Been having problems loading pages recently, as in last 24 hours. I get empty pages, eeasy fix though, just need a reload or 2.
Is this something on my end or is it a consequence of moving providers?
Been having problems loading pages recently, as in last 24 hours. I get empty pages, eeasy fix though, just need a reload or 2.
Is this something on my end or is it a consequence of moving providers?
been getting quite a few HTTP 503's the last couple days myself. Sometimes refreshing after a few seconds works, other times had to try many minutes later.
Twice today it's taken 30 seconds or so for the site to load.
Normally it's pretty much instant.
Starting for me today as well. Every few minutes, all I get are empty pages when I try to click a link.
No error message, HTML-response code is a solid 200, nothing weird... the page simply doesn't contains any content.
Firefox 137.
*EDIT* Just got another one, and noticed I was wrong. The 200 I get is for the fav-icon. The page itself gives a 503. Sorry about that.
Same here with Firefox for Android 137.0 (Build #2016081319).
At the Moment the Website works like it should, maybe at bit slow when hitting on Links.
Yeah, getting the same blank pages occasionally, with one or few reloads loading the page.
I tried posting a new chapter to a story but got the blank page in middle of the posting wizard and refresh broke the wizard so I guess I will have to try again once this is fixed.
I have also been having this issue since a number of days. It comes and goes, but seems to be happening for at least 2/3 of the page loads I attempt.
Also using Firefox 137 for Android, and it's happening for me both when on WiFi as well as mobile data.
The most common cause of this issue is being on a VPN connection.
It seems Cloudflare blocks some VPN connections.
I do not use a VPN and do not have currently any unusual problems with other sites that use Cloudflare. Using Firefox 133 on windows 11.
The situation seems to have gotten worse with about 2/3 of page loads failing currently.
Not using a VPN, and I haven't noticed any issues with other sites. No idea if any of them are using Cloudflare though.
Have to jump on the "I'm not using a VPN" bandwagon. I also don't have this issue with other sites that protect themselves through Cloudflare.
My usual Cloudflare-issues are that they suddenly show me a captcha to solve before they deliver the site's payload, not a 503.
Ironically, I had this problem when I tried to load this discussion.
I think it is related to the PHP.
That said, I prefer having a site with low censorship, even if it means I have to reload pages a lot.
Not using a VPN
OK. I'll investigate further.
For me, I never see this problem unless I'm on VPN.
It's not exactly worth investigating much since soon enough, the whole set up will change again as we move to our new hosting facility.
Please be patient.
It's not at the point where it would bother me. If it weren't for the one guy claiming it reset the posting process of their new story, I'd say: Just ignore us until the server-move is completed...
It is just an additional chapter and I have several next chapters queued up, so no interruption on that side. Just wanted to get more ahead on the posting part, so no hurry from that for me. But I do not know of course how others are affected.
But I do not know of course how others are affected.
It's been at best a minor inconvenience for me.
If it weren't for the one guy claiming it reset the posting process of their new story,
This only happens if it resets before the author chooses what type of submission it is.
After the type of submission is selected, the auto-save mechanism kicks in and progress is easily recovered by clicking 'resume'.
When is the change planned to happen?
And seems better this morning European time...
🤞
When is the change planned to happen?
No specific date/time.
The interruption would be fairly short, and we'll try to do it at around 4am EDT as that is the time of day with the lowest activity.
And since it's planned we'll have a 'the site down for maintenance' message until the transfer is done.
And seems better this morning European time...
I just experienced a 15 minute whiteout - Home page, Forum, Contact etc.
SciFiStories and FineStories were unaffected.
AJ
And again. SciFiStories and FineStories unaffected.
Could it be some form of denial of service attack?
AJ
And again. SciFiStories and FineStories unaffected.
Could it be some form of denial of service attack?
No attack. It's Cloudflare.
Finestories and Scifistories are now on a different server, and they're not behind cloudflare's proxy servers.
I'm trying to configure Cloudflare to minimize its DDOS protections, in order to minimize this kind of thing.
I'm trying to configure Cloudflare to minimize its DDOS protections, in order to minimize this kind of thing.
503 with blank page isn't due to cloudflare protection.
If the problem is with cloudflare (usually 502 or 504), there would be a cloudflare message, not a blank page.
If you do not see the error in your apache log, it's probably your load balancer.
You should check the cloudflare logs. When cloudflare protection is active, the visitor should see a some kind of security check warning. It's usual when connecting with tor. I do not think minimizing DDOS protection is needed or advisable.
https://developers.cloudflare.com/support/troubleshooting/cloudflare-errors/troubleshooting-cloudflare-5xx-errors/
By the way, you can replace your load balancer with a cloudflare service, that could simplify diagnostics. But I'm not sure it's as good as an F5 big-ip (not enough experience with that).
https://developers.cloudflare.com/load-balancing/load-balancers/
I don't know if it's of any use to you, but this is a response I got from the server yesterday: -
HTTP/2.0 503 Service Unavailable
Date: Mon, 07 Apr 2025 20:17:39 GMT
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Vary: User-Agent
cf-cache-status: DYNAMIC
report-to: {"endpoints":[{"url":"https://a.nel.cloudflare.com/report/v4?s=7prz1g3pS1hCU7Ido0Ejgqb%2B9%2FhKrdaCmObX%2B3befM%2F7Bm%2BMyYdLHgMGNkfdKPircGIZwrPHES%2FGqObKdFCG2mukoQ907a4Ly6gb%2Fck3gVm9UspyOFZUmsjsTRlH9JVVbvk3"}],"group":"cf-nel","max_age":604800}
nel: {"success_fraction":0,"report_to":"cf-nel","max_age":604800}
Server: cloudflare
cf-ray: 92cc35aa3a6148bc-LHR
server-timing: cfL4;desc="?proto=TCP&rtt=35499&min_rtt=7901&rtt_var=49148&sent=9&recv=13&lost=0&retrans=0&sent_bytes=1648&recv_bytes=1557&delivery_rate=356656&cwnd=101&unsent_bytes=0&cid=219396e9910b06b6&ts=16627&x=0"
X-Firefox-Spdy: h2
That was from the forum. It was ok when I tried again a few minutes later. First time I had seen it in recent months.
Since things are changing soon I'd say to leave this be, even if it might be interesting to know why it's occuring, the impact of the problem combined with the ease of the workaraound doesn't elevate this to more than a temporary annoyance.
Now if it continues after the move, that would be a whole other thing.
Been getting 503s here recently - using wget in a homebrew 'download entire story' which gets html and images, self-reporting as
--user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:40.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/40.1"
although it's actually running on a terminal under xubuntu.
The most recent two errors (the second occurred while typing this msg for the first):
--2025-04-16 21:04:24-- https://storiesonline.net/library/storyInfo.php?id=27735
Resolving storiesonline.net (storiesonline.net)... 104.26.1.141, 104.26.0.141, 172.67.72.54
Connecting to storiesonline.net (storiesonline.net)|104.26.1.141|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response...
HTTP/1.1 503 Service Unavailable
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2025 20:04:24 GMT
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Connection: keep-alive
Vary: User-Agent
cf-cache-status: DYNAMIC
Report-To: {"endpoints":[{"url":"https://a.nel.cloudflare.com/report/v4?s=tDpQMq%2BuYseosmwF358%2BGj5KFJIE8zd80MVcSn1CYOEzPzmMdmQPsytwfinm6TP5a4VUCbefOd5tCyEXns3DfXplePYqrOH1XXZ%2Bx7g8GTOfjqjqtF2GeaWcCtJI4T%2FQgWxX"}],"group":"cf-nel","max_age":604800}
NEL: {"success_fraction":0,"report_to":"cf-nel","max_age":604800}
Server: cloudflare
CF-RAY: 93164aa63f523477-MAN
server-timing: cfL4;desc="?proto=TCP&rtt=20030&min_rtt=16877&rtt_var=6666&sent=5&recv=7&lost=0&retrans=0&sent_bytes=3018&recv_bytes=795&delivery_rate=141537&cwnd=252&unsent_bytes=0&cid=e8aa8b0bdc33785d&ts=361&x=0"
2025-04-16 21:04:24 ERROR 503: Service Unavailable.
Converted links in 0 files in 0 seconds.
--2025-04-16 21:24:16-- https://storiesonline.net/library/storyInfo.php?id=27732
Resolving storiesonline.net (storiesonline.net)... 104.26.1.141, 104.26.0.141, 172.67.72.54
Connecting to storiesonline.net (storiesonline.net)|104.26.1.141|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response...
HTTP/1.1 503 Service Unavailable
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2025 20:24:16 GMT
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Connection: keep-alive
Vary: User-Agent
cf-cache-status: DYNAMIC
Report-To: {"endpoints":[{"url":"https://a.nel.cloudflare.com/report/v4?s=bUmskLIIAmqYEjuScngq1B75JH3nv17mKCBG7tZVODjfrZ%2BuieAJ5dZfDmRa2oapCe6pumjVxPzoKQcgx4fmfxb8dGisZVAl4mEAcJVSBpCzPhLVJiLRt6Axstr8qF40G6y2"}],"group":"cf-nel","max_age":604800}
NEL: {"success_fraction":0,"report_to":"cf-nel","max_age":604800}
Server: cloudflare
CF-RAY: 931667bcfdf7eb13-MAN
server-timing: cfL4;desc="?proto=TCP&rtt=20087&min_rtt=18083&rtt_var=6068&sent=5&recv=8&lost=0&retrans=0&sent_bytes=3017&recv_bytes=795&delivery_rate=120817&cwnd=252&unsent_bytes=0&cid=bc358049de335d9a&ts=342&x=0"
2025-04-16 21:24:16 ERROR 503: Service Unavailable.
ETA: This post is for info, feel free to ignore it; any news on the timing of the move to new servers?
ETA2: Retry succeeds (sometimes more than one required); the retry also connects to 104.26.0.141, the only problem for me is that the error breaks (terminates) the dequeue script that's reading and downloading N stories from a queuefile I built by drag-n-drop links from the site, so I have to manually restart with a new N (not a significant problem)
ETA3:Normally I would have run the dequeue script overnight in the site's slow time and with greater delays (inter-chapter and inter-story), but the need to monitor the process at least somewhat at present means I need to be running it about now.
ETA4: Another one, about the fifth since starting this post
--2025-04-16 22:21:42-- https://storiesonline.net/library/storyInfo.php?id=27778
Resolving storiesonline.net (storiesonline.net)... 104.26.1.141, 104.26.0.141, 172.67.72.54
Connecting to storiesonline.net (storiesonline.net)|104.26.1.141|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response...
HTTP/1.1 503 Service Unavailable
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2025 21:21:42 GMT
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Connection: keep-alive
Vary: User-Agent
cf-cache-status: DYNAMIC
Report-To: {"endpoints":[{"url":"https://a.nel.cloudflare.com/report/v4?s=YNmOEed%2BOk1uMLGO%2FjnXn0qw3HiatuA2ugRdhStnp67GwscH4sHJ1tHPPBspAnVpNTua%2FZv9BlyUTU3FZT5ct9v7rnjl59jYUCpuMkpTqpX6sFFt%2B5MTlsHT3vG%2FbwNydyRJ"}],"group":"cf-nel","max_age":604800}
NEL: {"success_fraction":0,"report_to":"cf-nel","max_age":604800}
Server: cloudflare
CF-RAY: 9316bbdfcf38b320-MAN
server-timing: cfL4;desc="?proto=TCP&rtt=19351&min_rtt=16630&rtt_var=6518&sent=5&recv=7&lost=0&retrans=0&sent_bytes=3018&recv_bytes=795&delivery_rate=152453&cwnd=252&unsent_bytes=0&cid=d94b668906728e71&ts=347&x=0"
2025-04-16 22:21:42 ERROR 503: Service Unavailable.
Converted links in 0 files in 0 seconds.
I don't know what it's got against Matt Twassel, possibly just that a there are a lot of his in the queue: Making a liar of me:
--2025-04-16 22:26:59-- https://storiesonline.net/library/storyInfo.php?id=27795
Resolving storiesonline.net (storiesonline.net)... 104.26.1.141, 104.26.0.141, 172.67.72.54
Connecting to storiesonline.net (storiesonline.net)|104.26.1.141|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response...
HTTP/1.1 503 Service Unavailable
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2025 21:26:59 GMT
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Connection: keep-alive
Vary: User-Agent
cf-cache-status: DYNAMIC
Report-To: {"endpoints":[{"url":"https://a.nel.cloudflare.com/report/v4?s=s5e1e3E3FrNvbhgxu%2BuCT3DfA76Q3kpyzboE%2FE5Ctg4R3LdBRjc0N5zW%2FVP7YrIX4aI3SVDe5fHG%2B1j2mn44PZRWc8eMoREc%2F39Z7d04XA6YFqf2%2BunUql%2FXjOD99vnnUqUz"}],"group":"cf-nel","max_age":604800}
NEL: {"success_fraction":0,"report_to":"cf-nel","max_age":604800}
Server: cloudflare
CF-RAY: 9316c39d89ceeb17-MAN
server-timing: cfL4;desc="?proto=TCP&rtt=18986&min_rtt=17624&rtt_var=6049&sent=5&recv=7&lost=0&retrans=0&sent_bytes=3018&recv_bytes=795&delivery_rate=139862&cwnd=240&unsent_bytes=0&cid=c6dbdd28d03492e0&ts=357&x=0"
2025-04-16 22:26:59 ERROR 503: Service Unavailable.
Converted links in 0 files in 0 seconds.
I think I'll give up reporting them for now...
ETA5: Possibly of relevance:
My dequeue script, if it fails to read a story, then attempts to open it in the browser, both providing an alert and where relevant the 'Not Found!' page, or the 'run out of downloads' error page. I get four types of break at the moment: 1/ Not Found, 2/ Out of downloads, 3/ blank story page, and 4/ desired story. All four of these give the 503 error, which I wouldn't have expected for the first two; perhaps this is a clue?
Also, there is some over-aggressive caching going on somewhere, as the main page download count sometimes does not update even on multiple reloads, even left for up to an hour - makes it difficult to give the correct count to download.
For completeness, no VPN
if your mobile browser has tracking resistance, as in it doesn't allow fingerprinting, it may cause this issue.
On the iPhone to make sure this is off, go to the settings app, scroll down all the way to Apps, find Safari, in the safari options, scroll to the bottom to reach 'Advanced', tap 'Advanced', under 'Privacy' check that the 'Advanced Tracking and fingerprinting protection says 'Private Browsing' and NOT 'all browsing'.
In safari use a normal tab/window and not a private one.
A further observation regarding this, it seems to be periodic, as in works for timeperiod, white pages for timeperiod.
For me it's not blank pages- it just takes 30 sec or more for the page to load.
Then everything loads normally for a while, then 30 or more seconds for a page to load...
Hopefully once everything's been moved to the new host, all will be good again.
As Lazeez said almost a week ago, it's Cloudflare. My impression is that he's playing with the settings in order to let the customers in while blocking the ddos merchants out.
Cloudflare is supposed to be good at 2) but has been pretty crappy at 1) for a couple of months now, especially if you are not using a new version of Chrome, Edge or Firefox. In the past they have tended to fix this kind of thing in a day or so but now they are asking browser developers to sign very restrictive NDAs and the developers are not prepared to do so.
I've got the latest version of Edge, and aren't having any issues with other sites i use that i know go through Cloudflare.
So it's very likely a configuration issue, that will be sorted once the site's been moved to the new provider.
I've had trouble with Cloudflare with particular VPNs and particular exit nodes. Weirdly, it's not storiesonline. That seems to work perfectly.
The problem just reoccurred, it had been ok an hour ago but 5 minutes ago it was very definitely not ok.
Now it's cleared up again.
Edit: ok, looks like someone was playing around. A couple of minutes later things broke again but only for a few minutes, and now things have been ok for maybe two hours.
It's been happening to me on and off over the last week or so. Sometimes a couple of reloads will get the page back. Sometimes a dozen or more reloads doesn't work. I'm not using a vpn and it it's a recent problem, I didn't used to have it, it's definitely a recent issue.
When I get blank pages, which has been happening more often lately, the end of the address shows php. Don't know why, I'm using Firefox 137, no vpn. Editing the address has no effect.
I cannot duplicate the error, it seems random, but when it shows up the site is unusable. Closing the browser and logging in again seems to help, but that's not always an option.
edit - when I just tried to log out, I got a blank page with this address:
https://storiesonline.net/sol-secure/user/sign_out.php
I cannot duplicate the error, it seems random, but when it shows up the site is unusable. Closing the browser and logging in again seems to help, but that's not always an option.
It's not a log out log in issue.
Just wait roughly 20 seconds then reload the page.
I'm trying to determine whether my iPhone or the website is having loading issues. I will be reading a story, try to go to next page and blank page. If I try to scroll a faint busy time wheel shows but nothing. When I go back to previous page no problem. When I go to another story no problem. Eventually it resolves itself and I am able to continue. No rhyme or reason when it happens, on a 1-10 annoyance 3 or 4. Main thing is me or you. I read some posts, no VPN, reader only, read throughout day (shut-in).
I'm trying to determine whether my iPhone or the website is having loading issues.
I've seen the blank page on a Win 10 PC using Fire Fox.
Me too.
Normanly reloading helped.
But just now. I didn't even get to the homepage after multiple reloads.
When I checked other browsers Chrome, Iron and LibreWolf all worked.
I therefore deleted the data firefox stored and voils I'm back with blank pages that restore after a reload.
Ah not just me then. Seen a 503 error a few times when moving on to a new chapter. Reloading gives the same, wait for a minute and retry it works OK. No VPN etc here in the UK. Server restart perhaps?
Just had a 10 minute outage from 07:21GMT to 07:31, 503 errors loading the page. If that helps.
This is getting really fucking annoying, sometimes my PC works as it should, at other times it does not work at all - even if I wait 20 or 30 or 60 seconds.
One such time was maybe 5 minutes ago and it lasted a while.
Going to my smartphone (with the "other address") worked just fine, although it's possible I did that during a "it works" phase.
Edit: Now it's misbehaving again, and I'm surprised I can even write this (I had the thread open in one tab).
Intermittent 503 error all day so far. Win10 with Chrome. Seems to be mostly when going from chapter or chapter or 'click here for rest of chapter'
The site gives a nonsense reply on curl:
curl https://www.storiesonline.net/
301 Moved Permanently
Moved Permanently
The document has moved here.
A site should never give a 301 to point to itself, that definitely breaks things.
The same error comes from all the IP4 addresses provided:
104.26.1.141
172.67.72.54
104.26.0.141
The problem seems quite common now and long lasting.
Firefox just gives empty pages, chrome and edge give:
503 storiesonline.net is currently unable to handle this request.
Connecting to Server seems to fail often also posting here or trying to get next part of a chapter.
Although Cloudflare's status page shows everything is good, i'm wondering if that really is the case.
For the last couple of days, some sites that i know use Cloudflare have been quite sluggish to load, and a few other sites that i suspect also use them have been slow as well.
short further comment: It seem that the error happens now almost 75% of the time on first connect and lasts for a fairly long time(more than 5 minutes). And once connected I can usually read about 1-2 chapters before it happens again.
I am getting a 503 error more frequently lately.
I've yet to get an error code or a blank page.
I click on the link, then the top left corner of the Tab spins until the page finally loads (10 secs or a minute or more later).
Twice now, when the site 'died' using Firefox (137.0.2) I logged in with Chromium (135.0.7049.84, using it now) and had no issues.
What's the difference? Does Cloudflare only mess with Firefox?
After getting a 503 error in Firefox, less than 2 minutes later I successfully logged back in with Firefox.
Cloudflare is known to have problems with non-mainstream browsers, this started a couple of months ago and they appear to have very little interest in fixing it.
I thought the "current level of Firefox" was exempt from that but they are demanding NDA agreements with browser maintainers and I suppose that could be a problem with Open Source browsers - the disclosure is in the source.
Twice now, when the site 'died' using Firefox (137.0.2) I logged in with Chromium (135.0.7049.84, using it now) and had no issues.
What's the difference? Does Cloudflare only mess with Firefox?
I'm on Edge, which is Chromium based.
My hand-built download script (referenced above) suffered from 503s (about 2 tries in 5 at peak times, roughly never in quiet times) until I built in (up to 5) retries on fail.
I've tried changing the Firefox user agent to see if this helps - it shouldn't, but in the past Microsoft IIS servers served up bad content (negative left margin) for Firefox causing a bad page rendering, and changing the user agent fixed this. I consider it a possibility that M$ or others could have applied commercial pressure to CF to drive users away from non-mainstream browsers. The download script used a user agent pulled from an old version of Firefox.
I consider it a possibility that M$ or others could have applied commercial pressure to CF to drive users away from non-mainstream browsers.
That does not make a lot of sense, they see no benefit from Safari or any mobile browser.
My guess is that Cloudflare have done something fancy and are not prepared to tell browser maintainers of obscure browsers what it is without a NDA.
Before that it was a question of resources, CF were not prepared to test their stuff under 10-15 different browsers, and that's without catering for ancient versions of Firefox. I'm not sure if they should support Internet Exploder at all, even Microsoft was telling people it was a gaping set of security holes which needed to be buried with a stake through its heart.
Another possibility is that maybe Firefox is ignoring any Retry-After response-header; I can't see any reasonable way to view the response headers in my script without major hassles, though I should be able to use developer's tools on Firefox to see if Retry-After is being sent and actioned during normal browsing - I just can't be bothered at present, as it's not misbehaving so far with the changed user-agent.
use developer's tools on Firefox to see if Retry-After is being sent
It doesn't seem to be getting as far as this browser - just the 503 header
it's not misbehaving so far with the changed user-agent.
I must have been looking during a quiet time, I've had plenty of blank pages and 503s whilst claiming I'm using IE5 on XP (but, at least some websites are able to see I'm using Firefox on Linux)
For info, the likelihood of a 503 seems higher during the 'busy' times (US evening, UK midnight-ish) and lower during more quiet times (UK mornings), 'busy' and 'quiet' taken from the underlying curve of the graph on the 'Why?' link (the click-for-more explanation)
Of course, I've taken so long getting round to typing this up that Lazeez may have already fixed things.
I've taken so long getting round to typing this up that Lazeez may have already fixed things.
Lazeez is no longer on any of the US/Canadian timezones, he was most probably asleep "UK midnight-ish".
I've been having the 503 errors all over the Easter weekend. Chrome beta on an android tablet here. UK based no VPN. Most of the time it'll work again a minute or two later. I might start downloading as epub when the site is working and read things offline.
Is there any fix forthcoming? I have the same issues with firefox, chrome and safari browsers and it only started after the recent server change.
It is extremely frustrating when trying to upload chapters and getting a blank screen. Closing the browser and reopening does not always work.
Last 2 days it's been really frustrating, 503 every 3-4 clicks. I work in software testing and almost feels like something wrong with load balancing (assuming the site uses). And for those on iPad, at least in Chrome for some reason you just get blank pages without seeing the http error code.
And for those on iPad, at least in Chrome for some reason you just get blank pages without seeing the http error code.
I get the blank pages without seeing the http error code using FireFox on Win10.
And today, I was only getting a "File not found" message.
That's the result of one fix attempt.
I checked around a bit and apparently issues with cloudflare is nothing new, look at this reddit discussion for example: https://www.reddit.com/r/CloudFlare/comments/13twgqb/cant_access_any_site_using_cloudflare/
In that discussion there is also a link to a website which displays info about your connection with CF, one of the lines says I'm not a verified bot and that I'm 94% human, wonder what the rest of me is?
That particular post looked to me to be somewhat older (I could not see a date) and that particular problem was almost certainly fixed in relative short order.
As of maybe two months ago, there have been a whole raft of problems with CloudFlare and they are specifically ignoring complaints.
Oh, I know it's older, the only date I see claims the post is 2 years old. I just wanted to point out that issues with Cloudflare isn't anything new and isn't limited to only SoL.
Now I'm getting 503's from Chromium and Firefox is working. Kinda psychotic.
Must be driving Laz to drink.
Gets me wondering if Laz is just greyhaired or have gotten bald from tearing his hair out.
Regularly over the last week or so I get blank pages when loading a page on the site, whether it's another chapter, the forum, whatever. On my iPad running the latest iOS. Usually it works if I wait 5 minutes then reload it.
I just read this thread, closed the tab, refreshed the forum page and got the 503. FS and SciFi working fine.
After a but over 5 minutes, the forum page worked again - re-opened this thread to comment, and got 503 again.
It came back after a couple of minutes, FS and SciFi still working.
Now even file save as is acting up.
Firefox gives back download manfunctioning retry downloading.
But it seems that the file are complete.
Retried files allways only load the partial files withe click to load the rest button. That is a real inconvenience then wanting to read off-line.
It may have been a rate limiting issue by cloudflare (although they never say that), due to the level of service purchased.
I purchased the higher tier, and it seems to be allowing more traffic through.
Give it some time, and tomorrow, if it still give 503 errors, please report it.
Although, please note, that VPN connections may still be problematic due to security settings.
I know it's not tomorrow yet, but...
HTTP/2.0 503 Service Unavailable
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2025 16:53:56 GMT
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Vary: User-Agent
cf-cache-status: DYNAMIC
server-timing: cfCacheStatus;desc="DYNAMIC"
speculation-rules: "/cdn-cgi/speculation"
Server: cloudflare
cf-ray: 934ee140fe2333fe-LHR
Alt-Svc: h3=":443"; ma=86400
X-Firefox-Spdy: h2
----------------------------------------------------------
FS is ok.
Sol worked again when tried at 17:01:59 GMT
BUT when I tried to reply to this topic, I got it again: -
https://storiesonline.net/res/frm/resp.forum.php
HTTP/2.0 503 Service Unavailable
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2025 17:12:20 GMT
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Vary: User-Agent
cf-cache-status: DYNAMIC
Server: cloudflare
cf-ray: 934efc382a4e459f-LHR
Alt-Svc: h3=":443"; ma=86400
X-Firefox-Spdy: h2
----------------------------------------------------------
I see that the format/content of the response are different to previous ones (as in earlier posts), so something has changed.
rate limiting issue by cloudflare
Tut tut - rate limit should return a 429(?), not 503, and both should return the Retry-after header. A fail on Cloudflare's part.
One thing I thought of: when reading up about 503, I found an article which noted (Amazon's version of CF)
gives a 503 if it cannot get a good connection to the source website (and I bet CF is similar), and put that info together with you having had a problem in the past with one of the load-balanced servers needing a reboot; however I doubt that's the problem here as during the quiet times recently a 503 is rare-to-unknow, whereas if it were a downed server, I would expect roughly the same failure rate.
For information only
I purchased the higher tier, and it seems to be allowing more traffic through.
Looking good so far, but it looked good at times a few days ago.
Firefox fork running under Linux here,
absolutely no problems for a solid 40 hours now - ever since LJ "purchased the higher tier" and that filtered down.
Since the only problems which are still being reported are with Safari, and LJ is a Mac fan, he can analyse that himself.
Still not 'tomorrow', but
HTTP/2 503 Service Unavailable
date: Wed, 23 Apr 2025 21:06:53 GMT
content-type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
vary: User-Agent
cf-cache-status: DYNAMIC
server-timing: cfCacheStatus;desc="DYNAMIC"
speculation-rules: "/cdn-cgi/speculation"
server: cloudflare
cf-ray: 935053c91a8f26aa-MAN
alt-svc: h3=":443"; ma=86400
X-Firefox-Spdy: h2
Seems to have done the job.
Now there are just occasional pauses where it might take a second or so before the page loads (not 10 to 60+), when normally it's instant (or close enough to it).
Seems to have done the job.
Yes, it seems that the worst is fixed indeed. Even using VPN, I haven't gotten any blank pages since yesterday.
While cloudflare says 'unmetered', it may be unmetered from a bandwidth point of view, but it's metered from the request count point.
After the upgrade in the account, SOL's requests going through went from just under 300,000 requests per hour to over 500,000. They were blocking half of the requests at the peak.
Although, please note, that VPN connections may still be problematic due to security settings.
Perhaps the most annoying part of my current internet experience is sites needlessly blocking VPN connections. I always use them if I'm using an unknown WiFi point, and usually use them at home to keep the scum at Comcast from tracking my interet usage.
CloudFlare also seems too aggressive with their 'verification' and does not like forked browsers, and is too suspicious of VPNs.
Safari browser still getting sustained blank white pages. Certainly for longer than just a few seconds.
Just now had an extended pause, but it was for about 8 sec- sill less than even the shortest previous pauses (and way, way less than the more common pauses).
I usually spend several hours a day on SOL, and I haven't had a blank page since my post about them.
i just have found out firefox seems to forget visted pages on SOL.
I just seen a story links not marked as visited so I checked out if the storyhad new chapters. Because I temembered the chapter meanting as update was the same as yesterday.
now after clicking the link I found all chapters unvisted since firefox on SOL seems to sct up then dowloading a chapter for later offline reading.
The pages seem to download correctly but the dowload history error downloading retry.
One of my patrons in New Zealand reports that mobile Safari on both an iPad and iPhone cannot access pages on SOL (blank pages). We've tried all the usual things, and no joy. Been going on for about 48 hours now.
I'm in New Zealand but use Android rather than Apple. I've had the same consistent blank page problem that started the same time as Michael's patron and continues to the present. Ironically, given Lazeez's frequent warnings against VPNs, I am only able to read this thread and comment here by VPNing (to Canada). I have had no blank pages in the last couple of hours as I caught up on my reading.
I also spent time in an airport yesterday (no VPN). I had no issues with Flightradar24.
The author QM is in NZ and he now has to use a VPN as well.
Thread https://storiesonline.net/d/s6/t13410/site-appears-to-blocked
It's not just SOL.
I have the same type of problem with FlightRadar24. I get the page heading, but no map or aircraft are drawn.
I get similar problems with certain forums - except on these, clicking on a topic just presents a blank page.
Firefox 136.0.2 on Linux.
I have the same type of problem with FlightRadar24. I get the page heading, but no map or aircraft are drawn.
FR24 uses Cloudflare.
Very occasionally i'll get a message from Cloudflare saying the site is having issues and to try again later, but refreshing will get the page up.
Sometimes the map page will load, but without airports or aircraft on it; refreshing gets them to load.
That has been occurring for several months now.
It wouldn't surprise me if it's as Laz posted- what a customer considers their load to be, differs from what Cloudflare considers the site's load to be.
I recently read an article about the impact of AI bots on sites such as Wikipedia- a 20-50% increase in traffic due to AI/ML bots scraping for input data.
Could be what's happening here- even if they are blocked, depending on how they are configured- instead of being told and accepting that there's no access here, they could still try again 24 hours later, over and over again (just in case things have changed...).
Was that supposed to be AI/LLM (Large Language Model)? If not, what is an ML?
Machine Learning.
Forgot about the LLM.
Too many acronyms to remember these days.
At least for me it seems fixed and in the past few days there has been no problems at all, unlike before where the problems were constant.
At least for me it seems fixed and in the past few days there has been no problems at all, unlike before where the problems were constant.
Since the fix, i've only had one longer pause for the page to load, which was still shorter than the shortest of pauses before.
Now, if there is a pause, it's just a second or so. And nowhere near the frequency of issues before.
I think most of it will come down to your location, routing, and Cloudflare's server location that you're going through.
Running windows 7 here, using Firefox. I keep getting the white page of no activity myself, over the last 48 hours. My solution is Ctrl F5, since it fixes 'whatever' so the page comes up normally. That tells me I am deleting something that is corrupted, not allowing the page to display properly. I have Firefox, and the site both set to dark mode, so a white page is contrary to those settings, making me suspect something is interrupting the display of the page. I am no programmer, to know what everything means. I am the troublesome type, knowing enough to get into trouble, not always enough to fix what I done.
One other thing I run on Firefox is NoScript 12.1.1. Meaning that the only Java script I permit to run on SOL is SOL it's self. The only other Java script that attempts to run is …cloudflareinsights.com, that is blocked from running, ALWAYS. So anything related to that service never runs on my machine. So the white screen might or might not be related to that script, but I have never had the white screen issue until recently.
I get picky about what I allow to run from any website, selectively allowing only specific scripts, after blocking everything until after I see what is trying to run.
Further testing with FlightRadar24 - since it seems consistently broken - if you change the security settings to allow "known fingerprinters", FR works as expected.
Someone with more skills could probably find out which "fingerprinter" site hangs.
No idea how this might apply to SOL or other sites.
As of last night, first noticed around 01:00 BST, getting solid blank pages (about eight pages of forum posts opened by ctrl-click) in Firefox. Gave up because I couldn't report them. This morning (~09:30BST), refreshes (ctrl-R) on the first few of those pages gave a couple of 503s (I'd opened the developer tools network view, ctrl-shift-E), these appeared to be the usual Cloudflare fails; seems to have been behaving since then. One unusual thing I've noticed about the successful loads is a failed GET of a Cloudflare script reported at the end, but IDK what this means.
ETA: ...and doing a resend for that GET within the developers tools has it succeed, followed by a failed GET of (what appears to be) the same script. Methinks this may be tied in to the Cloudflare service levels or, from the quick look I had at it, browser compatibility - websearching the 503s and Firefox shows it's a problem not restricted to this site, and requires code incorporating into the browser which is covered by an NDA, and so not available for an open source browser like Firefox. I've a strong suspicion that this is a factor in the precipitous drop in Firefox usage from >40% to < 2%
ETA2: Is there anyone here having the 503/Blank pages problem who is NOT running an open-source browser?
I just got hit: -
HTTP/2.0 503 Service Unavailable
Date: Sat, 26 Apr 2025 10:18:05 GMT
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Vary: User-Agent
cf-cache-status: DYNAMIC
server-timing: cfCacheStatus;desc="DYNAMIC"
speculation-rules: "/cdn-cgi/speculation"
Server: cloudflare
cf-ray: 936555888e729448-LHR
Alt-Svc: h3=":443"; ma=86400
X-Firefox-Spdy: h2
----------------------------------------------------------
It was ok again a couple of minutes later.
Hit again:
POST /ablog/Xalir HTTP/2
Host: storiesonline.net
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; InfoPath.2; .NET CLR 3.0.04506.30; .NET CLR 3.0.04506.648; .NET CLR 3.5.21022)
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/webp,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language: en,en-US;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, br
Referer: https://storiesonline.net/ablog/Xalir
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Content-Length: 4
Origin: https://storiesonline.net
Connection: keep-alive
Cookie: sa_pref=57876; lvt=1745677037; cookie=Ol4cQ8; salt=MY51ULnXCW; x=1517476228; selSt=5564; lst=15008; sbs=; stwd=932; solcore=i67af5pvrhb5l99g0rj4raptjo; drk=0
Upgrade-Insecure-Requests: 1
Cache-Control: max-age=0
TE: Trailers
going from first to last page of Xalir's blog. Immediate refresh still 503 (to gather above data), refresh a few mins later OK.
For those who don't know (lookin' at you, AJ), on a multipage non-story page (with nearby page selectors top and bottom) you can get to a page which doesn't have a button showing by clicking on the shaded larger current page button and using the up/down keys or deleting the page number by whatever method works for you and typing your desired page; after you have the desired page number in the button hit return or just click on the page outside the buttons.
And again, trying to save these edits:
HTTP/2 503 Service Unavailable
date: Sat, 26 Apr 2025 15:08:07 GMT
content-type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
vary: User-Agent
cf-cache-status: DYNAMIC
server-timing: cfCacheStatus;desc="DYNAMIC"
speculation-rules: "/cdn-cgi/speculation"
server: cloudflare
cf-ray: 9366fe60c95fb12e-MAN
alt-svc: h3=":443"; ma=86400
X-Firefox-Spdy: h2
clicking on the shaded larger current page button and using the up/down keys
That I didn't know!
11.5% ;-)
AJ
OK, a little more research (using FlightRadar24, since it fails consistently, not just randomly like SOL and others).
Loading of the web page content halts when https://raven-static.aditude.io is called.
So what is raven-static? Something involved with Amz. Web Services and Cloudfare. So pretty obviously a tracker.
https://pulsedive.com/ioc-url/67836257/https_raven_static_aditude_io_prod_1_5_0_raven_js
And the message from FlightRadar24:
Our engineers are working hard to make the service available as soon as possible.
Page Error
Your IP xxx.xx.xxx.xxx
Web server is returning an unknown error
There is an unknown connection issue between Cloudflare and the origin web server. As a result, the web page can not be displayed.
Summary: seems that the problem is more widespread than just SOL, and not likely anything that Lazeez can do anything about.
There is an unknown connection issue between Cloudflare and the origin web server.
So it looks like a Cloudflare and/or Amazon Web Services issue.
What's particularly annoying is that issue is stopping the rest of the page from loading. There are plenty of other web sites i go to that will often show in the tab as still loading, but at least the page has loaded as far as i'm concerned- i can read what's there even if it's still trying to load more.
Just had my first 10sec+ pause since the Cloudflare plan upgrade, that ended with an err_connection_reset, then the page loaded.
If your are using noScript addon for firefox and or an adblocker then try
giveing SOL all possible righs in noscript and or deactivate the adblocker for SOL.
It did help me.
SOL seems to run soothly again for me knock on wood keep yout fingers crossed.
Just to add, and probably obfuscate, the discussion:
I was getting 10 to 20 second timeouts loading pages here a couple of days ago [actual cloudflare url showing up in lower left hand corner of the screen outside of the forum boundaries]
Since win11 still has some problems now and then, I rebooted my system.Happened to run into an update cycle [second in two days]. In the couple of days since then I have had no blank screens or long delays.
I read sories mostly on my phone. Just had a 15m 'Site not found' error. This is the 3-4-5th in the last day or two.
Just another data point.
Just had something new occur.
Long delay for page to start loading- then the page only partially loaded (and very slowly till it got stuck).
Never had that occur before.
The problem is back, I wanted to download a completed story and also look at the latest chapter of another one. No can do.
Even looking at this thread fails.
So how can I post this? I have my smartphone set up to use the (costs extra) "other" site name. So do I need to go this way on my desktop PC as well?
Edit: That works, using the alternate site-name on my PC works just fine. Now using SOL.net does as well, wtf is going on?
Cloudflare is shit.
I've opened a ticket about New Zealand issue three days ago and no response even though I'm paying for their highest tier service.
I'm working on building a fleet of proxy servers myself.
We'll see.
I was hoping to have rebuilt the text search service by now... stupid cloudflare. It seems they have more business than they can handle, and it's severely affecting sol's traffic.
When I upgraded the service, for the first three days, traffic tripled from the lower tier, but 3 days in, we're back restricted to only 10% over the lower tier. Waste of money.
Awesome!
I had the blank-page problem for maybe 10 minutes, and during that time using https://NotSolAtAll/ worked just fine, but then SOL became accessible itself again.
(this is being posted using SOL, not NotSOL)
It really is one thing after another for you.
Sounds like Enshittification of Cloudflare.
They've long been considered the best CDN (Content Delivery Network), but it sounds like they've been picking up more & more business, but not building up their systems to support that increased business.
Not to mention the increase in load from the present geo-political tensions (North Koren, China, Russia have all been ramping up their attacks over the lasty few years, but apparently have taken things to a whole new level lately).
Not to mention with the AI/ML/LLM scraping boom traffic explosion adding to server loads...
May be worth considering-
https://runcloud.io/blog/cloudflare-alternatives
I don't want to jinx things, but it's been several hours now, and not so much as a glitch, let alone a pause or extended delay let alone an extended wait...
I have an ongoing problem with blank pages. was just on my pc but it has now spread to my phone and pad. really irritating. I hope it does get corrected. I would hate to walk away even if it is only for a few weeks. I RECENTLY renewed a 12 month membership.
jh
I've been getting a lot of "server not responding" and some 503 errors lately, as in past 2-3 days, is this all down to cloudflare or is there something else happening?
If this is cloudflare, they are very far off keeping the promises they make on their website.
Whereas for me, as i posted a couple of days ago, things have been as good as they have ever been...
Click on a link, and the page loads.
It's very intermittent, things are good for a while, just cruising along the highway, and then you suddenly drive into a mudhole, you plod your way through it and suddenly things are fine again. Just makes me wonder what's going on.
It's very intermittent, things are good for a while, just cruising along the highway, and then you suddenly drive into a mudhole, you plod your way through it and suddenly things are fine again. Just makes me wonder what's going on.
That's the sort of thing i was getting before, but things are still going well here (NT, Australia); been that way for 3 days now.