Hey everyone!
Over the past few weeks, I've been making a number of behind-the-scenes changes and adjustments to BigCloset, trying to improve performance, reliability, and generally make things run a little more smoothly.
I recently asked a few people over on our Discord server how things have been running for them. The feedback was encouraging! Nobody I spoke with had encountered a 500 or 503 error in days, and everyone reported that things seemed to be working normally.
That's great news, but I'd really like to hear from a much broader group of BigCloset readers and authors.
My monitoring dashboards are looking good, but monitoring systems don't always catch everything. Sometimes the best way to find a problem is simply to ask the people actually using the site.
So, how has BigCloset been behaving for you lately?
- Have you encountered any 500, 503, or other error messages?
- Have pages been loading quickly and reliably?
- Have you experienced any unexpected logouts or issues staying logged in?
- Have you had any trouble posting stories, blogs, or comments?
- Have you noticed anything else that seems broken, unusually slow, or just plain weird?
And if everything has been working perfectly, I'd love to hear that too! Knowing what's working is just as important as knowing what isn't.
If you have encountered a problem, please let me know roughly when it happened, what you were trying to do, and what happened instead. Those details can help me track down issues that aren't showing up in the monitoring systems.
I'm particularly interested in any persistent or intermittent problems that might have slipped under the radar.
Feel free to leave a comment below, even if it's just to say everything has been fine.
Thanks, everyone, for helping keep BigCloset running smoothly. I appreciate your patience while I continue working on things behind the scenes.
-Kirstyn, Erin, Melanie, Cat and the fam :)
P.S. And speaking of things happening behind the scenes... not all of my recent work has been about fixing things! I've also been quietly experimenting with a new visual design for BigCloset. There's even a new theme being tested on our development site, complete with light and dark modes (yes, dark mode!).
It's still very much a work in progress, and I'm not quite ready to pull back the curtain just yet, but I thought I'd give everyone a little hint that some potentially exciting changes are in the works. Stay tuned!
Comments
Lookin’ Good!
The past few days, in particular, everything seems to be going well when I log in. And, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the really small change you made, deleting the extra text on each story’s line in the “My Stories” screen! But, my friend Andrea Lena is having trouble logging in, and we miss her.
— Emma
Should I create a feature request thread?
It was asked for in another thread, and I had the moment to fix it, so I did it. It was actually a weird error where it was set to display "read only, number" or something like that, which we assumed would be what you want on a read-only tally form... But instead we needed to set it to "normal", oops.
But on that note, maybe it's time to use this, or create a new dedicated request thread.
-Piper
The site's good
I think I had 1 503 about 5 or 6 days ago but other than that the site has been running smoothly.
The same here
Loading nicely most of the time and no 503 pages
Did get a very few BC in Attack Mode pages but after the system automatically confirmed I was harmless it let me in with minimal delay
John in Wauwatosa
Site status
As of today the site seems fairly "normal" much as it used to do.
I should point out that we still have the Cloudflare bot trap in operation, I suspect that with that turned off things might become less "normal".
Penny
Dogs have owners; cats have staff. Grand-daughters have minions.
Most Definitely.
Yes, plus specific mitigations on the search path as well, both at Cloudflare, and at varnish. We had to do severe rate limiting. But finding where the problems lie outside the AI scrapers and misc bots makes the whole site more resilient.
not had
any issues this last week
Madeline Anafrid
Madeline Anafrid Bell
I just had trouble
I had trouble getting in about 20 minutes ago. Got the Cloudfare checking browser screen, and then it went to a Backend Failed, I think it was a 503 error. I didn't know I was supposed to be paying attention :)
I'm not sure how often it happens as I don't pay that much attention. Just try again later.
I appreciate your hard work!
*hugs*
The Logs! The Logs!
I will search the logs for your login and see what died in the process. Thanks for the heads-up!
-Kirstyn
The Interesting One...
...is that when I've left the site up and been gone for a while, I get the Cloudflare screen the first time I try to move to a new page after I come back. It's also happened when I'm trying to add a comment or kudos to a story I read earlier that day, or when I've been sitting on a PM before previewing it. (With the kudos it makes me enter it again; the comment or PM is usually still there, though not previewed or posted.
I think I've gotten one or two 503s entering the site in the past week, though not in the last few days. I don't think I've had any hesitations from the site when bringing up a new page -- certainly no more than usual. Site searches are taking appreciable time, but I don't know whether that has changed any. Searching my old PMs by participant (I've been doing that a lot lately) seems immediate.
Best, Eric
We're Under Attack!
That's kind of to be expected when UnderAttack mode is on. It challenges every new "session" with session defined as active usage that times out after a period of inactivity. I just turned off UnderAttack mode for the time being, we will see how long we can last without it for the moment. This doesn't completely turn off our firewall, it just makes it a bit more forgiving.
-Kirstyn
Searching...
Also funny that you mentioned search, as I developed a new search feature recently at the request of a user, and I was going to install it on the live site for testing... But I'll take a look at search performance over the next couple days. Search used to be one of our strong-points.
-Kirstyn
503 error
I get Backend 503 a lot, but that may be the problem with logging in from Australia. If I try to log in from the side bar, it sometimes gives me the 503 and if I refresh it remains at 503. However, I can go to the log in on the top banner and try. If I get a 503, refresh often takes me to the home page and online. Recently, there were problems adding a posting, with 503 coming up after the post. Resubmitting from the pop up ended up with two postings when the home page came up.
Marianne
Sorry for the late reply,
Sorry for the late reply, I swear I replied to this last night. Can you tell me how recently your posting issues were? I'm trying to rule out basically this weekend or was it older. I want to try and track down the issue, and weather it was during the week of the billion 503's or after.
-Piper
No problems the past week
I had a continual 503 errors when posting stories a few weeks ago but nothing in the past week. The site seems more responsive too but that might be my imagination.
Working much better now
I have never really been bothered by slow loading (personality trait) but I can't remember experiencing any recently.
503 errors used to be a pain (you ktnow where). I still get them regularly when I log in but now it's normally only once and I don't have to slug my way in.
I have not posted much recently but I can't remember any problem with that for a while now.
Logouts was only for a brief time and connected with login (logout directly after I had had a confirmation that I was logged in).
I got a 503 error today
when posting the latest part of Redress. The post(save) had been made but the return I got was 503. I closed the tab, opened another tab and found it there.
Some things are faster. If I use a VPN and set the output point in the USA (I'm in the UK), it is noticeable faster.
Samantha
Fast Fix!
Found an error that I think was when you submitted your post. About 04:55:08 my time zone (eastern).
The problem with your post seems to be a timeout when trying to purge the local varnish cache for the server. That was a misconfiguration on my end. Should be fixed now!
thanks
I'll see what happens next Tuesday when I post the next part of Redress.
Samantha
Missing comment text
One thing that I've noticed is that the text of the first comment on stories is blank. This appears to be the case for both new story posts & historic ones. Sometimes there'll be the signature showing, but no comment text, and this is always on just the first comment.
Seems fine now
Whatever it was, it was either fixed quickly or just temporary as I haven't seen it happening since. I'll assume it was a quick fix, so thank you for your hard work.
Not BCTS Nor You Piper
I've been having so much fun fighting with my own system as it seems gremlins have invaded, not one but bunches of them. Keyboard keys suddenly out of order or don't work. Picking up popups on websites should have been blocked. I'm scanning for a virus or viruses, swapping keyboards, cleaning the HD and reinstalling OS, adding all the add blockers, update blockers. The net provider goes down, their down line link cable cut, one day later they are back and their tower decides to take a break.
I finally have a functional system back online, I have a car back on four wheels, the world is looking better. I have a computer, wheels, and try to set up a new appointment with the VA after canceling all appointments the past three months due to no long distance wheels. Finally I have wheels and I'm willing to drive the 240 mile round trip to the VA. Their system is down, after three times trying to phone in and getting kicked offline three times I finally get an operator. Not sure where this person was hired at. He is totally clueless on what he's doing. His English is terrible with a heavy accent. Are they hiring India personnel now? God HELP ME, I'm ready to call the suicide number and I'm supposedly a suicide counselor. Life is challenging at times.
Hugs Piper, you're doing great girl. Hang in there, These little speed bumps in life are there to test us if we are "worthy" of something. Although I'm not sure what.
Barb
Oklahoma born and raised cowgirl
Cloudflare
It has been better recently. What was weird was that my cheapo tablet suddenly couldn't get a good Cloudflare run no matter how many times I checked the I am Human box. But my phone and desktop got through fine. I finally did a total reformat reset on my tablet and it's been fine, though was that due to you turning it off, or my reset? Guess I'll find out eventually.
Thanks for the update. Hmm, on the other hand I went to submit this and got a 503 error...
>>> Kay
But is an android human?
Not sure about your tablet, but I did turn off UnderAttackMode on Cloudflare. That's what challenges most people. Thanks for the new 503 heads-up. I had JUST made a change to the site, and I don't know if that caused your 503 or what, but I will investigate!
-Piper
Stories blank
It's actually been pretty good since around November 2nd, but this morning all the stories are coming up blank. Title, author, and book location are there, but no text and no tags.
The same happened to me
When I logged in (with the usual one 503) everything was fine. I read the latest Coop, gave it a Kudos which appeared to work and then hit "Home" at 12.24 CET. Repeated 503s before finally getting the home page. However, every story then came up as blank.
5:25 am CT 11-11-26 and Authors column is not fully posting
Stories and such show fine on the home page but no authors post newer than first two stories from last Saturday
And initial loading of BC a bit slow
Otherwise seems fine
Navigation within BC appears normal and timely
Using default Windows 11 browser
John in Wauwatosa
Blank Stories + blank author
It looks like the stories that are blank are also the ones with no author on the home page. I tried a few that don't show authors, and their stories were blank. I tried a few that did show an author, and their stories came up fine.
Stories & authors back, now blog contents missing
I can now see the new/recent stories (and their authors), but now blog articles are missing their contents (but comments are intact.)
This is actually kind of exciting: what anomaly will we see next?
Oopsie
The stories and titles were a cache issue; I fixed it by clearing the caches.
The blogs were a Piper oopsie ;)
-Piper
a single 503
Had a single 503 during the last hour. A direct reload fixed it.
Martina