The Dreaded '500 Internal Server Error' You See When You Try To Post

[Y_Participant 4591]

The Dreaded ‘500 Internal Server Error’ You See When You Try To Post

Some of you have become victim to this dreaded message when you try to post a new forum topic.

Don’t panic. Big brother is not watching you – yet.

I believe this message usually occurs when a bro’ tries to upload a topic which contains some text that has been cut from other webpages or documents and pasted into the ‘create topic’ textbox using the mouse button.

The problem is not with your PC, your internet connection or browser. It is in the MGTOW server uploading your topic.

1. Why and how it happens

The MGTOW site software program tries to upload your post to the forum webpage as a topic after you press ‘Start My Topic’. This software reads (or parses) your textbox information line-by-line.

The characters in your textbox must all be recognised by the software ‘parser’ in order to be transferred to the forum webpage in a similar format.

There are generally two types of characters in your textbox when you start writing your post :

–the group that you see such as the common alphabet, numbers and other familiar characters like & * % $. These are all called ASCII characters and pronounced ASS-KEY.

–the group that you do not see called control or formatting characters that are used to set up the page format – like spacebar tab etc.

It is the second group that causes the problem. There are control characters that you have cut from webpages or other documents and posted in the textbox as part of your ‘cut and paste’ that are not recognised by the parser. You do not see them as they are invisible.

The parser gives up when it reaches one of these characters it does not recognise. The MGTOW site then sends you the dreaded ‘500 Internal Server Error’ webpage of death.

That’s it in as non-technical a language as I can put it.

2. A Tried and Tested Solution

Do not copy any control characters from the other document or webpage.

When you copy from a webpage or document multiple paragraphs in one hit you are also copying the control characters in-between paragraphs. This also applies to any empty space you may inadvertently copy.

If you receive the death message then go back to the webpage and copy only the text – paragraph by paragraph. Do not even catch a single empty space before or after the actual text in the paragraph.

If there are figures charts or graphs avoid these initially. You can add them in later after loading the text. Upload the topic in stages paragraph by paragraph if you need to. This helps to identify sections with errors.

Reformat manually in the textbox before uploading again.

You should be ok after doing this. It worked for me.

PS : If you still have problems after doing this correctly then you have been cursed. Seek professional help from a spiritual guide or your nearest voodoo doctor.

[Sky-OParticipant 18949]

Thx

I wrote an epic magnum opus last night at about 1am.

Didn’t even think I had it in me.

Timeless stuff that even blew my own mind.

And I got that error and went back one page & lost everything.

If the thoughts are flowing tonight in the same cosmically induced way, I’ll try to recapture the moment.

It was almost like if I was in the studio and laid down a blistering, skull shattering three minute guitar solo (improvised in one take) on the old 2inch analog tape and it took things on an audio journey into the depths of hell, through the Gates of Valhalla, into battle then back again and the engineer apologized the next morning for accidently going over it with a drum click track.

But the magic can’t be recaptured.

It was like that. Really p~~~ed me off.

[Y_Participant 4591]

Sky-O wrote:

Thx
I wrote an epic magnum opus last night at about 1am.
Didn’t even think I had it in me.
Timeless stuff that even blew my own mind.
And I got that error and went back one page & lost everything.

Very sorry. I know how that hurts.

If you are composing something do it in a .doc or .rtf or .txt file and upload by cut and paste. The error should not happen with MS files. That way you still have the backup at your end.

If you still prefer to compose in the textbox then copy everything to an rtf file before uploading.

Also use Firefox or any other ‘safe’ browser. Never IE.
The text is usually still there in Firefox even if you skip and come back a page or two.

[Faust For ScienceParticipant 22559]

Before I post anything, especially long posts, I copy and paste a copy on wordpad in case this very situation happens so I do not lose what I wrote.

[Y_Participant 4591]

Faust For Science wrote:

Before I post anything, especially long posts, I copy and paste a copy on wordpad in case this very situation happens so I do not lose what I wrote.

That is good practice. I learnt to do that too after a while.
The old server before I left did not have this problem. Anyway better to be safe.

[Author]

Posts