Relentless 500 Internal Server Error

[Farfadillis]

Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, admin@nationstates.net and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

I've been getting this error for two weeks now when trying to post this particularly large thing. I've posted larger, heavier things before, and I have indeed received this error, but never so relentlessly. I am very sure of what the error consists of: it's basically a problem with the server processing the information, or at least that's what searching "500 Internal Server Error" in this forum indicates. I contacted the server administrator ten days ago, but I'm running out of time without getting a reply and I need a solution (or to be aware of the lack of one). This is a roster for the 69th edition of the NS Sports World Cup, and there's a sort of deadline for that which isn't far in time at all. I've also noticed that posting half the post then editing in bit by bit seems to work way better than simply posting, but there's still a point after which I can't continue editing.

So, uhmm, help please?

[Ballotonia]

What happens if you cut it in two posts?

I see nothing wrong with the contents of your post that might cause this to happen. Considering we have larger forum issues right now (a site admin is needed to fix that, I can't do it) I suggest looking at a work-around to solve your problem.

Ballotonia

[Farfadillis]

What happens if you cut it in two posts?

I see nothing wrong with the contents of your post that might cause this to happen. Considering we have larger forum issues right now (a site admin is needed to fix that, I can't do it) I suggest looking at a work-around to solve your problem.

Ballotonia

Splitting into two posts is my planned last resort, but I'd really prefer not having to split it. If it's too much trouble for [violet], I completely understand.

[Farfadillis]

Hang on, when's the server the least busy? As in, when (time of the day) is there the least activity?

[[violet]]

This one took some figuring out!

The tl;dr is you have too many [img] tags. There are 70 images embedded in your post, and when you try to submit it, the server has to go out and download those images, one at a time, and perform a few basic checks, like making sure they are images.

The image URLs are all at db.tt, and that server is fairly slow, taking 1-2 seconds to respond to requests. So it will take our forum 70 x 1.5 = 105 seconds to check them all. But we have a timeout of only 40 seconds, meaning that if we see a process taking that long to finish responding to a request, it gets forcibly terminated, since nothing should take that long. So that's what's happening here: It's trying to check the 70 images and can't finish before it gets terminated.

Possible solutions:

1. Use fewer [img] tags
2. Host the images somewhere faster
3. Combined with the above, link directly to the images, rather than linking to a domain (db.tt) that forwards requests to another domain (dropboxusercontent.com). This alone cuts the time required in half.
4. Split your content across several different posts

[Farfadillis]

This one took some figuring out!

The tl;dr is you have too many [img] tags. There are 70 images embedded in your post, and when you try to submit it, the server has to go out and download those images, one at a time, and perform a few basic checks, like making sure they are images.

The image URLs are all at db.tt, and that server is fairly slow, taking 1-2 seconds to respond to requests. So it will take our forum 70 x 1.5 = 105 seconds to check them all. But we have a timeout of only 40 seconds, meaning that if we see a process taking that long to finish responding to a request, it gets forcibly terminated, since nothing should take that long. So that's what's happening here: It's trying to check the 70 images and can't finish before it gets terminated.

Possible solutions:

1. Use fewer [img] tags
2. Host the images somewhere faster
3. Combined with the above, link directly to the images, rather than linking to a domain (db.tt) that forwards requests to another domain (dropboxusercontent.com). This alone cuts the time required in half.
4. Split your content across several different posts

I've already done the last one, but thanks a lot for the information, it's gonna be very useful in the future!