OK, I've been exchanging email with Brad about a particular problem I'm experiencing but seemingly nobody else is. (Actually, there could be some people out there experiencing the same thing, but they would not be able to get to this forum to read this unless they tried all the things I tried to get here.) I just thought I'd summarize it here to see if it is only me having the problem.

When I go to http://www.stripcreator.com, I get a prompt asking me if I want to open "/ from stripcreator[1]" and if I try to go to http://www.stripcreator.com/forums (by putting that url in the IE address bar or clicking on the forums link) I get a prompt asking me if I want to open or save "forums." I tried saving both with the following results: http://www.stripcreator.com presents me with the file index.php and this php file contains all of the server-side scripting that should normally be hidden when passed through a web server. Pretty much the same thing happens with the ..../forums/index.php link, which gives me the complete php including server-side code that usually presents the main forums page.

But wait, it gets freakier! I cannot get to the stripcreator front page by going to http://www.stripcreator.com but I can get there by going to http://www.stripcreator.com/index.php.

What? You don't think that's weird enough? How about this--I figured, OK, maybe I can get to the forums the same way, but no. http://www.stripcreator.com/forums/index.php doesn't work. But http://www.stripcreator.com/forums/index.php? (note the question mark on the end) works!

If anyone can find a method to this madness, please share it.

I had the same problem until about an hour ago, as did Kajun and Bazilla. However, the problem now seems to have resolved itself (for me, at least).

This is an exerpt from my super-secret trillian log.

Session Start (ICQ - 138072993:Brad): Mon May 20 15:31:34 2002
[15:31] Nate: hey yo, stripcreator.com is now a download for a php thingy
[15:33] Brad: Thanks. Working on fixing it.
[15:33] Nate: np
Session Close (Brad): Mon May 20 15:33:32 2002

aproximatly 5 min later, it was fixed for me.

It's still not fixed for me. I think maybe this is some kind of a Spider-Man thing. See, I was in the middle of posting a message when the PHP suddenly went berserk, and now I suddenly have the superhuman ability to see PHP code that I should not have any way of seeing. If anybody can help me figure out a way to use these newly acquired powers to fight crime, let me know.

!eloh kcalb a otni nellaf ev'I kniht I ,sagep lanretni s'moc.rotaercpirts hguorht yaw ym etagivan ot gniyrt tsol tog wohemos ev'I ,em pleH

It's probably just me that is experiencing this problem. I tested the site out using a different web proxy and everythign seemed to work fine, so it is apparently just a glitch in the proxy I was using earlier. Does anyone know enough about proxy administration to make a guess about what the glitch is? (I'd prefer to continue using that proxy, since it tends to be more consistently up than the others to which I have access.)

My guess is that the proxy is stuck with a cached copy of the 2 php files (one for the front page, one for the forums page) and it is refusing to go out and get a new copy of the page for some reason. Brad's host's server should be processing and removing the PHP code so that anyone retrieving the page can only see the PHP output and HTML. We did, however, have a short time today when everyone was getting the raw, unprocessed PHP, so my proxy server must be continually feeding a cached copy of that unprocessed page. Then again, I have been able to get around and make new posts using this same proxy, so the proxy must be accepting new copies from web hosts for everything but those two pages.

Boorite, where are you?

I'm fine, we're all fine now, how are you?

When I had the download thing it said stripcreator[4] as opposed to your [1]

Wirthling: Are you going through some kind of heavy-duty firewall?

At work, yes.

I've now had stripcreator[2], [4] and [5] I'm getting closer to collecting the whole set!

quote:

---

At work, yes.

---

Bummer.

What I don't understand is how it gets the actual code for the script. The webserver should just hand over HTML, never the script. I have never understood this. Until you brought it up again, I had managed to forget it and thus avoid being driven absolutely insane by it. Thanks a bzzzzeeebereeber hahahaha ferrets in my nutsack.

If the server isn't configured to treat files ending in .php specially, then it would just send them off without parsing, same as any HTML or text file, right? Sounds like that's what happened to everybody, shortly after the site went up at the new location. Then wirthling's proxy server cached the erroneously-sent PHP code and hasn't bothered to look for an updated version of it yet. And the proxy server has no way of knowing that /forums/, /forums/index.php, and /forums/index.php? are all the same thing.

The proxy/firewall finally fixed itself. I am no longer forced to trick it to get here. That's good, too, because when SC went down yesterday, I thought it might be something to do with the proxy again so I tried a different one and found that SC has been deemed an "adult site" and is thus banned. The proxy I'm using now is the only one that lets SC through. (This is odd, because I first discovered the proxy was causing the cache problem by using another proxy which let me through to SC. Now, that same proxy shows SC as a restricted site. Hmm...) If I should suddenly start not showing up here at all in the afternoon and evening, it'll mean they've finally blocked SC on this proxy server, too.

Or that I found you.