March 18th Downtimes

[VirusZero]

Just to clarify this issue and what was going on...

I jumped the gun a bit when I stated there was downtime. There wasn't any.

What was happening however was a case where I received an error message and then tried to find out what was causing it. In doing so I inadvertently caused the server to temporarily block me. (The server itself stayed online, but presented to me like it was offline.)

Now because the server we're on is connected to the server that the client panel is on... I also got blocked from it too.

I was able to make contact with our host and through a support ticket (and about a dozen replies) we were able to figure out what the issue was.

Spoiler:

The actual issue was that when I upgraded the version of the forum, I had not combined the old htaccess file (a file used to control who can view what parts of the site, which I have added all the IPs for Chinese and Russian spammers to) with the new one provided by the software developer (which added better support for search engines scouring our site).

Because of this, certain topics/posts (I have no idea which ones would have been affected beyond the Mars One I referenced in the chat) were being stopped by the 500 message.

The issue has now been fixed now though. However if any issues do come up, please let me know.