After watching the site tonight I've found that there is still an intermittent issue with it and have decided to switch off SSL connections. The site will, for the time being, default back to the standard HTTP protocol on Port 80.

Monitoring will continue to see how things progress from here.

Huston: We still have a problem....... On the two occasions I have tried to get in, my decision to try logging on, worked.

It was also having issues the first time accepting a post.

No syntax error somewhere, perhaps?

Marc

I couldnt get in yesterday using my tablet (Safari?) The address bar flahes and comes back with the error message "Too many server redirects" I tried Chrome this morning which does the same thing, gives the message "Site contains a redirect loop" but then works okay. I haven't tried it with a PC browser yet, I'll give that a go later today.

If that is happening then it brings us back to the infinite looping that I pondered on when this all started a couple of weeks ago. There lies the problem - you can get an infinite loop without any 'illegal' code and infinite loops don't normally return an error code from the server.

Safari and Chrome are behaving for me, though that doesn't mean much as the problem is intermittent.

Marcc and Scraps: Are you guys trying to get to the URL with the HTTPS prefix or the normal HTTP one?

Safari does it on both. The address bar flahes very quickly but it looks like its alternating between https and http, it stops on the error message on whichever one was entered. Chrome strangely doesn't show which one was entered after it loads the page but it is behaving now, albeit with an initial delay.

Yeah, that is what I dislike about most browsers, they chop off the protocol being used. IE and Safari tend to keep it there.

At the moment HTTPS is redirected back to HTTP though the other redirect scripts have always been there and have seldom been edited. Anyway, I will keep looking.

My bookmark to this site was for http which was redirecting me to https. Now you have a redirect from https back to http. A silly question but you don't have a redirect going both ways do you?

Nup. The redirect is in reverse at the moment because I want to get the search engines to reindex the HTTP port before I close off HTTPS to do some testing. Bing has done so but Google and Yahoo aren't as quick with this sort of thing.

It was worth asking though. It is easy to make a mistake like that.

Okay, the late mail is this:-

I have now blocked the SSL port (443) and disabled the HTTPS binding on the server.

From this second onwards I am expecting a return to the reliability we have previously enjoyed.

If this happens I am going to rewrite the main site file (default.asp) from scratch over the following week or so and then test that on the test site before going live here. Don't expect too much in the way of a new look with this though - the main priority will be to maintain reliability and uptime. If all goes well with this the look of the site will resemble the wide template that was here up until a few days ago.

Things are much the same at the moment and there are times when the site is still not available. Due to this, I have spent the day getting an older server out of mothballs and am in the middle of doing Windows updates, reprogramming the DNS server and web server and a few other dainty administration tasks. Once this is done I will shift the site and database over to it and bring it online.

If the site is unreachable later tonight (near midnight or thereabouts) this will just be me redirecting traffic to the older server. I'll then leave this running to see if things get better. The results of this move will determine what happens next.

I dont know if you got the change done last night or not but the site is loading much faster this morning.

Good to hear. I did the changeover between 23:40 and midnight however there was still a repeat of the problem. So I've moved further back to a backup that is about a year old, which is why one of the forums is missing. It'll be back once all this is sorted once and for all.

I really hope I've isolated the bug now because it has started giving me the poops.

As reported, it may be a fault within, or some form of syntax / script error; the system here managed to sneak in Win 8.1 showing why Linux is getting more popular: So much cumbersome Junk we don't need.

However, I am seeing no access / complete front page until I log in?

G'day Marc,

I can't replicate the problem you are getting. I've tried in the five major browsers plus IE on my phone.

The page cache in your browser may need emptying out manually. Whilst logged out, hold down the shift key whilst refreshing the page. This should force a full reload of the front page. Also, if you have more than one browser installed on your machine, see if the fault is apparent on both.

On the off-topic but interesting note: I've been playing with the pre-release version of Windows 10 (there won't be a Windows 9) on another laptop and it shows promise. The proper Start button is back, the absence of which pretty much spelt doom for Windows 8. That said, it the same scenario as for previous versions of Windows - unless you want to shift to a 64bit operating system or you just favour the latest and greatest hardware and software no matter what, there's no compelling reason to upgrade from Windows 7, which is currently the most popular and most sought after version. I still use Windows 7 on my main laptop and it's more than five years old and hasn't been reloaded yet. That is a testament to the quality of Windows 7 and at times I'd consider myself a 'power user'.

Windows, like most commercial products, will always contain loads of stuff many people will never use. To be dominant these days a product has to try and be all things to all people. An ideal version of Windows for me would have something similar to Windows 7 ergonomics and theme, Office, Photoshop, Notepad and the default browser, Internet Explorer. The latter three I used to build, maintain and (hopefully) keep things here bug-free. The rest just for general computer usage. I don't need the games, DVD ripping, media centre, Skype, Facebook, Twitter, speech recognition or millions of applications on the desktop.

I recall my first times with Windows on a 486-33 with a 130MB hard disc. Every year I'd reload the disc and to keep as much room as possible for files I'd run through and delete all the things I didn't need. Games were the first to go but there were a lot of other things too. With the size of discs these days there's no need to worry about it. 5TB discs have just become available, though I doubt I'll need one of those for a while.

It sounds like you've narrowed it down to a coding issue. That's progress at least. If your next post says you've moved to the Bahamas we'll know it's finally got the better of you!