Is anyone in charge of technical issues and responding to new member applications?

[puma guy]

First let me say this is the greatest 2A and firearm forum of it's kind - period. The best moderators, the best members and best off all developer Charles Cotton, who I know is fully occupied with his NRA duties. During the recent Houston South Quadrant breakfast a gentleman mentioned he has been trying to get a new member reply for months without success. A longtime member here with a new laptop was rejected after one attempt to log on and is locked out. I realize that the activity has drastically gone down, but I would like to think someone can deal with issues that arise. If anyone can help please do so. Thank you.

[The Annoyed Man]

First let me say this is the greatest 2A and firearm forum of it's kind - period. The best moderators, the best members and best off all developer Charles Cotton, who I know is fully occupied with his NRA duties. During the recent Houston South Quadrant breakfast a gentleman mentioned he has been trying to get a new member reply for months without success. A longtime member here with a new laptop was rejected after one attempt to log on and is locked out. I realize that the activity has drastically gone down, but I would like to think someone can deal with issues that arise. If anyone can help please do so. Thank you.

I can offer the following …

Are those who are either having difficulty logging in or creating new accounts using a VPN when they’re trying to connect? I do have one (NordVPN), and unless I’m making Nord use a Texas IP address, I’ve been blocked from logging in to this website, and in some cases, blocked from even viewing the site. When testing the system back when I first started using Nord, if I was connected from a California IP, I couldn’t log in, and with a New York IP, the forum blocked me from even reading the site. As soon as I changed back to a Texas IP, I was able to view the site and log in. Also, while traveling in California in July 2022, I had to connect through a Texas IP to log in.

So whether or not the user is using a VPN may play a part in the problem.

[RoyGBiv]

I've been trying for >1 year to help an old member get a password reset and a similar amount of time trying to help a new Texas resident I know from another gun forum get an account approved. I've been told that the only person who can act on new accounts or password resets is Charles.

I'm fairly certain that it's not any more complicated than that and is not any sort of IT issue.
I do not have any feedback on why this is not being handled,including more than one discussion with a moderator.

If you look at the bottom of the index page and click on the newest member name, you'll find that the newest member join date was in 2021.

[RPBrown]

I've been trying for >1 year to help an old member get a password reset and a similar amount of time trying to help a new Texas resident I know from another gun forum get an account approved. I've been told that the only person who can act on new accounts or password resets is Charles.

I'm fairly certain that it's not any more complicated than that and is not any sort of IT issue.
I do not have any feedback on why this is not being handled,including more than one discussion with a moderator.

If you look at the bottom of the index page and click on the newest member name, you'll find that the newest member join date was in 2021.

I am not on the smart end of a forum like this but I will say that several years ago, Charles made the comment that the forum took off far more than he expected. He had made several upgrades to be able to keep it up and going. Now that he is the Prez of the NRA, I am quite sure his time is much more focused on that and far less on the forum which at the time was only a past time for him.
I am not sure if anyone else has the authorization to make any changes, but I would assume that due to recent issues, probably not.

[carlson1]

To answer your question Mr. Cotton is the only one who takes of the technical stuff. I have sent messages telling him I would be glad to step up if needed. I am sure he is in overload.

[puma guy]

To answer your question Mr. Cotton is the only one who takes of the technical stuff. I have sent messages telling him I would be glad to step up if needed. I am sure he is in overload.

Thank you, Carl. I know he is very busy with his NRA activities.

[Rafe]

Another new one for me. I was logged in and replying to a thread this morning and, when I clicked to preview what I'd written I was sent to a page to log-in. I always have the "keep me logged in" option checked, and I understand that sometimes the auth cookie will expire and I have to log on again. But I've never had it do that in the middle of an active session. Normally those things get refreshed each time you successfully log on. I guess I need to make sure, if I don't start writing posts offline and then copy/paste, that I at least copy what I've written to the PC's clipboard before I preview or submit in order to keep from losing what I've already typed.

[Excaliber]

Another new one for me. I was logged in and replying to a thread this morning and, when I clicked to preview what I'd written I was sent to a page to log-in. I always have the "keep me logged in" option checked, and I understand that sometimes the auth cookie will expire and I have to log on again. But I've never had it do that in the middle of an active session. Normally those things get refreshed each time you successfully log on. I guess I need to make sure, if I don't start writing posts offline and then copy/paste, that I at least copy what I've written to the PC's clipboard before I preview or submit in order to keep from losing what I've already typed.

I've had that happen lots of times.

[Keith B]

Another new one for me. I was logged in and replying to a thread this morning and, when I clicked to preview what I'd written I was sent to a page to log-in. I always have the "keep me logged in" option checked, and I understand that sometimes the auth cookie will expire and I have to log on again. But I've never had it do that in the middle of an active session. Normally those things get refreshed each time you successfully log on. I guess I need to make sure, if I don't start writing posts offline and then copy/paste, that I at least copy what I've written to the PC's clipboard before I preview or submit in order to keep from losing what I've already typed.

Make sure you don’t have an antivirus or malware program that is clearing your browser cache periodically.

[Rafe]

Make sure you don’t have an antivirus or malware program that is clearing your browser cache periodically.

Nope. And I have the domain name specifically whitelisted in Chrome, as well.

What's interesting, though, is that I can no longer find any cookies set by the forum. I've browsed through cookies by "most visited," as well as searched by several different variants of the domain name and the first two octets (network class and network) of the IP address of the server. I'd thought the "remember me" function was almost certainly established via a cookie, but if it is it's under a domain name that I can't guess.

On the IP address, it may not have any effect but one thing I found interesting is that the previous IP address I had for the server was 208.77.216.52, but now it's pinging as 208.77.216.135.

May not help anyone diagnose why the forum is behaving so sporadically (I'm getting fewer bad gateway errors but still seeing it load normally sometime, but more often than not slowed to a dial-up level crawl), I just did a quick tracert. I'm not using a VPN right now, and here are the final hops after the request leaves my own provider's network:

28ms ae59.ter1.dfw2.us.zip.zayo.com [64.125.14.252] (https://www.zayo.com/; "As a global internet backbone company, Zayo is the leading independent provider of light-speed data transmission infrastructure...")

* Request timed out.

29ms ae16.mpr2.dfw5.us.zip.zayo.com [64.125.22.207] (That the previous request timed out and this one stayed within the Zayo network would tell me that the timed-out request was probably trying to go to a PSI target, below.)

39ms 38.142.84.226 (PSINet, Inc. (PSI); IP allocations within 38.0.0.0/8 are used for Cogent customer static IP assignments; https://www.cogentco.com/en/.)

42ms node.ave6.virtbiz.com [208.77.216.234] (https://www.virtbiz.com/; "VIRTBIZ is a 25-year veteran in the highly competitive Dallas hosting market. Our customer service really sets us apart from the rest."

44ms texaschlforum.com [208.77.216.135]

I think I may try that again the next time I find the forum responding v e r y slowly again.