Trouble loading the front page, and being redirected.

April 9, 2003 8:01 PM

I tried to load up metafilter earlier and it was taking a while. I noticed at the bottom of my explorer window it said something like "Opening page http://www.b4ta.com/metafilter" Then the page failed to load entirely. I'm confused.
posted by SimStupid to Bugs at 8:01 PM (9 comments total)

Me too.
Did you type "metafilter" into a browser?
Were you following a link to Metafilter?
Did you actually type "www.metafilter.com"?
posted by bshort at 8:10 PM on April 9, 2003

I typed in the address; www.metafilter.com - no more, no less.
It hasn't happened again. I'm glad you saw it, thought i was going insane.
posted by SimStupid at 8:27 PM on April 9, 2003

I updated some stuff on the server, and it took over an hour. Dunno what b4ta.com had to do with anything though.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 8:37 PM on April 9, 2003

A quick whois on b4ta.com reveals it's registered to an Andy Kelk, possibly aka mopoke. The page itself is a redirect to a Jeeves search on Metafilter.

Looks a mite suspicious...
posted by Johnny Assay at 8:56 PM on April 9, 2003

Actually, I didn't mean it happened to me too, I meant that I was also confused. I think you just typed something wrong and IE thought it could figure out what you were doing. Or something.
posted by bshort at 10:01 PM on April 9, 2003

It was b4ta, not b3ta, which i thought was pretty odd. It couldn't have been some kind of weird cache 'cause i've never heard of the site. I don't think i typed it incorrectly because, as Mr. Assay noted, that is an existing web address.
I'm gonna blame it on yahoo, who take over my browser every time i should get an error page - those punks.
Skallas: that new host file is great, thanks.
posted by SimStupid at 10:56 PM on April 9, 2003

Disabling MSN Address Bar Auto Search, which may have had something to do with this problem.
posted by dhartung at 1:24 AM on April 10, 2003

If you type in www.metafiler.com you get redirected to b4ta and their yahoo page.
posted by sebas at 5:35 AM on April 10, 2003

sebas wins.

And always take screenshots of this stuff, guys.
posted by Hildago at 4:13 PM on April 10, 2003