Site glitch earlier today; fixed now. Please forgive us!

If you kept checking the WSB home page earlier today and wondered why we hadn’t seemed to update anything after 7-something am – no, we were NOT slacking off! Some people were stuck with a “cached” version of the home page that refused to show the newest information, even though we had continued to update the morning commute story and then followed it up with several new stories. One browser seemed to be immune to this problem, Chrome, and since that happens to be the browser we use for most of our work, we weren’t aware of the problem until a few hours had gone by and a few people finally sent notes asking what was going on. Then it took a while longer to fix. Thanks to expert tech help, we finally know what was wrong (though not WHY it went awry), and all should be well now. As soon as we realized some people couldn’t see the updated home page, though direct story links worked just fine, we did get the word out via Facebook and Twitter, so if you use either of those services, please make note of where to find us, and consider “liking” or “following” WSB there, even if just to get updates in situations (rare as they are) like this. Sorry again – we try to make sure WSB hums along relatively trouble-free!

Diane October 24, 2011 (8:16 pm)

I use Firefox; had zero problems with up-to-date access

coffee October 24, 2011 (8:31 pm)

I didn’t have problems either on 3 different machines. And hey congrats KING 5 best of Washington award for best blog!! Yeaaaaaa!

p2 October 24, 2011 (8:48 pm)

Whew, what a relief! I just sat down to write up a comment pleading for suggestions on where to check for PM updates tomorrow. This eve I sat at my desk hitting refresh about 5 times, unable to believe that the ever-reliable WSB had no homeward bound road tips for me. Without you, I knew not where to turn : ( Happy to hear it was only a temporary lapse. Thanks for being there!

WSB October 24, 2011 (8:57 pm)

Seriously, if you ever see the site seem to go static for more than oh say 4 1/2 hours max (aside from some nights between late at night and early morning), call us (206-293-6302 24/7), e-mail us, or any other means of contact listed here https://westseattleblog.com/contact – it means something is terribly wrong, seriously, we don’t ever just hang it up and goof off. NEVER EVER. But a website can be a fragile thing on occasion and when there’s tech trouble here, we do get word out on the other channels (FB and Tw). Maybe we should offer the chance to sign up on an e-mail alert list too.

Aman October 24, 2011 (9:27 pm)

Hi WSB/Readers,
I use Google Chrome and had no problems with the updates. I did/do however have periodic trouble with the speed of connectivity to the WSB home page both using Google Chrome and/or Mozilla/Firefox.

As advised earlier today, specifically this morning at approx. 7:30 a.m. it took over 30 seconds+ for the WSB home page to load. This seems to be happening more regularly over the past couple/few of months.

Is anyone else experiencing a long delay in loading the WSB home page or comments pages within the forum site?

Any-all advice / help is appreciated.

metrognome October 24, 2011 (9:32 pm)

an e-mail alert list might be useful (as long as Comcast being down again isn’t the problem) as some of us don’t facetweet … at least not when we’re sober.
Tell ya what … throw in a free month’s subscription and I’ll forget all about today’s problems … which I wasn’t on-line to experience and didn’t know about until you posted your confession.
Now, if I could just get my credit card company to do the same thing; their payment server has been down for hours and all the contact info in the payment reminder e-mail comes off that server too … they don’t even include a phone number in the e-mail.

Doogs October 24, 2011 (9:43 pm)

Static for 4 1/2 hours?? Honestly, I don’t know when you guys sleep! I get itchy if I don’t see something every 20 minutes! :) You guys do a fine job!

p2 October 24, 2011 (10:09 pm)

True, if I hadn’t still been busy and distracted by work I would’ve realized something was mightily amiss. In retrospect, it should’ve been super obvious, I saw no postings beyond the morning commute coverage, nada. And I know well that is not normal! I was on the robust office network and on IE. I was hitting refresh between 5 and 6pm or so. Thanks again … to all the commenters too, your experiences flesh out the big picture.

metrognome October 24, 2011 (10:33 pm)

I forgot to mention … you have no clock on the home page except for at the bottom of the traffic cam which is too itty-bitty for my tired old eyes to read, plus I was never in the military, so subtracting 12 from any higher number usually results in a wrong number. Plus the traffic cams sometimes don’t update the pic or time.

WSB October 24, 2011 (10:48 pm)

Not standard practice to have a clock on the page – almost everyone has one on the computer or phone where they’re reading – but our stories are time-stamped at moment of first publication, right under the headline. If we update a story across a span of hours, that time-stamp stays the same, but we put time updates manually in the text of the story. – TR

george October 24, 2011 (11:18 pm)

A good reason to use Windows since most people in the universe do.

asteria October 24, 2011 (11:44 pm)

Thanks for the update! At first I thought the host server was overwhelmed with traffic because of Viadoom, but then I checked Google reader and was able to open the new stories. I mostly use Firefox, didn’t think to try Chrome. Couldn’t figure out what was going on.

Also thanks for being such a great source of information for the commute. And I hope you all get plenty of sleep & sweet dreams!