by Kestrana Sat Oct 13, 2012 7:07 am
I posted this last night, but it seems everyone who's posted since hasn't seen it, so I'm going to stick this at the end again, hopefully helping the last two pages of people...
For the techies in the group: the problem is with domain resolution. Some locations (or ISPs, perhaps) are unable to find the DNS records for the domains and collect the IP address(es) that serve the sites. The IPs (servers) themselves are just fine. Editing your hosts file allows you to bypass domain and DNS resolution and go straight to the servers.
There are six IPs you can use: 173.193.11.24, 74.86.217.213, 74.86.217.214, 173.193.11.21, 173.193.11.22, 173.193.11.23
Make sure to change the domain in the example to the site you want to access. If you have more than one site, add more than one line, with each site on its own line.
Kestrana wrote:WORKAROUND!
If you edit your hosts file to set one of the six IPs I list below to your site's domain, you can access the site!
You will need to Google to find your hosts file (every OS is a little different, so I'm not even going to try to detail how to find it). Add a line at the end to the effect of:
173.193.11.23 reverie.forumotion.net
...to the end of your hosts file, save, flush your computer's DNS, and voila! You should have access back. Note: You won't want to leave it this way forever, but this should satisfy most folks' immediate problems until the FM techs can sort out the underlying cause.
EDIT: To clarify, this is not a risky procedure in any way; just because I'm a sysadmin IRL doesn't mean that this is a "secret" workaround that only sysadmins are qualified to do. If it really was a sysadmin secret, you shouldn't be able to find instructions for doing it on Google...
You really can't break anything so long as you are only adding a line (or a few lines) for just FM sites. (And if something really bizarre happens, all you have to do is undo your change.) If you are not comfortable with this, don't do it. Eventually, the problem will be fixed. This just allows you to access you site(s) in the meantime. It is entirely your responsibility to make the change, and to remove the change once the problem is fixed.
Last edited by Kestrana on Sat Oct 13, 2012 7:33 am; edited 1 time in total