500 server error / 502 bad gateway / main & followers pages not loading - Please fix

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23 comments

  • sfdominant

    Got the same thing happening for one of my accounts and can't see the main blog page. Problem persists across browsers, with or without extensions. The blog having an issue is sfdominant.bdsmlr.com.  Other blog I own loads fine.

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  • sfdominant

    Okay, so disabling infinite scrolling in settings fixed this.

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  • John Blank

    No images will upload. Just when I thought this site had fixed the worst of its problems, it hasn't.

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  • NSFWBDSM

    I'll have to test, further, later (as time allows), but at first blush, yes, it looks like "ocdn012" is clogged, again.  But, of the 3 such pics I've seen, the "cdn012" was there.

    It depends on the type of problem causing this, but, it can be anywhere from a few hours to a few days.

    As far as I can see, there'll never be an outright long-term repair for this, unless someone puts a lot of money into this place.

    EDIT: It looks like the "ocdn012" problem was fixed very quickly.  I'm unable to reproduce it, nor find the posts that indicated it.

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  • reece john

    images/gifs and videos wont upload again

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  • reece john

    @sfdominant do you know a direct link to get into settings and can't seem to get into them on the site at the moment 

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  • Oldtauntonian

    My experience is that some blogs are worse affected than others. For a week I've had problems with two blogs in particular:- Nordicpervdom and Minski. In both cases it has been possible to open the main blog page but the 500 Server error message come up when trying to access archive pages. This can happen with other blogs but refreshing the page usually clears the problem after a few minutes of trying. Today though the archive pages two blogs I listed above are still inaccessible after MORE THAN 8 hours of regular attempts. It's making BDSMLR a lot less attractive and annoying that this problem doesn't seem to the administrators to be worthy of their attention. We users don't seem to be as important as their advertisers. It's short sighted as if followers leave in droves then advertising revenue will quickly dry up! 

     

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  • John Blank

    Just signed in, and NOTHING shows up on my dashboard. The site has been bad in the past, but not like this. I wonder if the owners have abadoned it, or are in the process of doing so.

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  • NSFWBDSM

    Oldtauntonian, for blogs that don't show up either directly or by archive, try, instead, using the RSS to find the top post, and go from there.
    (I will, now, shamelessly pimp my blog.)
    For example, if you go to https://nsfwbdsm.bdsmlr.com/rss
    ...you'll see the newest post is https://nsfwbdsm.bdsmlr.com/post/641342065
    Starting from there, you should be able to see all my posts.

    Try it on nordicpervdom & minski.  It just worked for me.

    (When I have more time, I'm gonna try to figure out which post/s they both have that are causing what looks like a divide-by-zero error.  My instinct says that it's a post that was removed in a way that the software barfs when it sees.  I can try to find that in the aforementioned RSS.)

    EDIT; I've located a potential problem point, and submitted a ticket.  Let's see what happens.

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  • NSFWBDSM

    btw, I just realized that my direct link for "settings" got "pending approval".   I'll try again here;
    https://bdsmlr.com/settings

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  • Oldtauntonian

    Sorry NSFWBDSM, I'm a VERY old person, and your explanation isn't in my understanding, For example "the RSS" is inexplicable to a geriatric like me.(Let alone the rest of your kindly meant explanation. Maybe this is the problem, I never did understand "geek speak". Thanks for your response but I guess I'm just too old to cope with a generation that has made up it's own language and I can't cope with the previous generation's answers. (Sadly a common experience for we who preceded you). I'll bow out from this discussion because it's totally beyond the comprehension of me and my contemporaries. But thanks anyway. Agatha 

     

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  • Oldtauntonian

    And incidentally NSFWBDSM, I tried loading your "link" and got a message saying:-

    This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below.

    That's what I mean about the current generation not making sense to we "oldies".

    Sorry, you meant well I'm sure, but I'm completely out of my depth here. I give in. It all makes NO SENSE.

    Agatha 

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  • Oldtauntonian

    A FINAL comment:-

    In any case, it shouldn't make any difference. If BDSMLR want OUR patronage (and therefore the advertising revenue that ensues) WE shouldn't have to piss about trying to manipulate and manoeuvre our way through TORTUROUS different ways of TRYING to access their pages. THEY should be doing their level best to make access to blogs as easy as possible. I shouldn't NEED to understand GEEK SPEAK, I should be able to get access without having to perform mental gymnastics to find out how to use the site. BOLLOCKS to such rubbish. You can stick BDSMLR where the sun doesn't shine. They can't be bothered with their subscribers, so we'll (at least I'll) go elsewhere. And anyone who continues to turn somersaults just to save them from BOTHERING about their "bread and butter" clients deserves all they struggle to cope with BYE BYE BDSMLR and all their misguided followers. You're too much bother to even try to continue with. Old, but not defeated by the lies of you. Agatha 

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  • IceyPixels

    I understand your frustration, Agatha. This is a common experience for all of us.

    If we draw a comparison to the real world, consider a scenario where a free service, like a library, has a broken door preventing entry. In such a situation, we would acknowledge the issue and return at a later time. However, when it comes to websites, we tend to expect flawless performance at all times, even though downtime is inherent to all websites. Smaller websites with limited resources often experience more frequent downtime.

    The unfortunate aspect is that bdsmlr staff don't always communicate the problem by posting a notice on the door, informing us that they're working on fixing it. Instead, it's as if you can see through the window, spotting staff members concealing themselves behind the desk with their feet visible, seemingly pretending that they can't be noticed!

    Support BDSMLR You should seriously consider improving your public relations. If you don't, the moment a better alternative emerges, people will start deserting this endeavour, given its recent history of numerous shortcomings.

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  • NSFWBDSM

    As was already said, the frustration is understandable.  I experience, myself, sometimes, even though I kinda have an inkling of what's going on behind the scenes, as a programmer, myself.

    First, let's get some perspective here on some things;

    1) Ad revenue.  Even in non-adult advertising, there's much less PVI (passive-view income) than there used to be.  There's none, at all, in adult advertising - and hasn't been for years and years.
    PVI is when just viewing an ad generates x-cents per view.  (Like watching television.)  Most ads, today (and all adult ads) is strictly a per-sale thing.  To use an example, I've accidentally clicked on a few ads, but, never bought anything.  BDSMLR hasn't made a dime off of me.  (By the way, this kind of revenue problem was a major factor in Tumblr's big adult purge.)

    2) I don't think I've ever seen a website that doesn't, eventually, have a hiccup.  Even Powerball and Megamillions' websites get crashy when the jackpot is over a billion.  For them, it's just not worth the financial resources to invest more heavily in something that happens rarely.  I can't count the number of times that the Walmart app loses connection to its database.  Twitter has little crashes pretty regularly - and that's surprising considering their investment (and investors).  I think I've even seen Google crash once, years ago.  These are the vicissitudes of technology.  Good thing we don't base our entire economy on the Internet.  (Er... uh... ouch.  Ooops.)


    3) Don't think of BDSMLR as some monolithic Compu-Global-Hyper-Mega-Net company.  Think of it more like a handful of BDSM enthusiasts with a few bucks to invest, gathered and cobbled together a website for like-minded folks.  In the unlikely event it made money, all the better, but, ultimately, just a hobby.
    Now, I don't really know if that's a completely accurate description of this site's inception, but I *do* know, without a doubt, that they run financially lean.

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  • Oldtauntonian

    Thanks for your kind words and explanations. I do try to be patient, but over 8 hours of being unable to access 2 of my favourite blogs I admit I lost patience.Agatha 

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  • NSFWBDSM

    I submitted a ticket regarding the "minski" archive, and, as I write this, it's being fixed.

    But, I emphasized that this was just an example - that I hoped my example would lead to a fix of the underlying problem.

    If anyone runs into any other blogs with archives broken half-way in - please let me know.

    (FYI, @Oldtauntonian, I'm 58 :)

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  • NSFWBDSM

    @ John Blank, let me know if your problem got fixed in the midst of this other issue.  Seems to me that there's a possibility it might.

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  • John Blank

    @NSFWBDSM, if I scroll down after signing in and wait a while, the stuff that used to appear right away will appear after a minute or two. Not really "fixed," but it does work. I try to temper my complaints about this site out of recognition that the operator(s) aren't exactly getting rich. There's a lot more good than bad here, but I've pretty much given up on even trying to give them any ideas for improvements given that the basics are hit and miss, and they really don't communicate anyway. Oh well. Beggars can't be choosers. Oh, and thank you very much for your attention and patient responses here. I appreciate it a lot.

    @Oldtauntonian, boy oh boy do I ever hear you. I am retired from a career where I had to speak some Geek, but only one of the dozens of Geek dialects. I published material for clients, and made good and god damned certain  to write in English. When I had to reference Geek, every single term was defined. There is a downside, which is that this takes more words. I would say it in my writeups, and eventually came up with a way for Geek-speakers to breeze through, but for English-only speakers to be able to navigate if they would realize that the first few times would take longer.

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  • IceyPixels

    @ John Blank

    If you deactivate infinite scroll for your dashboard in your settings, your page will load significantly faster and you'll encounter fewer internal server errors. The trade-off is the requirement to click on the next page, though the overall speed is still improved when the feature is disabled.

    Another issue could be an excessive number of blogs, which prevents the activation of infinite scroll.

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  • John Blank

    What do you mean by "an excessive number of blogs?" Too many of my own, or too many followed? If the latter, what number followed is "excessive?" Disabling infinite scroll makes the site much harder to use.

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  • IceyPixels

    Too many of your own blogs.

    Indeed, you're right about the user experience being less intuitive when the infinite scroll is deactivated. Although I initially disliked it, I've come to appreciate the time saved by not having to wait for pages to load (assuming they loaded at all).

     

    For the blogs you are following I recommend unfollowing any that display "Never been updated." This also appears to mitigate the occurrence of internal server errors.

    My assumption is that these errors might stem from blogs that use queues and either delete their accounts or get banned and the queues continue to run causing any blogs following them to receive internal server errors until the queue has finished running, although I haven't yet verified this hypothesis through testing.

     

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  • NSFWBDSM

    I have 32 of my own blogs, and don't have that problem.  On one of the unused blogs, I followed everyone on that ID that hadn't posted in over a year.  I didn't have any delay.  But, of course, this are all blogs that can be followed, because they're presently active.
    Along the way, I discovered that, as stated above, blogs saying "Never been updated" are, indeed, all dead and/or banned blogs.
    Just go to https://bdsmlr.com/following and you should see all of yours.  (Of course, it's paginated, so you'll have many pages to go through, if you follow lots of folks.)  I only follow 187 blogs, though, so it may not be representative of what you experience.
    I suppose if you really wanted to seriously test if your dashboard problem is from folks you follow, you could, simply, open a batch up in a new browser tab, unfollow, switch over to a sub-blog (make one if you have to), then re-follow them from the new one.
    Each stop along the way, re-test your old dashboard and see if/when it stops being slow.


    Ohhh, by the way, I found something interesting; when I was done testing follows, I unfollowed all the old ones that I had, which, of course, took me back to zero followees.  When I refreshed the https://bdsmlr.com/following page, I got a 500 error.  This adds credibility to my theory that some 500 error's are just, internally, divide-by-zero errors.

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