h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Considering the absurd inaccessibility status of the homepage, I've been doing a few checks to see if H2g2 entires can be viewed via a Google search.

Sadly I have to say that after trying to follow links from Google, all I am met with is the usual 'Gateway time-out Error code 504' notice from Cloudflare. This means that unless someone has a Brunel (or other skin) url, for the most part they are not going to be able to see H2G2 content, (or at least content created after H2G2 became independent from the BBC).

It has to be asked, why would a casual visitor following a Google search link be expected to know about the different H2G2 skins, and why should they have to jump through hoops just to visit pages here? Its just not the way websites are expected to work.

After quite a long absence I was hoping to resume writing entries again for H2G2 but unless I accept that content here is only going to be seen by established members rather than the wider internet community, then unfortunately there's little point.

I am not sure if this is the case, but to a casual observer all the signs indicate H2G2 is being badly neglected, and is presently going through a long, persistent and painful decline. It seems inevitable that this will continue until H2G2 becomes a hollow shell of a platform. Its truely pitiful and sad to see that process in action.

On its website Cloudflare has this to say about its 504 error messages:

"Error codes 504 12 and 502 indicate that your server is not responding appropriately to Cloudflare requests. To fix this problem, follow these steps:

- Check your server's health to ensure its operational and not overcrowded.

- Check server logs to find any issues or timeouts.

- Make sure your server's firewall isn't blocking Cloudflare IP addresses.

- If additional server resources are required to accommodate traffic, increase them.

- If the problem persists, try temporarily stopping Cloudflare (setting DNS records to grey cloud) to see if the problem is with Cloudflare or your server".

On another page Cloudflare adds this as tips to fix the issue:

"The Origin Server is not configured to handle the requested domain name at the targeted IP address. Maybe caused when changing DNS records; keep in mind DNS TTL determines how long a record 235 is valid in DNS cache.

"The server at the origin is overloaded or unreachable at the time the request was made. The could be due to the server crashing, traffic spikes, or lack of connectivity to the server. Check your origin server logs for clues as to what happened.

"An application or service used at your origin with is either timing out or being blocked.

"However, on some occasions this error is returned by Cloudflare. This might be before contacting your origin server or if we receive data that is incorrectly compressed from your origin server. In that case, the error page will look specifically like an unbranded black & white text screen.

"In a very few cases it is possible Cloudflare is displaying a 502 error page - as above - but in fact a different error occurred in the back-end. You should be able to verify that by generating a HAR file(s), How do I generate a HAR file? 1.4k

"Note that 502s and 504s can be returned by any HTTP-aware device. If you have any load balancers or local proxies in place and do not see errors in the logs of the server that handles that page, check other infrastructure between your origin and Cloudflare".

Whoever is responsible for running H2G2 have almost certainly seen this or similar information but are clearly consciously doing nothing about it. The damage it is doing to H2G2, to its accessibility to new and established visitors, as well as its online reputation is reckless, lazy and incompetent to say the least.