error message

[Scurra]

The system can manage your inbox quite well - but PMs aren't designed for continuous conversations; you really need some sort of proper "chat" program for that. (Or you ring someone up and talk to them )
I have tested some of those but none of the ones that are designed to integrate with this software really work very well.

[Bunnylump]

Are you trying to bankrupt me man? Or fuel an imminent divorce? If I rang people every time I pm on here I'd need to remarry a sugar Daddy to pay for my phone bill...

[LAT]

But IM is quite useful. I use yahoo a lot for both a quick query and a conversation without disturbing those around me.

[giraffe]

And with pms you can talk to ten people at once.... oops did I just confess to crashing the system

[Bunnylump]

Evil scheming giraffe...

[Laura]

Another point to note is that if you (possibly quite foolishly) happen to admit that you've done a puzzle no-one else has at that point, you can be bombarded by 7 or 8 messages from different people all within 20 minutes, and if you happen to reply to them all straight away, things can get very complicated very quickly.

And just as an extra note - you permanent hintspeople must be absolute saints!!!

[Bunnylump]

Are you suggesting that I'm NOT a saint as I'm not a permanent hinty person?

I must say, it si a very difficult thing to do, this hinting malarkey. I'm rubbish at it.

[LAT]

I must say, it si a very difficult thing to do, this hinting malarkey. I'm rubbish at it.

Which is, of course, why lots of us ask you for hints - we obviously like rubbish hints!

[chazzie]

Yep - well said LAT

[Bunnylump]

I usually need a gagging order. I've NEVER been good at "subtle". Bet you'd never have guessed that eh?

[maisie ladybird]

I've been getting this message on and off for a few days now:-

General Error
SQL ERROR [ mysql4 ]

Too many connections [1040]

An sql error occurred while fetching this page. Please contact an administrator if this problem persists.

It only seems to happen after I send a pm.

[giraffe]

I've been getting something like that, with a pale blue top? If I just go back to the previous page it seems to go away.

[Bunnylump]

That's the same message I was getting that I told you about the other day, Scurra. I had to make about 20 attempts to send one PM to Gill.

[Scurra]

We use what is called "shared hosting". This means that the computer that stores this website (and the .com site) also stores lots of other websites as well, although I have no idea how many or what they are or anything like that.
However, there is also only a limited amount of traffic that the hosting computer can handle at any one time. If we all try to access this site at the same time as everybody else tries to access their other sites, then essentially the doorway gets jammed and no-one can get in (i.e. there are "too many connections")! Unfortunately, nobody can predict when or how this might happen - but basically that's what is usually the reason. It rarely lasts for more than a few moments but it is annoying when it does.

The other reason it might happen is what is called a "distributed denial of service" attack. This is when someone tries to actively stop a website from being accessible by deliberately filling the doorway - e.g. by attempting to refresh a page many times a second via lots of computers - to stop anyone else getting in. This is fairly rare, although we have been the inadvertent victims of it a couple of times in the last year. Indeed, it seems fairly likely that the hacking incident late last year was not aimed at us specifically, but was the side-effect of one of these DDOS attacks.

(Another possible error message is slightly different, and it's when the software driving the forum goes wrong. In this case, you won't get a "Too many connections" error, but a general error message. But if that happens, you won't even be able to reach the forum!)

Of course, it could be any number of other things, but those are the most likely.

[maisie ladybird]

Perhaps a coincidence, but my pm's were to Gill too.

[Bunnylump]

We're obviously all talking to Gill too much. We'll need to send her to Coventry...

[maisie ladybird]

I can't do that, I need her to help solve these puzzles!

[gill216]

You sure that's not the other way around?

[maisie ladybird]

Nope, it was definitely a joint effort! (effort being the operative word at some stages)

[LAT]

For some reason when I try to send a PM to Bunnylump I am getting error message 403 resource denied. Any ideas why this could be happening?