AIBU to have the rage over 'sorry, the site is offline - we'll be back as soon as possible.'

Hi, Sorry this is a pain. Often when you get this message the site isn't actually offline - it's just that the one of the servers didn't respond in time to prevent another one of the servers thinking that if was offline - usually because one or other of them is very busy.

We are in the process of adding more servers to alleviate this, and changing one of our underlying software products on the application servers to prevent it altogether. BUT, that is a huge change and we need to do some extensive testing to make sure it's all going to work properly and that we won't make things worse.

SO, please bear with us. If you get the offline message try clicking reload or hitting refresh. It will often work.

We'll also make a more immediate change so that if the site is really up (ie not down for actual maintenance) the message says something like "temporary problem please try again" rather than the offline message. If it's actually down, we'll make it say so.

Hope this helps at least partly explain what's going on.

Talk

AIBU to have the rage over 'sorry, the site is offline - we'll be back as soon as possible.'