Hey, so, when viewing the forum, I'm finding an odd message that's saying I'm basically viewing an automatic cache of the website (which is great for when it goes down, so thumbs-up there), except I can't make a thread in the Advanced Section, but can make a thread in the testing section.

I have no idea if this is a malfunction or on my end or whatever, but somebody involved in making the website not break might want to be aware of it just in case.

I'm crossing my fingers I can even add this thread.

@Jig Thanks for the report.

Edit: Before you try to answer the questions below, can you first try to create your Advanced topic but instead put some placeholder text like "Testing..." in your first post? (You can always edit the post once the topic is created). Basically, there's a bug where the forum silently fails if you trigger a validation error (like "too many tags" or "title too long") and if your post is past a certain length. By putting a little bit of filler text into the post when creating a topic, the forum will show you what you need to fix instead of silently failing. It's a known bug that I need to fix, so let's first try to rule out this case.

- What page are you getting the "automatic cache" message on?
- What actually happens when you try to create a thread in Advanced? Do you see "INTERNAL ERROR" or something else? Is it when you go to the "New Topic" page or when you actually submit the form to the server?
- Do these things happen every single time or does it sometimes work and sometimes break?

Need some help narrowing down the issues to the right pages for me to take a closer look at. So far I'm unable to reproduce the issue. It's definitely an issue with the guild, it just apparently doesn't affect everyone.

For the known glitch, I just had somebody else make the thread. So we're all golden from my forum-usage side of things. I'm sure it wasn't a length-of-text issue (I can do a general word-count if this is helpful), but I don't remember what tags I'd put in. It's a private RP so they felt superfluous, so I might not have tagged anything in all sections apart from to say full, though I think the first time, I certainly marked modern, slice of life, fantasy and fandom.

- What page are you getting the "automatic cache" message on?

I didn't scroll through the guild, but there was a little header even on the homepage from a source I don't recognise (either something external to my laptop or something I don't know is on my laptop) saying that I was viewing a 'snapshot' of the website because the full version wasn't accessible. I meant to take a screenshot, but basically forgot. A-derp.

What actually happens when you try to create a thread in Advanced? Do you see "INTERNAL ERROR" or something else? Is it when you go to the "New Topic" page or when you actually submit the form to the server?

It was upon submission of the thread. It redirected me to a 'you've failed' page off the guild entirely in the same general style (in terms of appearance) as the cache header on the homepage. I don't remember much about it, but it had one of those 'timelines' things that show where the connection has gone wrong along a flowchart of the connection; I'd like to be specific about what was on the page, but the only thing I can remember was that the central one referenced the UK, like some kind of central UK internet-source or something. The thing that went wrong according to that page was the third item, furthest on the right (and so presumably the guild).

I appreciate that this is the worst description of anything ever. I'm not computer-savvy, so I'm just trying to describe things by sight according to what was on the page. If you need me to try to explain again or even draw a diagram, let me know. All in all, it looked like a spammy redirect, but I'm ad-blockered up to the nines, so I would be surprised. Still, if you can't find anything, it could well be me.

- Do these things happen every single time or does it sometimes work and sometimes break?

It's the first I've noticed and I've not tried since. I'll try to put a dummy thread in the advanced section and see what I get back. Still, I usually play in the Advanced section and I've not noticed it before.

Not very interesting, but a dummy thread that should probably now be removed.

I just successfully made a thread in the Advanced Section, so well done me.

First time I didn't put any tags, but, as you said, the Guild beeped at me to tell me to tag it. When tagged, it submitted as normal.

(for the record, the Guild doesn't have the cache-message thing in the header any more, and didn't from shortly after I noticed the problem)

@Jig

It sounds like when you originally submitted your Advanced topic, you simply lucked out and the guild was temporarily down (e.g. you landed on that "timeline" page). Maybe the guild was restarting itself or the caching server timed out. Doesn't look like it went down for any critical reason, but from what I can see it was only down for a moment.

I'm glad you didn't lose your post. I'm kind of paranoid of the situation where someone can click "Create Topic", hit an error like you did, and then lose their post if they didn't save it or at least ctrl-C it to their clipboard.

Soon I'd like to auto-save posts in the browser as they're being written so even in the worst case scenario the browser will remember your progress.

Thanks for the info!

- What actually happens when you try to create a thread in Advanced? Do you see "INTERNAL ERROR" or something else? Is it when you go to the "New Topic" page or when you actually submit the form to the server?

So, it happened again. It was simply trying to load the Guild's homepage. This time, I thought ahead:



Again, it could be some junk lurking on my computer, or some complete coincidence that the Guild was down for a split-second, but if it was ever a concern, here's what it looks like.