Board issues?

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

Is anyone having issues accessing the site today? Like, getting "page cannot be displayed" or any other errors like that?

[A Million Units In Jan!]

I did a couple of times this morning-things have been good this afternoon, though.

[SG7]

First time I've been able to be on here all week! (I know some of you were happy about that!) 

[Mike's Beard]

Mine has been on and off since Thursday. At least I'm not the only one. I was worried my internet was at fault.

[SG7]

My good buddy on here, Don't Back Down hasn't been able to get on here period!

[SloopJohnB]

Recently I've been getting "can't connect to smileysmile.net" messages, while other websites work fine. Also, even though I'm supposed to be logged in "forever", I've had to re-enter my username and password three times this week 

[Steve Mayo]

same here..about the past 3 days or so...worse today..usually after multiple tries i finally can connect.

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

Same issues I'm having...just happened again.

[GuyO]

I haven't been able to connect either these last 4 days or so when I'm at home. Right now, I'm at work and no problem.

[Emdeeh]

I've been having the same problem with connectivity. Sometimes I can get this site and sometimes I can't, all within the same day. This has been going on since last Thursday.

Is there someone who can please contact the site owner and see what's going on? Thanks!

[Jay]

I keep getting a "broken link" message. Tonight I had to go on Yahoo! and type in Smiley Smile, and just search untill I found the website.

[Mike's Beard]

Is anyone else finding they are loathe to leave the site these days just in case it's a nightmare to get back on?

[Jay]

Is anyone else finding they are loathe to leave the site these days just in case it's a nightmare to get back on?

That is why I never log out. I think my record is 17 days. 

[A Million Units In Jan!]

Lately I haven't been able to directly get to it. I have to first go to the Smile Shop page, then click on message board. Very rarely can I get directly to the board itself. Weird.

[Emdeeh]

Something is irregular with this board.

I'm getting to the board on an average of every other day. It's not resolving with my ISP all the time. When it's down, I can't even get a ping on the domain name. And I haven't been able to get to this site on campus for over a week.

[Roger Ryan]

Same here - this is the first time I've been able to reach the board in a couple of weeks, so I thought I'd better post something.

[Beach Head]

The problem is getting worse!

I'm located in the good ol' USA, as is this website.  When I stopped being able to access the board through my standard broadband Internet connection last week, I installed software for a VPN (Virtual Private Network) connection that routed me through a Dutch-based server.  That worked fine, allowing me to access this website (and this board) -- until a couple of days ago. At that point, the site became unavailable even through the Dutch VPN. So today I installed software for a French-based VPN and, though that connection, I'm again able to access the site.  But I have no great confidence that solution is going to continue to work for long.

Could the site administrator PLEASE figure out what's going on?  Through my regular broadband Internet connection, neither a Ping nor a Trace nor a simple Lookup finds smileysmile.net! It's literally invisible to my Internet provider's DNS server -- and from the comments posted here so far, I gather that situation exists for many others.

[Andrew G. Doe]

No big deal over here - now and then I get an error page, a quick refresh fixes it 99 times out of 100.

FWIW, my browser is Firefox.

[Beach Head]

FWIW, my browser is Firefox.

The browser doesn't seem to matter. Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari ... all return the same results. The problem seems to be that the IP translation for smileysmile.net doesn't seem to be known anymore by some DNS servers. Initially, I'd thought the problem was restricted to the U.S., but since I can't reach the site now through a Dutch-based VPN server, it's obviously more widespread.

[Beach Head]

What a difference a days makes!

Yesterday, the French-based VPN I was using stopped letting me access smileysmile.net. So earlier today I began installing and trying other free non-U.S.-based VPNs in the hope of finding one that would allow me access.  I put together a list of about a dozen such VPNs and began working my way through them. I got about halfway through the list with no success, when suddenly the problem resolved itself.  One moment, I was unable to access the website, then the next moment I was able to -- and I'd done nothing in between.  A quick check showed that access was available not just through the VPN I was trying at the moment, but also through both the French- and Dutch-based VPNs that earlier had been unsuccessful, as well as my regular broadband Internet connection! And that access has remained constant ever since!

I don't know if the site administrator figured out what was wrong and remedied the situation.  If so, all I can say is "Thank you!"  While computers and networks are my daily business, I was not enjoying the challenge -- primarily because I was on the losing end of it (and that's somewhere I don't like to be). In any event, it seems like the DNS translation for smileysmile.net is widespread again and the problem has been resolved -- at least for me.  Hopefully, no one else is still experiencing access problems.

[Mike's Beard]

Nope its still friggin' up more times than it's letting me on so it hasn't been fixed. Tried repeatedly yesterday and on and off this morning before it finally decided to let me on. What is strange is that when I do the maths on the times users have posted I can see that people have been posting while my access to the site was unavailable, therefore the site is down for different users in different parts of the globe at different times.

I don't suppose the owners of this site wish to comment on what the hell is going on here?

[Beach Head]

Nope its still friggin' up more times than it's letting me on so it hasn't been fixed.

(sigh) Yeah, I have to agree.  After easy access on Thursday, I couldn't get on Friday anyway anyhow!  Which makes absolutely no sense at all from a network/DNS standpoint.  I have no idea what's going on!

Today, I couldn't reach smileysmile.net directly through my broadband Internet connection or through the Dutch-based VPN I can connect to.  But the French-based VPN connection I've installed lets me through with no problem.  Truly bizzare.

Are the site's administrators even paying the least bit of attention?!!

[smile-holland]

I don't understand it either. Here at home it's no problem at all. But at work I can't get access these days. That is, I have 2 jobs, at job #1 no access, at job #2 no problems...

I'll forward these complaints to Chuck, maybe he knows what's going on...

[Charles LePage @ ComicList]

No, Chuck doesn't know what is happening.  I've had the server that handles this domain and comiclist.com go down for short periods of time, but I've not had any issues accessing the sites from one place or another.

[Beach Head]

Stranger and stranger ...

Just an hour later and I can now access the site through my regular broadband connection, wtihout having to use a foreign-based VPN.