Chat room access?

Has anyone used the chat room lately? I just tried to access it and got an error, so I want to see if it's a server problem, or something in my browser causing the problem.

Hmm, it might be my latest browser. I tried IE and it worked fine....

Until yesterday, chat was working fine for me. As of now, I can't get in. Tried un/re-installing Java to no avail. Also tried IE, which yielded the same results. I consider myself fairly tech-savvy, so it's bugging me that i can't get it to work. Is there currently some issue with chat itself?

I haven't seen anybody in there in a long time.
Java was starting to give me issues a while back, and there was some vague warning that if I didn't correct the problem I would be blocked. I had manually choose to run Java to enter, but I got blocked with this:

I think that's a separate issue that I encountered a while back. I fixed that by going into the Java settings from my PC's Control Panel, and lowering the Java security level to Medium. Here's what I get now:

Harald's issue may be with the browser he is using. The browser on my desktop does the same thing, however my laptop would work just fine.

Until recently, however, when a new issue has cropped up.

I recently hired a new server management company and part of the server hardening process was to shut down any apparently unused ports. Since the port used to access the chat system has likely been unused for a LONG time, they assumed it was just an oversight being left open, and apparently closed it to prevent an unnecessary hole being available into the server.

I have asked them to reopen the port, but quite honestly when I have to do an upgrade of the vBulletin software, I will quite likely just drop the chat system completely since no one seems interested in using it any longer. Heck, I can't remember the last time I saw anyone using it. Heck, if the server management guys give me a good reason why I should dump the chat system right now, it will be gone. I won't be able to give even a feeble argument about why it needs to stay.

Originally Posted by WebSlave

I will quite likely just drop the chat system completely since no one seems interested in using it any longer.

Actually, it's gotten a lot of use lately. Well, until someone recently found greener pastures; but I'm definitely one who'd like to see it stay.

"Greener pastures"? As in what?

Originally Posted by WebSlave

"Greener pastures"? As in what?

That was more of an off-topic, irrelevant poke at myself. Kind of a sad inside joke. Just meant that I'd been using the chatroom a lot lately. Hate to see it go, but you gotta do what you gotta do.

It's working now. Thanks!