-
Preventing an “ERROR” Messages On Our Forums: Tips!
I truly apologize to any of you who have taken the time and energy to post a long reply on our forums, only to receive the dreaded “ERROR” message when you click submit to add your post. A few members have alerted me to this, and I can only imagine how frustrating it must be for those who have been experiencing this.
I have connected with our tech team here at BioNews services in an effort to understand why this might be happening to forum members. As a patient living with IPF myself; I know the energy and concentration that goes into a thorough reply and I would hate to see that effort go to waste due to our platform not posting your message. I’ve found a couple of tips I can pass onto you in an effort to eliminate this from happening, which are:
- Due to formatting issues, the platform we use for this site often doesn’t allow people to copy a message written in Microsoft Word and paste it in the textbox on our forums. I used to type up replies and messages in Word, then try to copy and paste it into the forums simply to ensure my grammar and spelling was correct, plus it was easier for me to use Microsoft Word while I was learning the platform of the forums. However, I learnt quickly that this doesn’t work as the formatting gets all jumbled together. Therefore, please type your replies/comments/messages directly into the textbox (like this one) on the forums in order to avoid formatting issues and your message potentially being erased due to the system suspecting it is spam.
- If you type a long reply into the textbox on this site, per the direction from my tip above, it is always a good idea to save a copy of it somewhere on your computer. This will ensure your efforts aren’t lost if the message doesn’t get published. Even if you copy your reply and paste it in word (opposite to what I was discussing above) until you know for certain your reply has been published, this will guarantee a way that your efforts won’t be lost. I do this with all of my forum posts exceeding 300 words, and all of my columns.
- In an effort to prevent spammers on this site, we have installed a plug-in that only allows the “submit” button to be pressed every 30 seconds to publish a message. It used to be no one could submit something more than every 2 minutes (to avoid mass messaging/spamming) but we just changed it to every 30 seconds as of today. When you have a long post that is ready to be published on the site, please try to only hit submit once. This will prevent the system from assuming your message is spam, which it will do if you hit “submit” several times. If the system doesn’t publish your message after hitting submit, wait a few minutes before pressing it again. If it still doesn’t go live, please alert me as the forum moderator and I’ll find out what is going on for you.
I hope some of these tips help you get your messages/replies/comments on the forum. I value contributions from everyone, and want to ensure your efforts are never missed out on and that you can get your posts live on the forum. Are there any other “ERROR” messages you’re receiving?
Let me know and I’ll try to find out the answers as to why!
-
15 Replies
-
Thank you, Charlene,
Your above post answers a lot of my questions about the problems I have been having when I have tried to reply to your post to me on the topic “Starting Esbriet”. I also tried to send you a Private Post that I guess died because of the new rules. I will try to make sure I don’t post messages longer than the 300 words limit and I will no longer use MS Word to edit the message prior to sending it in the future. I will revise the message I had previously tried to send to you earlier.
I had also included my reply in an email to you. I am not sure you received it so what you may receive on “Startin Esbriet” later may be duplicated if you got my email.
The only thing I don’t like about responding directly in the Forum Reply Box and not using MS Word is that direct entering doesn’t show how many words you are entering or if there are spelling errors, so you must copy it to Word so you can get that information before submitting.
Ray King
-
@Charlene Marshall
Hi Charlene:
I read your article on preventing errors. As you know my experience was that I composed my post in the box but when I tried to post it, the Error message told me I couldn’t post at that time. For a Forum like this I think any risk on getting spam is probably very very remote so for my money they should wife out that 30 seconds entirely. I don’t know if that’s what I ran into but if it was, the more appropriate action for the tech folks to take would to give an explanation for the error and tell you what action you should take, or not take.
I rewrote my posting and tried to send it to the private exchange we were having and this time a message came up saying “you have posted an inappropriate word” Duh! This time I took a copy and transferred it to Word but reading your comments about formatting i’m afraid makes taking a copy redundant since as soon as you put it in word and save it the formatting will be changed. I’m in touch with Joe Pierce in an attempt to solve this latest issue.
I notice as I type this that my font looks entirely different to what I see as the end product of other posts so I don;t know if this is an issue. I’ll find out when I try to post this. I have made input to a numbers of forums. None have the protocols that this one seems to have. You type and you hit “Submit” and there are no Tags or formatting or spam delays. Someone has reinvented the wheel.
-
Hi Bob,
It’s great to hear from you, I am so glad you were able to make your post go live on the forums! I also received your email and will connect back with you that way tomorrow, as it is getting late here. That said, I so appreciate your message and your patience with the error message you seem to be having. Really interesting feedback you provided as well, re: making the error message explain what was causing the error in the first place in order for members to be aware and hopefully avoid it next time? I’m sure this would help with some frustration too! I’m going to follow up and see if there is anything we can do about this, just not sure what access our tech team has to customizing error messages…
Joe is really good and tech solutions, he is our lead person at BioNews who can likely help you with this. Were you trying to post the whole message you emailed me onto the forums? If so, can I have your permission to post on your behalf? I’m just curious to see if what happens if I try to post that message as the “Keymaster” of the forums, I wonder if I will get the same error message? I’ll wait for your permission to post it before I go ahead and do so though.
My only other question I have after your comment about the different font is, which web browser are you using to open the forums? I use a Mac computer so my web browsers are either Safari or Google Chrome and I have noticed the forums acting up a bit more when I use Safari, so by default now I am always on the forums using the Google Chrome browser. It just seems to work better for me, any chance you could try a different browser? I know that is a huge pain though so I am sorry to ask that of you. Hang in there, we’ll get this sorted together and thanks for your patience – I really want to continue corresponding with you! 🙂
Chat soon,
Charlene.
-
-
-
Hi Ray,
Great to hear from you – thanks for writing and I am really glad this post was helpful. I was hoping it would be for people who keep receiving that dreaded ‘ERROR’ message after trying to make a post. It seems as though the forums platform is being a bit tricky lately, so I want to ensure everyone’s efforts aren’t wasted by the forum deleting their post.
I did get your private message and email, and just emailed you back this morning actually! I’ll definitely have more time to reply tomorrow after the festivities of my family Christmas are done, I’ve been busy this week preparing for that which is today 🙂
Thanks again for writing, and I’m glad these tips are helpful for you! You may be able to continue writing your post in Word then copying/pasting it, if you do that and the formatting doesn’t look all funny, you should be okay. Its just for some people (ie. me) it doesn’t work to copy/paste from Word and I get the error message when I try to do that.
Hope you’re having a nice weekend Ray!
Cheers,
Charlene. -
Hi Kenneth,
Thanks so much for getting back to me, this is a great question of clarification and I want to be sure its clear for others who might be running into “technical” troubles like you are.
The 30-second “plug-in” (essentially what we apply to the site) is a spam prevention measure. It doesn’t mean you have to hit submit within 30-seconds of making a post. What it means is that once you hit submit to make a post on the forums, you cannot hit it a second time right away – you have to wait 30 seconds before hitting submit again. Does this make sense? We applied this to the forums because spammers tend to type one message then hit submit multiple times in a row to make several posts on the forums and then it is a lot on our end to clean up. Therefore, with this plug-in installed, automated spammers/bots can’t post as often and it slows them down. Does that help?
Let me know if you have additional questions 🙂
Thanks,
Charlene. -
No problem Kenneth, thanks for sticking with us through these technicalities the forum seems to be experiencing. I look forward to hearing from you when you’re upto writing – I know it takes a lot of energy!
You’re in my thoughts!
Charlene. -
Hi @CharleneMarshall
I seem to be able to post a short single line, but if I write a few lines I am told I can’t create at this time. I’ writing straight into the text box and not using a word type program.
There is a lot of interesting research going on here that may be of interest, but I can’t post.
I started Ofev today
Cheers
Mal-
Hi @mal-com,
I am chatting with our tech team now to see if we can come up with a solution for you. I really don’t want the forums giving people “grief”, as we value all the effort, time and thought that goes into everyone’s contributions. I can imagine it is frustrating when the posts don’t go public on our site. Recently, WordPress (the “behind the scenes” platform for this site) just did a big update, and we’re wondering if some of the hiccups are due to that. I’ll post a reply as soon as I have an answer and tag you in it as well. So sorry about this! Looking forward to trying to resolve this for you 🙂
Cheers,
Charlene.
-
-
Hi Charlene, I am having the same difficulty as Malcolm. One line posts go through, but I have written a long post 3 times which still hasn’t gone through. UGH!!!!
-
Oh @gilberta719,
This breaks my heart, I’m so sorry! I replied to your comment in a different forum topic about this, and wondered if you would consider emailing me the message you when when you try to post something to the forums, or explaining further what the site is preventing you from being able to do? I wonder if this might help us troubleshoot a bit more. I am frantically working to resolve this as I don’t want technical errors keeping people off our cherished site/community. I promise I am working on it!
Take care,
Charlene. -
Hi Charlene,
I just have one comment about posting to the forum and using MS Word. I know your techs have said that you cannot use Word to write your messages and then copy and post the Word message to the forum because it will be in the wrong format but I have found that it is the way you paste the copied message.
After you have written the post in Word and then copied the message, go the to text box on the forum and right-click the mouse button in the text box. It drops down a menu that gives you the option to “PASTE” the message or right below it, you have the “PASTE IN PLAIN TEXT” option. Select the “PASTE IN PLAIN TEXT” option.
The “PASTE” option is only used when you are pasting something while you are in a Word document or some other programs that will accept the Word formatting, Gmail, etc.
I have been using this procedure for over a year now with no problems posting successfully to the forum. I too like to write my messages in MS Word so I can use it’s editing features and then copy it to the IPF Forum text boxes to submit it. BUT you must use the “PASTE IN PLAIN TEXT” option to paste it to the Forum text box before you submit it.
Ray King
-
Hi Ray,
It is so nice to hear from you, I was getting a bit worried that you hadn’t signed on in awhile. I think I dropped the ball on our last email between you, Paula and I. Just trying to stay on top of my emails can be a lot and sometimes I lose track of ones or forget to reply? Feel free to email me directly with a more thorough reply, but how are you doing? How is your wife? I hope her pain is being managed okay.
Yes, you are correct, good memory! Typically when people copy something they wrote in a Word program then paste it to the forums, the formatting is all strange. I was worried about this, which is why our tech-team recommended a different program than Word, but I also really like your idea! I didn’t know about this, so thank you so much for helping us all with this tip.
Hope you’re doing well!
Charlene.-
Charlene, have you tried the WEI products yet?
-
Hi @denny-eliassen,
No, I haven’t yet – embarrassed to say I actually haven’t had the time to do my research on the products yet. We have a lot going on at work right now, and then have lost days due to winter storms and I am prepping for a big event on Saturday too. I am looking forward to some “quiet” after that and think I’ll review the forum thread on Wei at that point. I have however, ordered a few supplements from Amazon which will come at the end of this week.
Thanks for checking in and I hope everything is going well on your end.
Sincerely,
Charlene.
-
-
-
Hi Kenneth,
Thanks for further elaborating on your research findings. Did you get my previous response, about some questions I had and/or whether or not a research facility would be able to help you proceed with your research? It does sounds like you’re onto something, and you have put in an exceptional amount of time in trying to understand our illness; it would be nice to see a bigger centre jump on board with what you’ve come up with thus far. CF, PF and PH are very different illnesses, so I’m not sure the diseases could all come from the same/similar gene mutation, but maybe? It would be so neat, and helpful to so many, if the the Gene evaluation Delores is doing revealed some new information. I’ll keep my fingers crossed that you can get all the billing sorted out!
Thanks in advance for sharing any findings, and for your time and effort you’ve put into researching these illnesses. I’m eager to hear what is revealed on the Gene testing/evaluation.
Sincerely,
Charlene.
Log in to reply.