Can't access main page

[Scientia]

For the last several days I have assumed that civfanatics was dead in the water because I cannot access www.civfanatics.com. As the earliest symptoms of withdrawal started to sink in, I turned to Apolyton for comfort

There is a thread at Apolyton that mentions something about telefragged switching servers or something to that affect, along with mixed reports of people being able to access this site. Tonight, out of desparation, I tried forums.civfanatics.com and voila, here I now am. I still can't access the main page (www.civfanatics.com), but at least I can quench my addiction for the forums.

Quitting smoking was easier than this. . . do they make a patch perhaps?

IF only I had tried the forums link directly to begin with, but I guess I was overdue for a visit to Apolyton anyway . . .

 

[Alcibiaties of Athenae]

The main page and the forums are on different servers, for reasons known only to Telefragged.

 

[damunzy]

But you must admit it is good for situations such as this. I remember when it was the forum servers that moved.

 

[Thunderfall]

Most people were able to access the site and forum within 1 day of the server move. Some lucky people didn't have problem accessing the site and forum at all...

You should be able to access the main site sometime today.... Telefragged moved the main site server several hours after moving the forum server.

 

[starlifter]

Tonight, out of desparation, I tried forums.civfanatics.com and voila, here I now am. I still can't access the main page (www.civfanatics.com), but at least I can quench my addiction for the forums.

The reason why you cannot access and most of us can is kindof technical.

Telefragged moved (changed digital addresses). To understand what happened, I will summarize:

1. All non-dot IP addresses must be "looked up" thru a DNS (Domain Name Server).
2. A DNS is like a "phone book".
3. Once the DNS is resolved ("looked up"), the dot IP (e.g., 209.189.226.11) is then used to get to your site (not the nice alphanumeric name).
4. It sometimes takes a while for some DNS tables to get updated.... all DNS servers worldwide must changed, and if your route goes thru one that is not yet changed, you will not connect.




Now that we have talked about that... I personally think your problem is something else, but would need to see a file from your machine. Look in your C:\windows directory, and see if you have a hosts file. Not hosts.txt, but just "hosts", with no extension. It will be a fairly small file. If you want to try and fix it yourself, make a backup copy. Then edit the file with Wordpad, and look for a line with "civfanatics" in it. Delete all such lines. Save as text. Then go back and edit the extension that Wordpad will add (it will add a .TXT)... you need to kill the .TXT extension, leaving only the filename of "hosts" (no extension!!!). If you can access the main page now, great! It is not a DNS issue. If you cannot, then it is a DNS issue.


If you want me to fix the file for you, zip it and attach it. I'll fix it, and you then need to just unzip & replace your existing hosts file.




Good luck. My bet is that the DNS your ISP uses is fine, but your hosts file is defective or out of date.

 

[Scientia]

Originally posted by starlifter
Good luck. My bet is that the DNS your ISP uses is fine, but your hosts file is defective or out of date.

Starlifter,

Thanks for jogging my memory on something I should have looked at to begin with . . . not the hosts file (which I do not have) but my DNS cache that is part of my firewall

I cleared the old entry for www.civfanatics.com and viola, instant connectivity again. Of course, one more day and it would have cleared automatically since I have the items in the cache set to refresh every 7 days.

I'm obviously becoming absent-minded in my old age.

 

[starlifter]

Thanks for jogging my memory on something I should have looked at to begin with . . . not the hosts file (which I do not have) but my DNS cache that is part of my firewall

Yup. 3rd party software can have a separate DNS cache. "Hosts" is a flatfile DNS lookup cache.