whats with all the "Ex Members" im starting to see..  :-/

I'm looking into it. Please give me a list of names with links to their posts.

Hostgator is still looking into this issue, and whatever is crashing the PA forum. It is unusual for them to take so long to sort something like this out, so it is probably a broader problem with their servers or something. The "ex member" problem is most likely caused by files going missing.

freediver wrote on Aug 18^th, 2015 at 1:09pm:

Hostgator is still looking into this issue, and whatever is crashing the PA forum. It is unusual for them to take so long to sort something like this out, so it is probably a broader problem with their servers or something. The "ex member" problem is most likely caused by files going missing.

Is there anyway you can delete my other email address from your files, as well as the name John Smith, so that I can re register as john Smith again?

Can't you think of something more original . . .like Jane Doe maybe?

Hey FD .... I just logged in as John Smith with my tablet, which I rarely use. My tablet is set to automatically log in ... however, when I tried to post it said something about needing to fill in the 'name field'.

Not sure if this helps or not.

bogarde73 wrote on Aug 18^th, 2015 at 3:26pm:

Can't you think of something more original . . .like Jane Doe maybe?

depends, am I trying to come up with a name for you? in which case Jane doe is fine!

Hostgator seems to be MIA at the moment. No idea what is going on. I'll update as soon as I hear anything.

Thanks Freediver.

thanks FD :)

:)

PA is back online, thanks to Hostgator tech support.

Do we still have ex member issues?

freediver wrote on Aug 26^th, 2015 at 2:27pm:

PA is back online, thanks to Hostgator tech support.

Sorry to say, Freediver, PA has gone down, yet again. :'(

Best place for it.

Sorry about the extended downtime for PA.

Last time they repaired it hostgator said their tech support wait time was "longer than they would like it to be." The MySQL server is currently offline. I don't think there is anything I can do about it from my end.

There is a way to fix it. The ex-member status is caused by zero byte vars files. Zero-byte .vars files come from the server hiccuping during a post when it has the .vars file open to be updated.  When the server recovers, the open file is now empty.

For the members showing up as ex-members, you just need to add temporary vars files using a working vars file as a template. .

Once you've done that bit of tapestry, it might be cogent to back up the members' vars files by just making a copy of them all in a subdirectory. It should take up very little space.  That way, you can restore them without any dramas if it happens again.

Seems to be happening again, I've just noticed member "Aussie" is now an "ex-member".

Thread he created a few hours ago: Abbott's Royal Commission

Thanks John, that's what the problem was.