Following an upgrade to our server if I as (forum admin) try to login I get the message
"500 - Internal server error. There is a problem with the resource you are looking for, and it cannot be displayed."
Prior to the upgrade I shut down the forum and the website that contains it. This morning I can access the website but any attempt to log in was met with the 500 .... message. I can log in as an ordinary member (mLev=1) and can create a test topic (I shouldn't be able to as the board should still be shut down), the message does not appear to post, after a while the 500 ... message reappears. If I go back a page the message is correctly displayed. I am assuming they copied the forum before I shut it down and now one or more files find the "forum down / forum up" conflict if I log in as admin. Is there any way I can restart the board without being logged in as Admin? I can access the forum files via ftp. All help gratefully received
Nick

The forum up/down in classic asp version uses an application variable, so if you move to a different server it should not be down by default, so it is probably something else that is causing the problem. Do you have access to IIS? there are settings you can change that will give you the error rather than the generic 500 error

Thank you Huw
I have asked the server folks to give me more information. The forum is not working properly, I can post using a non-admin login but the site eventually returns the 500 error message but the post is created if I go in again. I will report further. Nick

The server folks seemed to have made some progress, I can now log into the admin functions. I can edit posts without a problem. If I try to post a reply or new topic the website remains busy for some while then I get the 500 message. But if I go back to the forum page and refresh it, the text is present. This is not only happening to me. Some members of the forum report everything working OK, others report the same symptoms as me. I also cannot edit any of the forum properties, it gives me the 500 message but no changes to the forum have occurred. Any clues?
It seems to me as if post.asp might not be completing for some reason. Nick

One further piece of information, ordinary members of the forum do not seem to be having any problems but admin (me) and moderators experience the same symptoms. I have asked for the 500 message to be expanded but no luck so far. Nick

there must be a function somewhere that is failing

Resolved. The subscriptions database table had somehow become corrupted, Easy to test, simply turn off all subscriptions in "Admin options - Feature configuration" and everything returned to normal. I found some obviously incorrect entries (e.g. non existent forum numbers) and deleted those but it still created errors so I deleted all the entries and asked everyone to re-subscribe. Nick

That's a strange one. Glad you got it sorted out.

A further issue has arisen with the subscription system. I have been getting complaints from our users about the length of time it takes from clicking "Submit reply" to the process completing with the usual thank you message. I have recorded as much as 55 seconds during testing. I turned off all subscriptions and we are back to just a few seconds as before. With subscriptions allowed by topic only it is a little slower but that may be due to internet traffic etc but if I allow subscriptions by forum it takes 40 or more seconds. Our subscription database file only contains 186 lines with several of those being the same member id with subscriptions to more that one forum, so only a small list. The database file looks OK, I see nothing strange. Is it possible that one of the member's email addresses is very slow to send for some reason? I have not had any bounce back for several months. Anything you can think of I could try or test? Nick

unfortunately this is a problem with the classic version since subscription emails are sent in the same process, so it will have to wait to send ALL subscription emails before returning control to the user, This process seriously impacts the time taken when posting, depending on how many subs etc. There really isn't much you can do about that in classic asp.

The .Net version processes all subscriptions in the background, so control returns straight back to the user regardless of how many subscriptions it is processing.

Thank you Huw, I was afraid you might say something like that. I guess I had better start learning asp.net
Nick

.net version is not really asp.net it is uses .Net MVC Razor engine. This means most of the backend code is compiled as dll's so you will need a copy of Visual Studio (there is a free community edition) if you wish to change any core code. Pages templates however can be tweaked without the need for VS, the templates look a little like classic app pages, it just uses C# rather than VB, but is fairly easy to get in to.
TBH, it has most of what anyone would require without the need to learn any coding.

Huw
I may have stumbled across the issue that is slowing down the emails. We use CDOSYS and in inc_mail.asp there are several lines of code (around line 124) that call for field updates e.g. "http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpauthenticate" this page no longer exists producing the message "The resource you are looking for has been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable". I have tried to locate an alternate page but so far no luck. Is it essential to keep updating these fields? Are there any default settings I could use? As always, all help gratefully received. Nick

Huw
I may have stumbled across the issue that is slowing down the emails. We use CDOSYS and in inc_mail.asp there are several lines of code (around line 124) that call for field updates e.g. "http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpauthenticate" this page no longer exists producing the message "The resource you are looking for has been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable". I have tried to locate an alternate page but so far no luck. Is it essential to keep updating these fields? Are there any default settings I could use? As always, all help gratefully received. NickOriginally posted by Nick Feakes

I'll have a dig around and let you know

do you see any other errors, you can't actually open the address in a browser which is perhaps the error you see, it is a namespace not an actual address, so that probably isn't the actual problem (it may be)

could you try sending an email manually to a user, if it errors you should then get an error message which may point us in the right direction.

Huw
Thank you, that ruins that theory!
I don't see any error messages. I have recorded the send times for one of our forums, it takes around 5-6 seconds to send each subscriber an email (a very constant figure for each subscriber), which fits in with the total time to complete a topic with 11 subscribers of almost a minute before control is returned to the poster. With subscriptions turned off it only takes about 2 seconds. Is there anything I can do to track down why it takes so long? Sending an email to myself from within the forum software completes within a second or two so why should emails generated from inc_subscription.asp takes so much longer? Nick

that is a bit strange, I would expect them to have similar send times. I'll fire up a VM and do some testing using cdo to see if I can determine a reason for the difference.

Huw, any progress? I am going to try AspEmail if I can arrange for the necessary files to be loaded on to the server. Do you have any experience of that service? Nick

the snitz classicforum uses AspEmail here, so yes I am familiar with it