Alright, I have been following issue and so far here is what I have.
I am stumped.
I can find nothing in the logs showing that these error messages are appearing in abundance, nor can I find anyone aside from you 2 that have experienced this issue.
The error that comes up saying "The topic or post you requested does not exist" will indeed happen if a post is deleted after you load the page and before you click on the topic reminder link in an email, or on the recent topics list on the left side of the page. In order for this to happen when clicking anywhere else, say just browsing through the forum or using the "There are XX new messages" link on the top of the page, then the whole topic would have had to be deleted after you loaded the page and before you clicked on it. There should be no other reason this happens. This means that your computer got to the SpudFiles server correctly, but the server can not find what you are looking for in the database.
The page that comes up with the black background and red text with scrolling text below it, it is indeed a 404 File Not Found message from the SpudFiles server. The scrolling text is yes a joke, it's supposed to be as if the server was talking. I should probably remove it since it has really freaked some people out in the past. The difference between this message and the other one is that this means an actual file can not be found on the server. You have reached the server, but it does not know where the file is that it is looking for (always some type of PHP script or image). The 2 links that appear (the "mail me" link and the "go home" link both indeed work, there is no explanation as to how anyone could receive that error page by clicking either of the links on the same error page.
Can either of you explain in greater depth of what was clicked on the forum to receive these messages? Maybe even a video of it happening if possible?
FYI for those who claimed they could not access SpudFiles at all for a period of time, it was probably while the server was crashed. Granted it was not an entire day, but just a few hours each time it has happened. SpudFiles keeps requiring more and more server resources as it grows, and it is getting to the point where I can not currently afford to put it on a better server. I have tweaked the server to reduce resource use, however the server still updates it's self and has to generate automatic backups and sometimes these things running in the middle of the night can cause the server to use too many resources and crash. I had a system setup that would send me an SMS when the server went down, but the free service no longer seems to work so I have subscribed to another free server monitoring website that will hopefully let me know faster when SpudFiles goes down. The past few times this has happened I had to either find out myself, or get awoken by someone sending me a message on my phone letting me know the website was down.
FYI #2, the only time these problems could possibly be on the clients end (home user PC's and/or their Internet connection) is if they were receiving a "server not found" or "connection timeout" message. As long as they receive an error message from the SpudFiles server, that means they have connected to it and it should not be a problem on their end.
dis- and re- appearing threads
One could also "lose" a link to a thread if they renamed it and then tried to go to a bookmark based on the original thread name.
FWIW that, and when a mod deliberately deletes a post are the only time I have experienced lost posts.
FWIW that, and when a mod deliberately deletes a post are the only time I have experienced lost posts.