Stuck in a Time Warp!
- Thread starter CharlesRyan
- Start date
Nikchick
Explorer
Morrus said:
Stumbled upon this thread and wanted to chime in, I have had the same problem Charles describes. I posted about it here in the META forum many months ago, and was told to force refresh (which I had to do on every page each time I wanted to view a new thread).
I too use a Mac, OS 9.something. I've tried IE 5, Netscape 4.7, Opera. I was having the most problems when I was connecting by my DSL connection, which I've got connected to a wireless Airport router. I've been dialing in recvently, and haven't had troubles, but I've also been using the "Jump to Forums" menu at the bottom of the page to navigate, as I found that was a good work around. Clicking the forum links at the top of the page brought me to days-old threads, but using the menu at the bottom of the page loaded the pages no problem.
I've never had this happen with any other sites or message boards (Mortality.net, RPG.net, the Green Ronin boards, the WotC boards, Delphi forums).
Nicole
CharlesRyan
Adventurer
Mac only?
It certainly looks like most of the complaints are from Mac users, but at least one or two PC users also chimed in.
Morrus said:
It certainly looks like most of the complaints are from Mac users, but at least one or two PC users also chimed in.
CharlesRyan
Adventurer
Completely locked out of d20 System & OGL Games forum
All of my workarounds have failed. Nothing I do will get me a current view of the d20 System & OGL Games forum. No matter how I navigate there, I can't bring up a more recent version than December 13.
Please find a solution to this problem! As Nicole mentioned, this doesn't occur at any of the many other message board sites I visit regularly--so even if there is a mac- or network-related issue, there's also something unique about ENworld that sets it off!
All of my workarounds have failed. Nothing I do will get me a current view of the d20 System & OGL Games forum. No matter how I navigate there, I can't bring up a more recent version than December 13.
Please find a solution to this problem! As Nicole mentioned, this doesn't occur at any of the many other message board sites I visit regularly--so even if there is a mac- or network-related issue, there's also something unique about ENworld that sets it off!
EricNoah
Adventurer
Charles, can you give us an example of a forum where you're not having this problem (preferably a vBulletin forum like this one)? That might help us look at their code and see if there's something different they're doing.
Also going to suggest to Russ to look at a "No Cache" setting -- which might help but also might crash the server... We may need to round up mac-using volunteers to test it out if we decide to test this theory...
Also going to suggest to Russ to look at a "No Cache" setting -- which might help but also might crash the server... We may need to round up mac-using volunteers to test it out if we decide to test this theory...
CharlesRyan
Adventurer
EricNoah said:
I regularly visit boards at the following sites:
WotC
Green Ronin
montecook.com
RPGnet
Gamingreport.com
stannex.com
Hope that helps!
EricNoah
Adventurer
Gonna post some random notes here:
Our boards are vbulletin. There are no "no-cache" headers on any part of the forum.
RPG.net uses vbulletin. The main page of RPG.net's forums uses the "no-cache" headers. Sub-forums do not.
Monte Cook's board is an EZBoard. Doesn't appear to have a "no-cache" header but does appear to have a special "style sheet" for mac users.
WotC's boards are vbulletin-like probably with major hacks and mods. I checked about 3 forums and they all had "no-cache" headers.
Green Ronin's are a "phpBB" and don't have a "no-cache" header.
Our boards are vbulletin. There are no "no-cache" headers on any part of the forum.
RPG.net uses vbulletin. The main page of RPG.net's forums uses the "no-cache" headers. Sub-forums do not.
Monte Cook's board is an EZBoard. Doesn't appear to have a "no-cache" header but does appear to have a special "style sheet" for mac users.
WotC's boards are vbulletin-like probably with major hacks and mods. I checked about 3 forums and they all had "no-cache" headers.
Green Ronin's are a "phpBB" and don't have a "no-cache" header.
As much as I hate suggestion kludges instead of solutions, I'm nt close enough to the situation on this one to do otherwise.
Two possible things to try:
+ In the old days, I think I remember my Mac browser (NN, IIRC) had a difference between Refresh and CTRL + Refesh, with the latter overriding any and all caching.
+ For one critical fix that we didn't have time to hunt for, we once (*shudder*) inserted a random number as a "dummy" parameter. For example, the URL for this thread would read "http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=537060&r=01001101#post537060". The r= value would do absolutely nothing and never be read by the server, just regenerated with a new number on every redirect. UGLY, to be sure, but it seemed to work until we got around to a more elegant fix.
. . . . . . . -- Eric
Two possible things to try:
+ In the old days, I think I remember my Mac browser (NN, IIRC) had a difference between Refresh and CTRL + Refesh, with the latter overriding any and all caching.
+ For one critical fix that we didn't have time to hunt for, we once (*shudder*) inserted a random number as a "dummy" parameter. For example, the URL for this thread would read "http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=537060&r=01001101#post537060". The r= value would do absolutely nothing and never be read by the server, just regenerated with a new number on every redirect. UGLY, to be sure, but it seemed to work until we got around to a more elegant fix.
. . . . . . . -- Eric
CharlesRyan
Adventurer
New workaround!
I've found a new workaround that seems to be much more reliable than the old workarounds--but at a price.
I've set my browser's cache space to 0, and set it to check the cache against the server page every time I visit the page. (In Netscape 6.1: Edit->Preferences->Advanced->Cache; set disk cache to 0, set "Compare the page in the cache to the page on the network:" to "Every time I view the page.") Oh, yeah, I also purged the disk cache. (There's a button for that in the cache preferences.)
I now see the most current version of the page every time I visit. Woo-hoo! However, it drags my surfing time to a crawl--fully loading the d20 System & OGL games forum, for example, takes around 40 seconds. Every time. (Keeping nothing in the cache, the browser has to download every single graphic every time it's used.) And I pay this price not just at ENworld, but at any web site I visit. (Unless I change my preferences back to normal when not at ENworld.)
I offer this info in hopes it might be useful to those investigating the problem (and those suffering from it)--not as a long-term solution. The long delays in download time are very aggravating--but not as aggravating as not seeing the page at all!
I've found a new workaround that seems to be much more reliable than the old workarounds--but at a price.
I've set my browser's cache space to 0, and set it to check the cache against the server page every time I visit the page. (In Netscape 6.1: Edit->Preferences->Advanced->Cache; set disk cache to 0, set "Compare the page in the cache to the page on the network:" to "Every time I view the page.") Oh, yeah, I also purged the disk cache. (There's a button for that in the cache preferences.)
I now see the most current version of the page every time I visit. Woo-hoo! However, it drags my surfing time to a crawl--fully loading the d20 System & OGL games forum, for example, takes around 40 seconds. Every time. (Keeping nothing in the cache, the browser has to download every single graphic every time it's used.) And I pay this price not just at ENworld, but at any web site I visit. (Unless I change my preferences back to normal when not at ENworld.)
I offer this info in hopes it might be useful to those investigating the problem (and those suffering from it)--not as a long-term solution. The long delays in download time are very aggravating--but not as aggravating as not seeing the page at all!
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