How to Not Panic When Blurt Seems Down

I wrote much of this as a comment and reproducing it (with edits) in the hope that more Blurters gain some basic understanding of how the whole system works.

It is worth knowing the difference between glitches you can resolve yourself and major traumas that need to wait for some back-end repair. Just as you should be able to fix minor things in your car, and not call out a mechanic to change a lightbulb or check the oil level.

Science may seem like magic to most, but technology can be pure sorcery!

The issues that started some 2 weeks ago had nothing to do with the adverts. They were, and continue to be, sporadic. Hence, was not such a wise idea to compound an unresolved issue by adding advertising code. So be it. It takes time and some digital forensics to locate some issues that may break stuff without leaving a visible fingerprint.

What classifies as a problem? There is the blockchain - it is unique in the sense that all copies are identical. The RPC servers, aka API nodes, process instructions to and from the chain. The various apps interact with the chain via those nodes. Some of those apps are blogging front-ends, and some are not.

Any problems blogging, voting, logging in, whatever, can be caused by either the front-end itself or one of the RPC/API nodes. As a user, one can do oneself a huge favour, and save time, by doing some very basic investigating.

If the issue is at the login stage, it is worth doing a hard refresh of the page and trying again. If this seems to do nothing, then delete both the cookies and the cache associated with the site. Every login creates a session token that allows you to jump from page to page while remaining logged-in; sometimes old session tokens are not properly removed and cause some confusion to the system. It can also be the case that devs have been working on a site and have changed some files; again, doing a hard refresh will replace the old files stored in the local cache with the new files.

Just remember...

If this doesn't work, there is now a page showing all the different Blurt apps, including alternative blogging platforms and keychain apps. Bookmark this for future reference. If you really think that "the site" has a problem then try another one. There are now multiple front-ends, they are currently based on the same template and read and write to the same blockchain, so it really doesn't matter which one you use.

If you are logged in and things appear not to work, then head over to the Settings page. This has a dropdown menu of RPC/API nodes, so you can easily change node and check which one works. If there is one that works and the issue is resolved then the problem was with the previous node. The nodes should switch automatically but this may not happen. This is also true of any Keychain or similar app.

The perception that somehow one platform doesn't work but another one does may have nothing at all to do with the platform, but with the fact that some (all?) of the new platforms also run their own RPC servers. This is actually great for the whole system as Blurt has always been short of RPC servers. But the point here is that each platform will work with whichever RPC server is also working.

For example, if you end up using blurt.one and wonder why it works, that's probably because it defaults to its own blurt.one RPC (which is actually the tekraze.com node). If you go into its Settings page and pick another RPC that is down, then you will end up with the same issues as before.

To stress this point further, you could be on blurt.one and switch to the blurtlatam.com node; you end up with a blurt.one experience but your interactions are with the blurtlatam.com node!

That the issues that started some two weeks ago have not yet been resolved is a frustration for all, but the real cause has not yet been found. The above workarounds should satisfy most users most of the time.

If problems persist, then you should check on Discord or Twitter.

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_{Posted from https://blurt.one}