Slow operation

[John Hinson]

This morning I have noticed some pages of the forum have been slow loading, whilst they try to connect to the Fotopic site to display avatar images.

As far as I know the Fotopic service has been defunct for some while but obviously the server isn't dead but attempting (and failing) to do things. In simple terms it is failing to tell us it can't supply the image, causing a delay before our server gives up waiting for a reply.

This could be resolved by all users that formerly used Fotopic to host their Avatars turning the facility off through their User Control Panel, or uploading a new one to use to our server, a facility that may not have been available when you first joined.

It would obviously be a massive task for me to try and identify each and every user linking to Fotopic, so your help on this front will be appreciated by all.

Thanks,

John

[S&TEngineer]

Late last year the FOTOPIC site was reactivated and former users could download their treasured photographs (wot no back up ). As a former FOTOPIC user I keep getting emails telling me I can download the photographs for free (I do have backups so don't need to). The site is going offline again at the end of February 2013. Maybe this is the reason?

PS: I think its going to become a new subscription only service later this year.

[John Hinson]

Late last year the FOTOPIC site was reactivated and former users could download their treasured photographs (wot no back up :oops:). As a former FOTOPIC user I keep getting emails telling me I can download the photographs for free (I do have backups so don't need to). The site is going offline again at the end of February 2013. Maybe this is the reason?

PS: I think its going to become a new subscription only service later this year.

I'm behind the times (again), clearly!

I suspect, then, that their server had semi-failed overnight - I seem to remember reading that the site used to be run on an old server sitting in a cupboard in an office (which may be a slight exaggeration!) which is why overnight faults were never resolved until the next day.

Certainly the issues affecting us seem to have resolved themselves during the morning.

John