Oops! Looks like our GPS took you a bit off-trail. Sorry about that!

[Arthur]

I know you said there were issues with attempted hacking.  This is getting worse and worse every week. There are hours on end when I get this message, seemingly only on the most recent forum page.  I would have hoped you would have this resolved this after many months.

 

thank you.

[CS]

I think something is either misconfigured or the content delivery provider might be misunderstanding something; it appears to be some sort of rate limiting, where they’re trying to prevent too many requests coming in at once, however if you’re logged into the website they know who you are then and rate limiting can be based on your request rate alone. But that doesn’t seem to be what’s happening, it’s as though it’s grouping everyone together into a single bucket. It could be something else entirely, but at face value that’s what it appears to be.

[Matthew / BPL]

Hi. I need an inventory of places where people are seeing the GPS Off Trail message. This will inform our debugging process.

I will start: I see it frequently on the Recent Topics list (99% of the time I come to BPL that’s my entry point because of my position here).

Where else are we seeing it? Arthur is reporting the same location.

[JCH]

See it very frequently on recent forum topics, often when using the back button to return to the main listing from a particular subject.   Don’t remember seeing it elsewhere.

[John K]

Community selection from the menu bars right now.

[Matthew / BPL]

Thank you for the additional data points. I’m still looking for more reports about what part of the site you were on when you got the GPS Off Trail message.

[Arthur]

I get the Opps page mostly using the link that I have in my bookmarks https://backpackinglight.com/recent-forum-topics/   I am usually logged in, I leave the logged in cookie in my browser Chrome browser.  Sometimes I am then able to get to that page by then going to the Community / Recent topics drop down, but not always.

[Ken Larson]

“reports about what part of the site you were on when you got the GPS Off Trail message.”

>>>This BPL site?

[Dan K]

I would get the message when I click on Recent Forum Topics and no where else, but not in the last couple of days or so.

Dan

[Ray J]

I use Firefox, which is current.  On a Dell laptop, Windoze 10 still.  I occasionally get the message.  I have this hiking forum and several others on a Bookmark.  Firefox has their “Open all tabs” feature on bookmarks and I use that, so five or six forums all open at once.   However I get to this forum after already checking several others first (Today, this is the last one I’m checking).  I click on COMMUNITY and then select the RECENT FORUM TOPICs.  Which 95 percent of the time (it seems) presents me with the list of most recent topic, in descending order.  Which is what I also do on all the other forums I look at.  the 5 percent of the time I get the GPS error.  I simply click Community and Recent again and so far, it has then always corrected to the proper lists.

As far as Logged on or not, I’m not sure I’ve seen any difference in the issue.

I consider it a “Glitch”.

One item I’d like is on all the other forums (Camping, Cars, Music) is that once I’ve looked over the recent topics, then a “Mark all as read” function is there.  So when I come back to the forum in a few hours or the next day, I only see topics with posts since my last visit.  Maybe that is already here and I’ve not found it.

 

Good luck on figuring the issue out.

[Matthew / BPL]

Update / Possible Resolution
We have made some adjustments to the caching on the morning of 4/5/22. We’d like to know if that seems to address the problem or not. Are people still seeing the GPS Off Trail message?

[Ken Larson]

NONE as of 5April.

[Arthur]

Working just fine for 2 days now.

[JCH]

Early results: I used to get this error at least once every 2 days…sometimes multiple times per day.  Have not seen it since the fix went in.

[Pedestrian]

Seeing it now on “Recent Forum Topics”.

But this issue has festered for months on end.

BPL management believes that members are the QA organization that will do the work for free.

I haven’t been on the site for months now but it’s good to see that the same old bugs remain. ;)

Forum traffic seems way down….benign neglect of the site will do that.

 

 

[JCH]

One minute ago, clicked on a tab I had left open on the Recent Topics thread listing since early this morning…about 6 hours ago.  Hit the refresh button and got the “GPS error”.  Hit refresh again and got a refreshed Recent Topics thread listing.  Previously any attempt to refresh would return the same “GPS error”, so this is decidedly improved behavior.

Mac OS 12.3.1, Safari 15.4

[Matthew / BPL]

Overall it seems like the cache settings have resulted in an improved experience.

I’ve had a couple error messages this week but I haven’t had any times where it has repeated again and again.

[Ray J]

Well…….I just got this message.  First time in a long time.  I’d opened the forum, am logged on, Firefox (current), Windoze 10 (Current but not Windoze 11).  I’d left the laptop for 15 minutes doing a chore, came back and clicked “Community >> recent forum posts” and got the “OOPS!”.   I simply clicked it again and it worked fine the second time.

Just an occasional (every few weeks?) annoyance.

[Matthew / BPL]

Thanks, Ray. I have seen the error twice in the last week but it resolved with a single refresh both times.

[JCH]

This is back big time this morning when attempting to access the recent forum topics thread.  Every link on BPL to recent forum topics, as well as any attempt to access it via direct URL returns the ‘Oops!” page.   Oddly, other (non-aggregated) threads seem to be available.

Edit: OK…this is strange.  It seems the act of posting this in the Website Bug Reports thread has eliminated the problem!!!!  I doubt any of the this will prove valuable to the devs, but…

[Jerry Adams]

I only look at recent topics

Usually, if I resubmit it works the second time

Today, it didn’t work after several attempts, so I waited 10 minutes and now it works

This is way down on my list of annoyances in life.  As far as I’m concerned, it’s not worth time trying to fix it.

[Ray J]

^^ Strange.

I got on clicked the “Community” and then the “Recent” and it worked just fine.  That’s my standard way to browse about.  I’ve not had the OOPS since April.

[JCH]

Yeah…it’s not the end of the world…but it IS an annoyance.  Whatever…my life does not depend on browsing BPL at any particular moment.  I’ll just wait until it works.

I also should not have surmised that posting in one thread “eliminated the problem”…more than likely that was a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.

[Matthew / BPL]

I’ve let our Team know about the issue. Thanks for reporting it this morning.

[Jerry Adams]

This is my day for learning about common cultural terms

First, I hadn’t heard the term OG

Now, post hoc ergo propter hoc

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc

What?  The rooster crowing doesn’t cause the sun to rise???

I’m getting silly now, better go outside and do something useful…

[Author]

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