Chapter Websites and WEBS Support

Just wondering if anyone else is having, or has had trouble uploading photos to the Photo Gallery on the news WEBS hosted chapter web sites? While the editor is somewhat klunky, I've managed to struggle with it for severlal months now and we've got a fairly decent site put together. We haven't had any problems uploading photos until this weekend.

Some will load and others will not... but it isn't the same pattern, just random failures during each attempt. Here is what I get when I try to upload...

Attachment 1756

I posted a request on the WEBS - GetSatisfaction forum and they simply merged my request with another long and ongoing discussion about people having the same, or similar issues. http://support.webs.com/webs/topics/...from_gsfn=true

The primary recommendation on this thread was to update Adobe Flash. I've tried to upload my photos from three different computers using two different browsers (IE and Firefox)... and I've even updated Flash (which was already current) on one machine... still, no joy.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Hal, have you had to address this before? The web sites are alright once we struggle through the setup, but maintaining them is difficult enough without the added frustration. Hopefully someone has a fix.

Hi Mark -

I haven't encountered this issue directly, and I haven't gotten any other reports from other Chapters at this point. I'll reach out to Webs and see what I can find out, but please bear with me as I'm headed out of town for a week (to work our booth at Sun 'n Fun) so I'll be at least occasionally off the grid.

Best -

Hal

Thanks... I'm working with them too, but so far the solutions are not working out. There are several other WEBS users that are having similar problems outside of EAA, so hopefully they will find a solution.

If they do, I'll post an update here.

Thanks again!

No real explination was offered on what the problem was, but suddenly I was able to upload images just as I was in months past. The moderator on the WEBS forum simply stated, "This issue should now be resolved. Please let us know if additional assistance is needed."

Glad to hear that it's fixed, and thanks for the update Mark - I'm still curious as to what happened. Keep me posted if anything similar pops up again.

Glad you had some luck with Webs support - I'm trying to get the forums working for our chapter and I contacted Webs support on 4/10 and they still have yet to address my problem.

FYI - I had multiple conversations with Webs' director of support today about the forums issue - I hope to have an update tomorrow.

Hal is trying to get the Webs staff to correct this forum issue. As the www.cubs2oshkosh.com site, an EAA Chapter site mod is having this same forum problem, I too am not happy. Let's hope that a resolution comes sooner rather than later. Another site, not EAA related that I have with Webs has a forum area that is working. Go figure!

This is good to hear - I tried diagnosing the issue myself, but had no luck at all. I have emailed them for updates and get the "we're working on it" response... The disappointing thing is I have a presentation coming up for the chapter on how to use the forums for flight scheduling and ridealongs, and I figured a month would be a substantial enough timeframe for it to be fixed. Hal, thanks for getting on them about this issue, it sucks to hear its not just my site, but it's also kind of a blessing in that maybe you will be able to get them to fix it more quickly because it's multiple sites having the issue.

Thanks for the help!

David

EDIT

One other thing if you talk to Webs again - if I log in to manage the webpage as the webmaster, and edit the forums page, the reply boxes are there for me... But log out of editing the page and the manager and just log into the site, and the text boxes aren't there any more. Thought this might help for troubleshooting...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rick Rademacher

Another site, not EAA related that I have with Webs has a forum area that is working. Go figure!

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That's really odd, I figured it would be an issue with the forum application as a whole - must be the way the set up the format for the EAA sites then? Thanks for the information though guys, I really appreciate it - your updates are significantly more than I have gotten from Webs so far!

David

I have been told that no news is bad news. I don’t know about all the other Chapter sites but the EAA supported cubs2oshkosh site forum area is still not working. Apparently even the leverage of the EAA can’t get Webs to act to fix the problem.

I am going to wait one more week before I go to another option for www.cubs2oshkosh.com . I can’t wait until AirVenture 2012 is over!

If I were on the Board at EAA, I would recommend that they dump Webs for EAA Chapter sites as they dumped the old 365 forums. All of you Chapter web operators need to take notice of this situation.

You know, or I hope that you do, that I share your frustration - while I don't have a sense that a major number of our Chapter or otherwise-supported sites actually use the forums feature, it is unacceptable for it to simply be broken as it is right now.

I'm communicating with Webs head of support at least once a day, and I will be the first to tell the world when they have found, tested, and implemented a fix for this issue.

I just got an email from my support contact at Webs telling me that they've found the problem and that the fix is with their QA (Quality Assurance) team now. They hope to have the fix live this week, depending on what happens in QA. It *should* be a pretty straightforward change, but there's really no such thing in the software world. I'll let you know as soon as I have more.

My latest response from the Webs team stated a forum fix and photo fix was being implemented in a large update that is happening 5/18, so we'll cross our fingers and hope!

Here's a copy of the last communication from them...

Ryan, May 04 10:55 (EDT):
Hi David,
This is Ryan from Webs support.
What you are reporting is a known issue. Our developers are aware of it an currently testing a fix. That fix should be launching along with our system update two weeks from today.
I apologize for the inconvenience.
If there is anything I can help you with right now, please let me know.

As of this past weekend, the forum area on www.cubs2oshkosh.com seems to be working. If anyone is still having trouble posting, please let me know of the issues. Now, if I can only find out why some people are missing from the site.

I've been spot-checking sites that I know of that use the forums app since the update on Friday, and haven't seen any issues as of yet. Please let me know if something else crops up.

On the forum area at www.cubs2oshkosh.com
I am fit to be tied! When people try to create a new heading, they get the message “This operation is currently not available. Please try again”. And, others are saying they can’t post!
Please try your EAA sites to see if you are experiencing these same issues.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rick Rademacher

On the forum area at www.cubs2oshkosh.com
I am fit to be tied! When people try to create a new heading, they get the message “This operation is currently not available. Please try again”. And, others are saying they can’t post!
Please try your EAA sites to see if you are experiencing these same issues.

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Yep, same issues. I've been trying to push the forums as a good place for the chapter to get together and set up flights, meet-ups, etc, and it's hard to convince them of this when the forums are as unreliable as they have been.

You cannot even reply to posts on our site.

As far as I can tell, this issue was resolved - please let me know directly if you're still running into this error.

The forums were not working !!! Today, they are back in operation! I suppose I should be happy they are working again. As long as they stay up 100% for the next 51 days, I will be happy!

www.cubs2oshkosh.com

OI may not be a cub owner, but I fully support the Webs partnership. The official webmaster of our chapter taught himself HTML and made a decent website at the time (1990's I guess), but the site fails in today's standards. Though knowing HTML is a valuable skill, without a graphic designer, the pages look sloppy and bland. The Webs online editor allows anyone with minimal technical skills to make a simple website. I have always been happy with webs, my only complaint being that their online editor is so large that it takes a bit to load (even on my new Mac).


Just take a moment to compare the original site to the new site that I put together in 10 minutes:

http://eaa323.org/

http://www.323.eaachapter.org/


Which one would you rather look at?

I will agree with you that the setup and look of a web site using Webs is fine. However, there are many other firms doing what Webs does and can produce the same results. My concern is their terrible support if things go wrong. Hal can’t fix the problem. Only Webs can fix their buggy software.

Time will tell if Webs is a good choice. So far, I have not been pleased by their slowness to correct their problems which causes problems for me.