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I just wrote a six paragraph comment, took me a good 15-20 minutes and several tissues. Rechecked and ready to go, I hit Preview. What I got back was that damn 503 error. When everything came back it goes without saying (but I'm going to) my piece was gone. As I wrote it from the heart and in the right mood I know I won't be able to rewrite it.
It was just after midnight CST, and if my memory serves me correctly it happened at about the same time a couple of days ago.
Is there a set time for this to happen?
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Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C is your friend
As a rule of thumb I'd always keep a copy of a long post in the clipboard when writing directly to a site.
On Windows
Ctrl-A to select all the window contents
Ctrl-C to save it.
On a Mac
Command-A followed by Command-C
I often make small changes to my posts before commiting the post. I use this method to save the contents and put them back into the file that was originally pasted into the site.
I can recall many, many issues back in the days of dial-up where you got disconnected just as you were about to hit commit/save/run. I lost a whole programme that calculated coil spring compression rates that way. Mind you, that was circa 1973 and the input was on Paper Tape, the code was in Basic and I'd been online for almost two hours making changes to the code and I didn't save them back to paper tape.
Things are a lot better these days but I still take precautions..
Samantha
My rule of the thumb
Whenever I write a long post and it gets "eaten by the internets" I ask myself - do I feel like writing it again?
If the answer is "no" that it means that what I wrote hadn't been so important after all ...
With 503 errors and similar the text occasionally may be recovered by hitting "back".
Also sometimes starting to write it again entices the text to come out from its refuge in a cache of some sort.
I dunno why these things happen or not, could be the site software, so YMMV ...
However
If you have spent a half hour writing from the heart it may not be possible to recreate. It is gone and can't be brought back. Was it worth posting? Yes, I thought so. It was to hopefully give some comfort to somebody.
"Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.”
George Carlin
It happens
It happens to me, too. I never lose anything that way though because I just wait a minute or so, hit back on my browser and there's the stuff I typed.
I have noticed that it seems to happen more often at around 2 am eastern time, 11 pm my time. Piper is looking to see if there is a reset of some part of the system going on at that time. Since we now have four machines delivering the site, it gets complex.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Doesn't always work
I've used that before, so I hit the backarrow and lo and behold I got yet another 503 error. I opened another tab for BC and used that to check for the site going back up. Then I went back to my original tab but 503 had wiped it all.
"Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.”
George Carlin
YES. This has happened to me
YES. This has happened to me too. I always check BC on my phone on the way to work in the morning, which is roughly 7am UK time, which (if my maths is correct) marries up with all the other times mentioned above. So it's definitely a server/website thing. Probably.
Debs xxxx
1 a.m. glitch
Approximately 1 a.m. Eastern time is when the database backs itself up. Apparently this can cause errors when accessing the site.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Only the time has changed
I remember having to be careful at around 3:30AM because the site was going down then. Now it is at midnight. The more things change the more things remain the same.
"Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.”
George Carlin