no smilies displayed anywhere in forum :(

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Re: no smilies displayed anywhere in forum :(

Postby pbottomley » Sun Feb 26, 2012 12:53 pm

played with the .htaccess file again thomas, hot-link is back on and your IP added to white list (I think and hope) let me know via a PM please :thanx:
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Re: no smilies displayed anywhere in forum :(

Postby thomas » Sun Sep 29, 2013 10:15 pm

It has returned to its old behaviour since some time in July this year, Paul, again no smilies anywhere, banner along the forum top is gone, buttons to reply, reply with quote, pm users and so on are all missing, server returns 403 Forbidden for all the missing stuff, it makes using the forum rather hard work.
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Re: no smilies displayed anywhere in forum :(

Postby thomas » Sun Sep 29, 2013 10:40 pm

Some snapshots of how bare it all looks:

Missing banner and smilies.
Image

Missing buttons next to user names.
Image

Missing smilies in smilie picker.
Image

:cry:
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Re: no smilies displayed anywhere in forum :(

Postby pbottomley » Mon Sep 30, 2013 12:23 pm

You are the only person exsperancing these issues Thomas! I have not changed one single setting anywhere since it worked fine for you a while back... :?:
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Re: no smilies displayed anywhere in forum :(

Postby thomas » Sat Nov 01, 2014 8:20 pm

Paul: Rather than take another member's thread off the immediate topic, I'll continue this here.

"Ohh Thomas does this mean you can see things again? Let me know as I am interested to know if my fix for you has worked? :D"

No it doesn't mean I can see things, still the same as ever, awful.

I still get http error 403 (Forbidden) for every single graphic image, be it smileys, buttons and stuff, banner along the top; site looks like something on teletext, it would actually more usable using lynx (text based browser) as I can then tab to the links behind the missing buttons and stuff. The only graphics that do appear are users avatars, every other image be it gif png or jpg, the server returns a stern eff off 403 error, all that appears is the text of comments. Where a graphic has a link behind it, it might be worth adding short alt tag labels (improving accessibilty for screen readers and stuff, too) describing the buttons function, reply with quote, pm other user and stuff, then I would at least be able to know there is an actual link there, where the button is missing.

I've given up, hoped the passage of time would fix it, with some version upgrade of the bb sw or something, or some "A-Ha!" moment when you've got your head under the bonnet (of the site) but no such luck, yet, when you did 'whitelist' me for a time it was all perfect but soon reverted back to how it has always been.

I'm stuck for ideas, I'm adamant it's not my end, you thought there might be some proxy detection going on, but even connecting directly, bypassing the (local) proxy, squid, it makes no difference. I'm still connecting from the same static ip address as I've had for years, so expect some security feature has taken it into its head to blacklist me on the basis of that alone, or the browser id or something. My head hurts with it.
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Re: no smilies displayed anywhere in forum :(

Postby thomas » Sat Nov 01, 2014 8:59 pm

On the forum front page, there is one and only one graphic image served and that is a photo of a red engine and gearbox, sourced from download/file.php?avatar=g1_1264073305.jpg

Everything served out of the following locations (and this is not an exclusive list) is blocked:

/forum/forumpics/
/forum/mchat/
/forum/magazinefronts/

/forum/highslide/graphics/
/forum/highslide/graphics/outlines/

/forum/images/
/forum/images/smilies/
/forum/images/ranks/

/forum/styles/se_square_left/imageset/
/forum/styles/se_square_left/theme/images/

... probably everything out of /forum/ downwards

Graphics served from other places that DO work perfectly, from other areas of the site, include
/wp-content/plugins/highslide/graphics/outlines/
/wp-content/themes/vauxhallviva/images/
/site//gallery_images/intro-pages/

The double forward slashes in that last one are verbatim, it's mildly invalid html, but still work fine.

Hope this is of some help diagnosing this; I have to run now, might be able to pop back in now and again after an hour or so, to check for new posts in an idle moment, but won't be able to do much more tonight on this.
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Re: no smilies displayed anywhere in forum :(

Postby pbottomley » Sun Nov 02, 2014 9:48 am

I have disable hotlink protection, see how that goes? If it fixes the issue then i need to rebuild the hotlink system to include your IP range... Don't realistically want to disable hotlink as the bandwidth is already high (10 gig a month at the minute)
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Re: no smilies displayed anywhere in forum :(

Postby thomas » Sun Nov 02, 2014 1:57 pm

It's fixed Paul, thanks! First visit today and everything is as it should be, at last.

I can even see smilies again :mrgreen: Brilliant.
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Re: no smilies displayed anywhere in forum :(

Postby thomas » Sun Nov 02, 2014 4:23 pm

I hear what you're saying about bandwidth Paul, don't have a solution, just some ideas, which I'm sure have occurred to you already, but obviously there's a need to determine what content items are the hogs, it obviously isn't tiny little smilies and buttons, though they can stack up, what are the big items and most importantly the frequencies with which they're being requested, some automated httpd log analysis prog or script could probably do this in the blink of an eye? Maybe archive more of the older stuff past a certain date cutoff point, making it just available to full members logged in, perhaps. Maybe offload (copy) a bundle of stuff to other (cheaper) hosting which doesn't allow scripting, php etc, but just static content, copy over to other hosting sites and a quick find and replace on the html sources to change the image links to the new (duplicate location). Encourage too, those posting images, to use their own hosting options, even their (usually free) webspace associated with their isp accounts. I could serve a bundle of stuff from my zen account http service, including some bigger items or too frequent ones, as could many others I'm sure do something similar, you'd only have to point me at a zipped up lump of stuff you wanted hosted and I'll put it under http://domain/vvoc/ ... it would be fairly transparent, and then update in one fell swoop the links pointing to it accordingly. Pm me anyway if help of this sort would be useful.

Thanks for fixing this anyhow, for now site looks great again, and for me it is at once more usable (you might regret this) :P
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Re: no smilies displayed anywhere in forum :(

Postby pbottomley » Sun Nov 02, 2014 4:25 pm

Right so i now know what the cause is... just need to replace the hotlink protect (to keep the bandwidth down) but allow your IP address..... I have your IP range so shouldn't be a biggie to sort out.... (says he)... If the images disappear again in the next few days it means i did a wrong move again... :D
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