Howrse - Server problem?

Question

Is anyone else getting a server error when trying to go to howrse? I have been trying periodically for about five hours (I am actually having to do work instead of goofing off! LOL!). Anyway, just wondering if I am the only one.

Even if you don't play I would appreciate it if anyone could try going to the site www.howrse.com and tell me if it loads for you. THANKS!!

First of all, I have only posted on Howrse.com twice that I recall. Second, I can access it just fine from my house and I can't access it from my office!

Guess I should tell you more. I Was the only one in the office between the time that the site worked and the time that it didn't. I work for my parents (they own the biz) and I know for a fact that they were out of town until after I started having trouble... Could it be something that our ISP changed?

We have a physical firewall, don't know if that matters. Oh, and just FYI, I am the computer savvy one in my office and believe me, that isn't saying much! LOL! :-)

So, I downloaded a free trail of Anonymizer and now the site is working. Can you tell me what that means??? I can tell you with 100% certainty that there was no one here to put a "net nanny" on any of the computers here. We also no longer run a company server...

Answer 1

Works fine for me. I can think of 2 possibilities.

You might hit reload/refresh and clear your cache in case one bad load is stuck in your browsers memory so its not really going to try again for a couple of days.

or the fact that I see that you post often about this site simply means you are connected to the site somehow and pulling black-hat SEO tactics. Post meaning questions and answers.

edit: Ahh new info. If its ok from home and blocked from work then I suspect that a "nanny" software is being used by your IT manager. Ive helped install some of those. Your browser history probably showed the site so they added it to the blocks.

Your only option would be to use a "proxy". Thats a site that you go to which then bounces you to the site you want to go to. But disclaimer: purposely going against the wishes of your office managment can get you in hot water. And keep in mind that EVERYTHING that goes on on the company servers can be tracked so even a proxy can be caught if your IT manager is smart enough

NEW EDITS:
Hmmm well there is always malicious adware which can hijack your computers routing abilities in order to try and stear you to their prefered sites. Such as making sure that anything with "exam" in the URL goes to example.com. But those want to be invisible so they usually dont let you see a "broke" page. On the other hand, they dont tend to be well-written so maybe you got a bad one. Or even two that are confilicting. So you might get something that cleans SpyWare (different than viruses so an anti-virus software might not be doing it)

A tech-geek would also tell you to look at the hosts file but thats diffrent for every operating system so I cant give info on where it is for you. Thats a file that says things like "exam=example.com" which can be handy to create shorthand for long URLs but bad if someone uses it against you

You might also try downloading another browser and see if you have the same problem. Explorer, Firefox, Netscape, Opera, etc etc. You dont HAVE to switch but the fact that it works for you in another browser would help pin down the problem.