Random Account Switching

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10000fists
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Re: Random Account Switching

Post by 10000fists »

I didn't do anything, other than call and tell them I know what happened and ask how they plan to fix it. He didn't say what he did other than they turned it off for my site and I didn't ask. Like I said, I will be switching to VPS soon anyway.

I watched it happen for a week and I was just about to dig into it myself when I happened to see this thread, thanks calman. I haven't even addressed to the 3.2 that breaks all my extensions yet :cry: I can feel my tiny little SERPs dropping already.
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thunderchero
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Re: Random Account Switching

Post by thunderchero »

10000fists wrote: Sat May 13, 2017 12:38 am I didn't do anything, other than call and tell them I know what happened and ask how they plan to fix it.
you got lucky, it is all in the luck of the draw. But it may have helped you called on the phone instead of live chat. it took me 3 tries on live chat before I got lucky to getting a helpful rep. Others like calman chatted with reps way too many time and had nothing but negative results.
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Re: Random Account Switching

Post by Calman »

Two words for you all today/tonight .... "ZERO ACCOUNTABILITY"

This is my genuine report on numerous live chats, trying to address this problem over a near two week period. After much "ducking and diving" on our hosts part, not budging on even attempting to convince me that they were trying everything possible to rectify the problem, it even got so bad in my last chat, that their answers to my comments/queries .... didn't even match the comments/queries and left me scratching my head so badly, I couldn't be angry/dissatisfied anymore, I simply had to smirk (probably a release mechanism).

So, apart from life getting in the way, I have been researching alternative hosts in the last 3-4 days, building a wee text file of questions, live chat logs and site links. At worst, at least we will have the 3 year honeymoon period and be rid of our current host, who clearly fell of the mantelpiece and into the toilet.

Notice I am not even bothering to discuss these issues anymore - I'm done with it!!!!! (and enjoying a live-chat-free, depression-free 24/48/72 hrs and counting).

All the best,
Cal :)
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10000fists
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Re: Random Account Switching

Post by 10000fists »

thunderchero wrote: Sat May 13, 2017 3:10 amyou got lucky, it is all in the luck of the draw.
I sure felt lucky ...or...or, maybe I used my years of customer support experience combined with vast reserves of IT knowledge to communicate my problem effectively with the technician on duty thereby resulting in an albeit incomplete yet somehow working solution?

Yes, I probably got lucky.
- Every now and then the Sun will shine on a dogs :shock:
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10000fists
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Re: Random Account Switching

Post by 10000fists »

Not to keep running on this thread but as a side note, FYI: during my investigation I came across this content scrapper that started hitting my SERPs right after the cache "maintenance" happened. Depending on your niche you may or may not have seen it yet. Go to the big G and search for "occurso.info [your site]"

You can do your own Whois but this popped out for me:

Name Server: MIMI.NS.CLOUDFLARE.COM
Name Server: JONAH.NS.CLOUDFLARE.COM

It looks like occurso is rewriting my urls to their domain name and linking to my images directly or through a CDN cache. All in an attempt to steal SERPs and "link juice" They appear to be hitting all niches as far as I can tell. Doing an image query and linking out to the top 100 images. I assume some kind of re-direct will be next but I'm not clicking on anything at this "occurso" site. By definition of the word "occurso" it appears they mean business. Whois guard, namecheap in Panama, they will be around for a minute. enjoy
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Re: Random Account Switching

Post by Calman »

Surely it can't be as simply as this, or the clever people around here would have suggested this weeks ago, right?


https://www.one.com/en/support/faq/how- ... nish-cache

All the best,
Cal :)
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Re: Random Account Switching

Post by RMcGirr83 »

As this site deals with phpBB and not varnish I wonder how it is you came to that conclusion. I, for one, know zero about varnish.
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Mick
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Re: Random Account Switching

Post by Mick »

And irrelevant, I've used that host for many years and whether varnish is activated or not I have never seen the symptoms as reported here.
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.m.
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Re: Random Account Switching

Post by .m. »

whether it is Varnish or some other thing from the Web Server,
it is surely affecting login system of phpBB boards & also other forum systems!

esp. shared web hosting users are affected
Last edited by Mick on Fri May 26, 2017 9:15 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Removed unnecessary colouring.
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Re: Random Account Switching

Post by Calman »

.m. wrote: Fri May 26, 2017 4:59 am whether it is Varnish or some other thing from the Web Server,
it is surely affecting login system of phpBB boards & also other forum systems!

esp. shared web hosting users are affected
We are in the process of finding a new host, as we believe it may not be that Varnish is such a bad thing, but possibly that our current host have badly configured it's operation. It all went wrong for us on April 30th and although the main issue is related to our phpBB forums (login/session problems) .. it also clearly affects any cache related pages leading back to that day. For instance, I run an F1 Dream Team website and all stats including Race Calendar, Player Sheets and Leaderboard were "stuck" on the last update prior to April 30th, so had to change web links in order for everyone to NOW see the current stats. So .... whatever went down with this whole "exceeded peak performance" accusation, I think it's a lot of nonsense and our current host's handling of the situation has been shocking.

So, as I've said before, I thank all the suggestions from this phpBB community, but the root problem still exists and our host can't or won't fix it, without implying that we need to upgrade to a VPS to allow us to have our own control of the Varnish Cache .... something "they" can't control on their watch.

LAUGHABLE.

All the best,
Cal :)
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Re: Random Account Switching

Post by Calman »

Just curious, now that we have arrived at 1st June (and in our case, this bloody Varnish Cache issue kicked off a shade over a month ago), has anyone witnessed any miraculous fix, now that we are into a ne month???

All the best,
Cal :)
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