Is anyone else having problems accessing iSpot? For more than a week when I try to access iSpot it doesn’t load, or if it loads I cannot access my observations etc and sometimes unable to access other people’s observations. Is this a general problem at the moment.
Looking at the last three days, there was a noticeable slowdown starting at 02:30 yesterday morning, lasting until around 07:50. Other than that, the server appears to have been chugging along quite nicely for the last 7 days:
Looking at the error log, there’s been a few instances of SQL (database) errors which might have led to observations or comments on observations not being saved. It’s difficult to be certain but for all of the errors I’ve examined, the user as tried to use a “non standard character” in one of the fields, often the title field, such as 
or 
or 
It’s possible that the most recent iteration of mariaDB (the database software) has become more strict about such characters and is now throwing a wobbly where older versions did not.
Therefore I recommend everyone refrain from using such characters in their posts.
Thanks so much for replying so quickly - really helpful. Although I was indeed having difficulties early yesterday morning, that wasn’t the first or the only timet then, so it clarifies that the problem is with my laptop/server and not iSpot.
It is working well this evening.
I put 9 photos up without any re-sizing without even waiting for the progress bars to complete. The observation saved with no problem.
Good to hear. It certainly appears not to be a iSpot problem but with my connection so I don’t get as far as adding a new observation. When I log in, not always successfully, and try to view an observation, sometimes I can view one but never more than one, before I get the dreaded rotating circle for as long as I can bear to watch it before I abandon hope and close down!!
Might be worth you visiting this site and running a speed test. If the speeds you’re getting are significantly lower than what you’re paying for, you should contact your ISP and make a scene.
Thanks very much for the tip Chris, I’ll do as you suggest - e never had any problems with manual typewriters, which is about as far as my technical know-how goes!!!
Incidentally i was uploading quite a large image last evening 7mb, it got to 100% but still kept the little wheel turning round for ages. So still in the upload screen I just deleted that version of the upload and tried the upload again and this second time it loaded immediately without any issues - same file, same connection just 30 seconds later. The other images in other observations last evening did not give any problem so a little glitch somewhere but don’t know where.
I’ve found that trying to re-order the already uploaded photos while a different one is uploading is usually enough to defeat the system.
I experimented with those, precisely, yesterday or the day before. iSpot is very firm as to which it accepts but only causes my connection with iSpot to break not, apparently, the site to crash. I am being more cautious. I was looking for Characters to use, so that results in my Tracker were easier to spot.
you can SEE in my tracker some results
The “non-standard characters” was the only common issue I could find between the reported errors - even though in some cases it said the date field was wrong - which I decided was “error in error message”, since it wasn’t!