What happened?

I am sorry for the further interruptions since the original messages in this thread. We are actively investigating with our suppliers why the forum has gone down several times in the last couple of weeks. As soon as we understand the cause and are able to do so, we will put a fix in place.

Regards

Seems to be 'flapping' a lot at the moment. I would say more down than up since 7pm last night (Fri 29 Jun). I think the forum's come back, go to answer a post and it's gone again (I see a little orange pop-up).

Are the suppliers Sys-Pro/Sysgroup? (first time I noticed it happen over a whole weekend, I emailed them myself, to no avail).

Seems to be 'flapping' a lot at the moment. I would say more down than up since 7pm last night (Fri 29 Jun). I think the forum's come back, go to answer a post and it's gone again (I see a little orange pop-up).

Are the suppliers Sys-Pro/Sysgroup? (first time I noticed it happen over a whole weekend, I emailed them myself, to no avail).

Cassandro said:

I suggest we use that one, because it has a clearer title

...Awww, I really like this Thread, but this is a good suggestion, for the "Summer2018-Error503"-Thing, so, I guess I am going to try that now, then, then... (Thanks for the link, Cass-The-Man...)

My withdrawal symptoms are now mild because I'm back at work and that's keeping me busy. And away from these forums.

Thanks for the explanation. The way I understand it, the orange 'You have gone offline. Trying to reconnect...') pop-up might show up for several reasons, such as if my own internet connection has gone down, or I have a poor wireless connection.

(There's a script on the page that seems to check the state of the replies, notifications and connections every 20 seconds, and if it doesn't get a response within about two seconds the box appears, so it is quite sensitive to even a small network disruption. I also sometimes see an orange 'An error occurred' when trying to do a function like upvote or reply and the server is down.)

However, what I was saying was that the orange 'You have gone offline' pop-up also shows up if you are logged in, composing a reply, and the server goes down. If that happens, I open another browser tab to check if the forum is still up or giving the '503' error - if it's the error, I know it's not my connection. So actually the orange pop-up (produced when the script running in the browser can't connect) is quite useful to indicate something's gone wrong at either the host end or my end. If I've written a lot of text, I can copy-and-paste it somewhere else until the forum is up again.

It was giving the same 503 error until about 10am this morning. California's started a new thread on this here:

https://community.autism.org.uk/f/miscellaneous-and-chat/12772/why-are-the-forums-so-often-offline

and I suggest we use that one, because it has a clearer title and this thread seems to include a different technical problem (related to the Domain Name System [DNS]) back at the beginning of 2018.

I'm still wondering what Robert's 'withdrawal symptoms' were. 

We're very aware of these issues, and that there have been serious periods of unavailability over the weekend just past. We are working with our suppliers on this, but various companies are involved, and not only the one that you mentioned.

I see the orange pop-up quite often. Owing to the nature of the way that this system works, it tries to maintain a connection with your browser. That sometimes fails, and an orange warning appears for a few seconds. It is not, as far as I am aware, related to this issue, or even necessarily a fault. However, please do report it here if your experience is different and you're seeing that warning in connection with the 503 error that we have been discussing.