Recent scores -discrepancy

[Marghek]

Another poster - Daniel(le) somebody ? - said no scores had been posted since 15th Sept. I had the same anomaly. I thought it might be a difference between the Contributor and 'sites', but I was 'locked into' the Contributor version. Having logged in (using the lower RHS login, as the banner wasn't active) the Contributor site now displays extra scores since 15th Sept.

However, going to the Visitor 'site' (the banner now being active) there are again no contributions listed since 15th. Something seems to have changed somewhere, unless cache-ing is confusing things.

Alan Knight

[choralia]

I wrote about this this subject:

Few days ago we activated a MediWiki feature helping the server to manage a larger amount of traffic, as we foresee very high traffic peaks in October and November. I wonder if this new setting may trigger some specific effects that we cannot see ourselves. Could you please provide more info, and help me to reproduce your problem?

If I cannot reproduce the problem, I can only guess. I think that the problem is not on the website, but on the browser that you are using. For some reasons, it prefers to get the copy of the web page cached locally on your computer, rather than getting the updated page provided by the website. Try to clear the cache of your browser, or to use a different browser (e.g., use Mozilla Firefox in lieu of Microsoft Internet Explorer).

Max

[Marghek]

I cleared the Internet cache. Symptoms are the same: Contributor interface has updated, Visitor interface has not.

Yes, I am using Internet Explorer (as do the majority of CPDL viewers, I'm pretty sure - but I don't know for certain). I don't intend changing just so that I can see updated scores in CPDL's Visitor interface. My view (and I do software testing for my company as part of my 'day job') is that is that "if it doesn't work in IE8, it doesn't work - period".

A further thing/symptom/clue: when you are in the Visitor interface the banner (at the top of the main page) still says

This CPDL Contributor ChoralWiki requires registration/login to display and edit most pages •
• For downloads and unrestricted no-edit viewing, click Visitor ChoralWiki, updated daily

Clicking the Visitor ChoralWiki link redisplays the same page.

I still think something has changed since 15th September and 'broken' the Visitor interface.

[choralia]

If I correctly understand, when you browse a visitor website the top banner shown is the one that is normally displayed on the contributor website. If so, this is definitely a problem occuring outside the server. It's likely either your local browser's cache, or the cache of a proxy server located between you and the CPDL server. Apparently, they do not recognize that www and www1/www2 are different websites, so they mix cached elements of both.

All CPDL wikis are set in such a way that browsers are instructed to never locally cache any pages, just to prevent this problem. However, some browsers and/or proxies might be set to ignore such directive, and therefore their cache may interfere with the correct displaying of web pages.

I tried to reproduce the problem using IE8, but the problem did not show up. Maybe the problem is specific to your internet connection through a proxy.

Anyway, I've de-activated server file caching now. I activated it some days ago as traffic is increasing a lot and we had some overload problems (especially on www1). File caching is beneficial as it reduces the server load. I've also cleared server cache on all servers. So, the situation should be now precisely as it was before September 15. Is your problem still present?

Max

[Marghek]

Hi Max,

It seems to be OK now. Both Visitor and Contributor display newer contributions than 15 September. Thanks for your attention to the prob.

I don't understand what was wrong before. There are no proxies (that I know of) between my IE8 and the Internet.

I hope the load doesn't get too great and cause other problems. I can always go to the Contributor wiki and get 'the latest' but not everyone wants to go through a registration and login procedure. Besides, that would, I suspect, add to the load!

Tahnks again.

[choralia]

I hope the load doesn't get too great and cause other problems.

I've tweaked the distribution of traffic between www1 and www2. I hope this will be sufficient to handle traffic peaks without re-activating file caching. If not, we can also distribute visitor traffic on further servers. In such a case, I'll send hosting providers' bills to you

I can always go to the Contributor wiki and get 'the latest' but not everyone wants to go through a registration and login procedure.

Please note that the "recent changes" page on the Contributor wiki can be now accessed without requiring registration and login: it is whitelisted, similarly to the main page.

Max