| NOTICE TO ALL USERS OF AOL |
The following information was posted to our members forum after several members were regularly finding it difficult to login and use the website.
The problems that our AOL members were having were monitored over a long period of time and repeatedly came back.
The solutions presented in this post are those proposed by the poster of the forum and are explicitly not the views of the website. All of the technological explanations are accurate and many other similar problems caused by the use of "AOL caching servers" is well documented across the internet.
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| The post: |
AOL users may be experiencing difficulties with using this site (and many others for that matter)
It is becoming increasingly frustrating for us to provide support to AOL users and as such we have recently considered preventing people from registering with our site if they have an AOL email address.
The reasons why we would be prepared to make such an aggressive stance against such a large population of online users are clearly explained below.
AOL BROWSER & SERVER CACHING
Because AOL now has so many customers, for no other reason than to save money they are probably now the biggest user of what are known as "caching servers". A caching server: A computer (or number of computers) that simply "store" the internet locally for a network of users. In simple terms, this means that if someone on AOL visited this website yesterday and another person on AOL visits today, the person visiting today may not necessarily see the ACTUAL page of the website as it appears today but instead will see the page served & stored from the AOL caching server that someone else viewed yesterday. By doing this, they effectively provide the 2nd user with an old version of the site, rather than fetching the ACTUAL, current version of the site. In doing so, they can continue to increase the number of AOL members but at the same time not necessarily provide ALL of their members with "REAL" access to the internet when they are very busy - In simple terms, saving money on equipment and other technology to properly support their customers.
Furthermore, there are internet standards that developers can code into their websites to instruct browsers & servers NOT to cache the pages of their websites. We have implemented these standards. However, AOL has chosen to blatantly ignore these internet-wide standards adopted by other major providers and as such it is not possible for our website to make sure you receive today's version of the website when viewing the internet through AOL.
This causes MAJOR problems for AOL users. (and not only with this website!)
If the date is wrong or you are being regularly logged out of the uk-swingers.com website, this is because AOL is serving you with an OLD page that they have stored that simply does not recognise you as being logged in. By passing you between pages OLD(stored) and ACTUAL(live) pages, you will experience untold problems that APPEAR to be the fault of the site, but are in fact the fault of AOL. The whole of UK-SWINGERS.COM works in real-time, all of the pages are dynamic and every time you move from one page to another, for security reasons, we check that your login is still active.
You MUST & should be able to browse all of the uk-swingers.com pages AS THEY ACTUALLY ARE on the server at that time.
Use of AOL prevents you from doing this under certain conditions.
NOTE: This does not happen ALL of the time - for the most part, AOL will serve the actual pages but at times when their servers are experiencing high usage, they will rely upon their caching servers.
AOL SOFTWARE
AOL software provides a view on the internet that does not truly reflect what the rest of the people using the internet see. The view of the internet that AOL provide is their own interpreted view of the internet. AOL software can also be difficult to use, manage and uninstall. I would strongly advise against using it for browsing the internet.
SOLUTION 1
The most effective way of eliminating these problems with AOL is to simply change ISP. Use a regular internet service provider that bundles software like Internet Explorer. Familiarise yourself with Internet Explorer and a "normal" email client like Outlook Express. These may take a little time for you to get used to, but once familiar, you wont look back.
SOLUTION 2
If you absolutely have to keep using AOL, again use Internet Explorer and Outlook Express. Do not use the AOL browser to view this website or any other website that is dynamic, it will likely cause problems.
SOLUTION 3
If you have to keep using AOL browser, keep clearing the cache regularly. For instructions on how to do this, refer to AOL help files or website.
DISCLAIMER: The views & information presented above are merely the views & opinions of the poster and should not be considered the views of the website.
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Wed 7th January 2009 12:20PM
