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"Freeola FORMMAIL broken"

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Thu 17/03/11 at 09:20
Moderator
"Are you sure?"
Posts: 5,000
Just to add some details (as I see things) for other Freeola customers in the same position as me this morning with the 'formmail' outage.

The Service Status items reads:

Formmail on Unlimited Hosting Servers 17/3/11 8:32 AM:
We are currently investigating an issue with Formmail message sending on our free hosting servers. We apologise for any inconvenience caused by this and we will resolve this issue as quickly as possible.


I'm finding forms using 3rd party scripts are still working and the email arrives as normal.

The problem is with sites using Freeola's formmail PHP script where visitors will receive a 'ERROR 500, Problem Running a Script..." message when attempting to submit the form.

Will be rather frustrating if they've just spend 20mins typing something!

*spooky* Someone's just contacted me via my non-Freeola form while I'm typing this!


If others are seeing anything different please post.
Hopefully this will be a quick fix.
[s]Hmmm...[/s]
Mon 28/03/11 at 22:21
Regular
"Feather edged ..."
Posts: 8,536
Hmmm... wrote:
My visitors are still seeing the 500 error and a page of Freeola ads!

'Exacto Mondo' here aswell Hmmm....captcha....then 'pear-shaped'..but actually quite quick to appear now :¬)
Tue 29/03/11 at 10:57
Moderator
"Are you sure?"
Posts: 5,000
Any ETA for a fix for this yet please, the service has been down for a day now?

It's not a good situation to be in.
i.e. Customer spends 5 minutes or so filling out a web form only for it to fail on them when they go to submit it.

Thanks.
[s]Hmmm...[/s]
Tue 29/03/11 at 12:33
Staff Moderator
"Freeola Ltd"
Posts: 3,299
Sorry for not popping on earlier but I had no idea this issue was occurring (dang those days off!).

I know you have a ticket open so I'll leave the majority of info through that and the service page.

We are chasing the issue with our wholesalers and our systems team are working on a fix at the moment.

As far as I am aware it has been caused by the PHP upgrade, causing the script to fail. I'll have more accurate/detailed info after the issue has been resolved.
Tue 29/03/11 at 12:39
Moderator
"Are you sure?"
Posts: 5,000
Thanks for the reply Warhunt.


I wondered if it might have been connected to the recent/ongoing PHP changes.

I tested the limited PHP services I use last week when I saw your update message and everything was working fine, so I was surprised when this service stopped working (what looked like) after the event.


[s]Hmmm...[/s]
Tue 29/03/11 at 14:13
Moderator
"Are you sure?"
Posts: 5,000
I see this item has been closed on the Status page - Freeola's script seems to be back but I'm still getting "Error 500" on 3rd party ones (Tectite).





[s]Hmmm...[/s]
Tue 29/03/11 at 14:37
Moderator
"Are you sure?"
Posts: 5,000
For the info of others, even though this only seems to be affecting me!?


Received a reply to my ticket.
3rd party scripts need changing if they follow the previous Freeola instructions here
-f is no longer required and will now make the script fail.

I would have thought it was worth mentioning this on the Status Page rather than just closing the item to make it easier for others to find?

FWIW formmail scripts seem to run much slower than before.
[s]Hmmm...[/s]

EDIT: I've updated my ticket.

FYI: The captcha code used with the standard Freeola script is often unreadable. This example is: box box z box box
Please let me know if you can't recreate this and need more details.

EDIT2: The captcha issue has now been fixed!
Tue 29/03/11 at 15:22
Regular
"Ctrl, Alt, Woof"
Posts: 212
Hmmm... wrote:
For the info of others, even though this only seems to be affecting me!?


Received a reply to my ticket.
3rd party scripts need changing if they follow the previous Freeola instructions here
-f is no longer required and will now make the script fail.

I would have thought it was worth mentioning this on the Status Page rather than just closing the item to make it easier for others to find?



*sigh* Thanks Hmmm.... good job I rewrote all of my mail procedure to only call the one script. :o)


FWIW formmail scripts seem to run much slower than before.
[s]Hmmm...[/s]

Also - good info - I had noticed this but thought it was my laptop/browser/connection.

many thanks for the update.

JTD
Tue 29/03/11 at 15:45
Moderator
"Are you sure?"
Posts: 5,000
Cheers JTD :¬)


I think others (non-forum customers) will probably find out the hard way over the coming weeks :¬(


Re. Speed.
Are you noticing that sites/images don't seem to be quite so snappy loading (standard hosting) ?




[s]Hmmm...[/s]
Tue 29/03/11 at 17:27
Moderator
"Are you sure?"
Posts: 5,000
Hmmm... wrote:
3rd party scripts need changing if they follow the previous Freeola instructions here
-f is no longer required and will now make the script fail.



Just to update so say the -f instructions have been pulled from the page I linked to.

@Freeola - sorry if it's just me, but do you think this change could have been better communicated to your customers?


[s]Hmmm...[/s]
Tue 29/03/11 at 17:38
Regular
"Ctrl, Alt, Woof"
Posts: 212
Hmmm... wrote:
Cheers JTD :¬)


I think others (non-forum customers) will probably find out the hard way over the coming weeks :¬(


Re. Speed.
Are you noticing that sites/images don't seem to be quite so snappy loading (standard hosting) ?




[s]Hmmm...[/s]


Re speed: I've been thinkning for a while now that sites are taking a while to load - again, thought it was my connection at fault. Browsing seems to speed up after a while though..


The other thing I've noticed about the speed is the amount of time it's taking for the mail script to return. It's taking so long to send a moderatly small text email I don't know if it's crashed or is still working on it.

As I write this the script finished - took about 5 minutes to send a text email to 50ish people.

Not great but better than not working.

I'll keep an eye on the image loading.

JTD

Edit: Timed a script to susmit text email to 50 people via thrid part script - started 17:40 finished 17:46. SIX minutes to do what used to take no more than 10-20 seconds..
.

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