Livejournal eating posts...?

[cyan_blue]

Hi folks,

I've seen a number of times lately where people have said something along the lines of "I just typed for an hour and then LJ ate my post!" I was wondering how this happens? I ask because I've discovered that sometimes after I click to submit my post it goes to an error screen - but if I hit the "back" key on my browser, my post is still there and I can click to submit it again, until it works. So since I haven't had the problem of losing LJ posts I figured I'd post this in case it helped someone else.

If all else fails, copy/paste what you type into a word processing document before clicking send, just in case...

Geri

Comments

[crowinsnow.livejournal.com]

If LJ is acting up, I'll sometimes highlight and copy before I submit.

I've never lost a post or needed to paste one back in.

[melebeth]

For reasons which I have yet to understand that works on my work computer but not on my home computer. On the work computer I get the error screen, go back, and repost what's still there. On the home computer, I get the error screen, go back, and nothing is there. However, sometimes, if instead of going back I hit "reload" the post will go through. This inconsistency makes less than no sense to me, unless it's a browser version issue.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

[nods] Sometimes the back button goes back to an empty form instead. I dunno why. Its smart to copy/paste first but sometimes one doesn't think of these things in the flush of posting enthusiasm. :)

Mer

or use a client

[catbear.livejournal.com]

i recommend using a client to post to lj. they have good fail-safes to keep you from losing posts, and you can just double-click the icon and post whenever the mood strikes.

[apollolee.livejournal.com]

If you accidentally hit your escape key in a textarea field on a web page in Internet Explorer (and maybe Mozilla/Netscape as well), it will delete everything in the field. Whenever I post, I use a client called iJournal for Mac OS X to post. I can hit escape as much as I want and nothing happens. Also, since I use Safari (http://www.apple.com/safari/), I don't have to worry about the escape key thing.

Food for thought, eh?

[cougarpants.livejournal.com]

I tend to write my posts on notepad, then copy and paste to the client. If it eats it, no worries, I still have it off to the side where I can just try again later.

[dglenn.livejournal.com]

I do something functionally similar for posts, but I guess I've just been lucky with comments. I use 'clive' to post from the Linux command line, and I edit my posts in 'vi' and feed them to 'clive' thus:

clive -options < filename

So if 'clive' complains about an error from LJ, all I have to do is repeat the command a few minutes later. This is functionally similar to your editing in notepad and doing a copy/paste from there.

I write comments in my web browser (Opera, usually running on Windows -- I don't think I've posted to LiveJournal from an Opera session under Linux yet, but I might have) So far Opera hasn't given me an error page I can't get back from; it puts up an error box that says, "Connection closed by remote host", waits for me to click "OK", and I've still got my form with all my writing in it on my screen. So either Opera does the Right Thing, or I've just been lucky and other folks have been getting a different type of error.

[exceptnot.livejournal.com]

wow, i was really thinking the same thing lately. people are odd.