cycle or on the same page.  I uploaded every file that the download gave me, so I don't know where I went wrong.  :/ 

I'll try to upload again, I suppose... but after that, I'm stuck.

[011235813]

Okay, I managed to go back and figure out that there were a few files that hadn't uploaded for some reason.

Did the update.

Some of my extra features don't work, like the shout box and link for chat, so I suppose I'll have to look into finding out if there are upgrades that I have to do for those.

Still.  Having.  Problems. 

In the first five minutes I had the same thing happen, "The connection was reset".  One of my members had it happen to her shortly after that. 

By going through this, I've noticed that there are a TON of files that we have that weren't in the upgrade.  Is that normal?  Leftover from previous versions? 

If I do some screen caps and show someone, could they tell me if they might be causing problems?

[kat]

Well, as I said...

Be aware, though, that your mods will no longer be installed and, most likely, won't reinstall. You'll need to get updated versions, of those. Probably the same with the themes that you have, too. (Why people release mods and themes for a beta version I will never understand, to be honest)

By going through this, I've noticed that there are a TON of files that we have that weren't in the upgrade.  Is that normal?  Leftover from previous versions?

Such as?

[011235813]

One I find extremely out of place is a flash file called expressInstall  I have no idea what it's to. 

index.php_restore  File.

index.php~   I know I don't know much about this sort of thing, but what's with the squiggle?  Anyway, it's file type is just file.

Restoreindex.php  That one is a script.

All those caught my eye simply because they have index.php, which seems to be a central focus of these weird periods of down time.

There are others, but some of them I'm now sure came from things like the treasury and ajax chat. 

I'm still kind of picking through.  :3

[011235813]

There was an entire directly filled with garbage that I was able to get rid of.

Also, after doing some more research online, I found someone who was experiencing the exact same problems that we have been having.  It was random and intermittent, just like ours, and had the interesting thing where removing index.php would load the page fine.  Down to the letter, it was the same disaster.

It ended up being a server issue.  It was caused by load on the server.  Just like with mine, they were unable to figure it out, unable to even see that there was a problem in the beginning.  They were observant enough, however, to eventually notice the issue and fix it. 

I've made godaddy aware of the new information and wrote them a (not so friendly) support ticket.  I've wasted all of today and countless hours for the last few weeks trying to sort this out, and it is more than likely something out of my hands. 

How irritating.

On the other end of things, since I've upgraded everything, ajax chat integration doesn't seem to be supported in the new version?  Looks like the last thing it was designed for was RC3.  That was a key feature for us.  Also, when I go to post, both the quick reply field and the normal message field stretch out forever.  I don't know what happened to make it like that...  We might be back-stepping and going back to the old version.

[kat]

Ajax chat MIGHT install, if you use emulation (Click "Advanced", during the install). You could check-out the mod's support topic, too, coz it may give you some clues about getting it to work with v2.0.4.

As standard, the damned WYSIWYG editor is in use. Shame, that, coz it's as buggy as an apiary. Try disabling it.

[011235813]

Playing around with Ajax.

Disabled the WYSIWYG.

Still experiencing the same problems.  Now I have a new one.  The quick reply box stretches out for forever to the left.  Also, when typing, it doesn't give a word wrap.  Instead, it just keeps pushing off into the unknown. 

One of my users sent me this:

[kat]

Well, from what little I can see, your forum looks fine. But, of course, as a guest I can't see much.

If everything looks OK, if you revert to the SMF default theme, you might need to ask at dziner studios about this one.

[Arantor]

Eh, that's a bug that came up with 2.0 RC5 to 2.0 final... the code was changed in the editor boxes. That just means it's an old version of the DS theme in use.