Yesterday our lovely @Therese spotted that there was an issue with the Forum, where it was placed into “Read Only” mode for a short while, and I was just wondering if anyone else had experienced the same issue before?
I’ve noticed it once or twice but it’s only lasted for a few seconds, but yesterday’s incident seemed to last a bit longer, and I’d like to ask our platform provider Discourse for some information and assistance.
It’d be great to know if anyone else has spotted the issue before, and I’ll be able to pass that over to Discourse as well. We don’t want to stop anyone having access to the Forum due to a technical hitch!
Thank you!
Jenny
update
It does appear that the read mode relates to maintenance but with yesterday’s incident taking a little longer than usual I’m still going to feed back, just in case, and to see if there’s anywhere we can get advance warning so we can let everyone know if posting is unavailable for any length of time.
If anyone’s got any questions or concerns about read mode please let me or Carla know!
I’ve been doing a bit of digging @Twitcher and you’re right - it seems like Discourse are doing maintenance when it happens!
Thanks @Cuttlefish - have you found it just to be for short amounts of time like I have?
With yesterday’s incident taking a little longer than usual I’m still going to feed back, just in case, and to see if there’s anywhere we can get advance warning so we can let everyone know if posting is unavailable for any length of time.
Yes, we have spotted the issue before as well as some other times.
According to this manual article (link below) published by Discourse, it is the specific forum´s admins who restrict forum activity (like enabling read-only mode) and not Discourse.
more info:
As @Carla and I are responsible for the Forum admin side of things, I know for sure that it wasn’t us who restricted Forum activity, and I don’t feel that anyone else with admin access would be doing so without our express permission.
I’m going to go ahead and speak to Discourse, noting the article you’ve provided, and I’ll report back with any information they can give us.
Perhaps the read-only mode is enabled automatically when all admins are logged out (or is triggered by something else)
Added: p.s. @Jenny
did some digging and found that read-only mode cannot be enabled automatically. However, there are apparently some plugins that can add such functionality
I’m looking into it now @anon47943759 - my curious mind needs to know
As far as I’m concerned there shouldn’t be any time restrictions on when someone can post on the Forum - we’re open all hours to meet the needs of members from all over the globe - and I know Therese had already been logged on for half an hour when yesterday’s longer incident happened.
It’s a bit of a strange one but I’m hopeful I’ll get to the bottom of it either via Discourse or via checking over our Admin settings.
I saw it once briefly when I checked the forum yesterday.
To be honest, I can see the good side of not always being able to reply.
If it was all the time, that would be awkward
I have an update from one of the lovely Discourse team on the Discourse Forum…
They’ve told me that forums they host can enter read mode without admin intervention, when Discourse are doing maintenance, and that they did have reports of some sites entering read-only mode for longer than anticipated during a recent maintenance window, which was connected to a technical hitch at their end.
Normally, these read-only periods would be very short so they apologise for this one being much longer than that.
They’ve also pointed me in the direction of a resource so that the Forum team can get a heads up about any upcoming maintenance, and warn you all if it’s going to be longer than a few minutes.
update 
