Technical Questions - Mutual Fund Observer Discussions

Disregard - Solved Problem

hank — Mon, 06 May 2013 20:10:32 -0400

I could not get the link to Hussman's commentary to stick after several attempts. Saved the text I had written to internal memory. If you can make the link work, I should be able to insert my commentary, including an excerpt. Thanks.

Solution: Apparently using these marks in my text < > rendered the link inoperable. Thanks

Disregard- evidently no problems with site access- just a slow day...

Old_Joe — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 17:20:55 -0400

I haven't seen any updates (new posts to existing threads or new threads) in several hours on the site- this is possible I suppose, but pretty unusual. Anybody else?

Firefox not showing any information in MFO

Soupkitchen — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 05:40:07 -0400

This is odd. Firefox was working perfectly yesterday. Today can only see the top header and the second blue line where it says home etc.. Anybody know what might be going on?

Resources/The Navigator, drop down list moved to left & partial overlay

catch22 — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 09:30:17 -0400

Accipiter's wonderful tools listed in the "Resources" drop-down menu on the MFO header bar are of great value, for those who choose to use the tools.

---A recent "burp" now shows for my pc/Ipad use and wondering if anyone else has seen or does see a similar problem.

1. mouse hover on "Resources"
2. drop-down menu appears
3. click/select "The Navigator"

Note: all is well to this point, and for those who have not used, "The Navigator"; a primary function is to find funds/etf's via a name search.

4. the insertion page is displayed
5. I type in the fund box: consumer (or your choice), for a list of funds containing this name.
6. as is normal, after about 6 letters; an auto list is generated of name related funds.

---The problem is that the list, which normally generates down the center of the page; is now shifted to the left page edge and the MFO header/banner lays on top of some of the fund(s) list.

This condition exists using Windows 7, IE build 9; with all cache and related cleared each day; and the same indications when using an Ipad 4.

Regards,
Catch

Indentation in Vanilla Forum is not working anymore...

Investor — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 04:25:39 -0400

1st post

Is there a printing feature on MFO?

Soupkitchen — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 10:39:26 -0400

I have been looking for a print button to be able to print a thread in the discussion section. This would remove all colors and designs from the page, and allow one just to print the written text. Does this already exist?

Slow Loading in FF

AndyJ — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 15:33:11 -0500

A few days ago, I came to the site & found that I'd been logged out since the last visit the day before, so of course I logged back in. Since then, pages have been extremely slow to load, much slower than any other site I've been on in that time. I've tried it with & without cookies, after logging out and back in, & checking that cookies are enabled, and nothing I've tried changes the slow load. Firefox 18.0 ... suggestions? problems on the site that have developed over the past few days?

request for assistance: page distortions

David_Snowball — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 21:31:34 -0400

Dear friends,

Chip and I are trying to puzzle through two emails we received from readers complaining the MFO was blank when they tried checking in during the last day or two. One reader (using Firefox 3.5) said that all of the text was pushed off the side of the screen, leaving the body of the screen blank. I suggested updating to the current Firefox 20, if only for security's sake. The other reported that only the top banner was visible and the rest was blank. He was running Chrome on an Apple machine.

We did not make changes in the underlying software on the first, though there was a WordPress update a couple weeks ago. Chip has been running diagnostics (there are programs that run your site through up to 150 browsers at once to see if it's compatible) but hasn't discovered anything.

Here's the request: if you've experienced any unusual symptoms, please drop me a note and let me know what and when. Chip will monitor the thread to see if she can find a pattern. I'll also send a version of this note to the folks on the conference call mailing list, asking them to glance in if they haven't already.

That said, Monday was our biggest single day ever - 2900 folks dropped by to read the April issue and join in the discussion board. It's possible, though improbable, that that was sufficient volume to cause the occasional hiccup. The Pingdom monitors shows 100% site availability since the day last week with the 22 minute outage.

Thanks, as ever, for your support and willingness to help out.

David

A little help please with thread titled "P-I-N-G"...

bee — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 10:25:21 -0400

It seems I "pinged" in the discussion title and the thread link is not happy...sorry.

I think I fix it...Thanks Mark

Recent site problems

chip — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 21:51:43 -0400

MutualFundObserver.com was down for just over 20 minutes today. I filed a report with our hosting provider and they indicated that they'd had some network disruptions which have since been cleared.

I've been monitoring the site for over a month using a service called pingdom.com which sends me alerts if the site is down for more than 5 consecutive minutes. I created a public pingdom page for MFO today, so that everyone can see the odd pattern of very short interruptions that we've been experiencing. You can see it at http://stats.pingdom.com/rz59sk2qql6d.

At this point, I can't really tell if the problem is with the hosting provider or with our site. Today's longer disruption presented an error of "HTTP CRITICAL - Unable to open TCP socket" on pingdom and the hosting company mentioned their network problems. I've seen this error a few times. With some of the shorter outages, there's not a diagnosis from pingdom, but there is a traceroute showing lots of timeouts.

Does anyone have any ideas about this? Or, a suggestion as to whether it's "normal" for a site on a shared virtual host to experience these types of outages?

Thanks for taking the time to look!
chip

Morning*

TSP_Transfer — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 01:30:05 -0400

Haven't been able to apply the Descending/Ascending sort feature in the Portfolio Manager section of my M* acct.Anyone else experiencing this problem? Thanks in advance.

Question for David about buying through Amazon

BWG — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 21:31:04 -0500

Does MFO receive any funds from Amazon if:
a) I click on the Amazon link on MFO to get to Amazon.com and then
b) from Amazon.com, go to Amazon.ca or Amazon.uk to make a purchase?

BWG

Unable to access MFO

sligo — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 09:33:25 -0500

On 1/28/2012 Explorer was unable to access server - came up with an "oops" message. This continued all week however received monthly newsletter in my gmail account but even using the link provided I was unable to gain access to the MFO site. In desperation and getting withdrawal symptons my wife suggested downloading Firefox. I did but only achieved the same result. On 2/2/2012 both Firefox and Explorer were able to access MFO without a problem. Using desktop XP/Explorer 8 and Laptop 7/Explorer 9 and Firefox all produced the same result until everything just happened to work again. Just wondered if there had been others experiencing a similar problem and what the possibilities are that may have caused this for future reference. A week without MFO is really bad news !!
Thanks

New bug... Topic won't open re:Ping

Maurice — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 14:35:51 -0500

A few weeks back I came across this problem. I'd click on one specific topic, but the category page would just refresh. The same thing is happening today when I click on Mona's topic titled Ping Rono.

Reset Password For Firefox Browser

Ted — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 08:21:42 -0500

To Whom It May Concern; Please log me on when i use firefox Browser, I'm Ok when using IE
Ted

Report Bugs and Problems Here

Skeeter — Sat, 08 Sep 2012 17:33:31 -0400

Test Post Message

Skeeter

email address

Mona — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 11:06:05 -0500

How can I change my email address with MFO without signing up for a new account. I would also like to use the new email address as my sign in, but retain my user name.

Ignore this post... just practicing

Maurice — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 14:44:19 -0400

test link

Donate button & Amazon link in side bar

chip — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 13:55:18 -0400

Accipiter's been tinkering behind the scenes, again. His new effort has been to create a plugin that displays our donate button and Amazon link in the sidebar of the discussion area. He thinks the Amazon link, especially, will be more convenient for those who spend a fair amount of time here. David asked me to let the board decide, so I'm posting a quick poll, here. Please take a moment to vote, and also to leave any comments, questions or concerns.

Thanks,
chip

The Signin Process - and why you may have trouble with the "keep me signed in" checkbox.

Accipiter — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 12:02:53 -0400

Reply to users who have to sign in multiple times

- When I finally got logged on,

It is a pretty simple login process - enter your username and your password correctly after you click the signin button. You should NOT be creating additional user names. Each member of the forum should have only one login name.

- but I checked the box "keep me signed in" and it works until it does not. I log on several times a week and it works fine. &%$#@*

the reasons why you may have to continually supply your username and password and re-sign in are as follows.

1) you have told your browser to delete cookies after closing session.
2) you have installed software that automatically deletes cookies.
3) you use another computer or browser, and have expectations that the other computer will know it is you.
4) you sign out.
5) after 30 days the cookies will expire and you have to re-login.
6) you have not checked the box "keep me signed in".
7) your browser does not accept cookies.

still having trouble with multiple sign-ins after reading the user documentation and this message,

If one supplies the name of your browser (Internet explorer version ..., firefox ver, safari...) and version your operating system (windows, apple, linux) and device (iphone, pc, etc), one can often get more help.

Posting Discussion's

Ted — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 10:02:40 -0400

Have had a lot of difficulty in the past few weeks. Type in Discussion Title, paste article link, click post discusion box nothing happens.
Ted

[Solved] new message count appears to be incorrect. Incompatible Browser

Derf — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 20:01:30 -0400

Lately , I've been clicking on to posts that show a certain # of replies. Only to find that # to be in error. Example ( Pass the hankie - 18 new) only to find 2 replies. Is the problem on my end or yours ?

Thanks , Derf

Anyway of adding a Hyperlink function ?

kevindow — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 22:40:42 -0500

Adding links to posts would be much easier with this function. Thanks.

Kevin

Something you might want to read.-Relating to new version

Accipiter — Sat, 08 Sep 2012 15:40:00 -0400

It would be a good idea to click on your name on the menu and go into "edit my account" and then click save.

It would also be a good idea to click on your name on the menu and go into "my preferences" and adjust the popup notifications and e-mail notifications that you would like and then click save.

Unread Posts

Mona — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 08:23:00 -0400

Up until very recently (seems like the other day), all post headings on the "Discussions" page that were new (ones that were posted after I had clicked on the post) would be highlighted in yellow. Now they are not, so I have no way of knowing the new posts.

Why is this suddenly occurring and how can this be corrected?

Mona

User Guide

hawleyl — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 19:43:19 -0400

Is there a user guide somewhere? I would like to give long URLs a meaningful short name. Also what about fund/ETF names? Will phrases such as "abbreviate Pacific Standard Time as PST" give a reference to an ETF?

Wondering if it is possible to reference comments to other responders within a thread...

bee — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 22:56:20 -0400

As often is the case, a thread maybe started by one contributor but may be responded to by others who have commented. I was wondering... if JohnN were to start a thread and catch22 were to make a comment to JohnN and then I , bee, were to comment to catch22 could the "recent" tag include who I am commenting...in this case, (catch22). It might appear as...recent: bee (catch22). This would clue catch22 that I have responded to his comments and prompt him to read what I had to say...which usually is timeless and prophetic (not).

Somebody once asked for the "In this Discussion" panel to be above the "BookMarked Discussions"

Accipiter — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 13:04:22 -0400

I don't know if this is what the majority of users want.

But the solution is now known.

What are the disadvantages of moving mutual funds to a supermarket like Fidelity , Schwab, etc

jerry — Sun, 24 Jun 2012 21:33:27 -0400

I have one fund in a few families and so am thinking of consolidating in part to make it easier if somethig appens to me Most but not all are no transaction fee if I want to sell at some point. I also have some stocks acquired as resultof spinnoffs etc that are in different trust companies that hold that sort of stuff.
I think the consolidation obviously has some benefits but are interested in the cons as well as other pros.

Brokerage offering secondary/backup automatic withdrawals?

BannedfromBogleheads — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 11:13:07 -0400

When setting up automatic withdrawals from mutual funds in IRAs Fidelity allows one to specify a *secondary* mutual fund to continue withdrawing from after the *primary* mutual fund is completely liquidated:
http://personal.fidelity.com/accounts/pdf/irapws.pdf
(see page 5)

Is there any other brokerage that offers this service for taxable accounts? Fidelity will ONLY establish this feature for IRAs.