-- we're taking it very seriously, working on it now.

First a few facts:

1. NO new scripts have been added to the website. I'm the only one here who could do that - or give access to a programmer so that could be done - and that has definitely NOT happened.

2. These discussion boards run on software licensed out by a company called vBulletin - what you see and use here is totally their product. We would never consider even touching their code - it's an enormously complex product.

3. The version of their code that we are running now is identical to the code started this version of our website with in 2008. It is totally stable and bug free for years.

Next, some background:

When you mouse-over a link and it "lights-up" to let you know it is active and clickable - it is your browser that does that, not this website. Only your browser can even know where your mouse it - this website cannot.

So if a link does not light-up - something local has interfered with its ability to do that.

Ad-blockers - when installed on your PC or Mac - train your browser to not show you the blocked ads. So they "interfere" in some ways to prevent an action your browser would normally perform. It is at least theoretically possible that an ad-blocker (or equivalent plug-in) in your browser is interfering in some way beyond its intended purpose.

I do not claim this is happening - at the moment that is only one trail we are following.

We note the success some of you report from adding a "no-script" feature to your browser. First, that's good news, thank you for that. Second, we'll try to track down (and learn how to do that) for the several popular browsers out there - and publish that information here.

Why that works, we don't yet know for sure. I acknowledge that if "no-script" works - it sounds like it is preventing a script from this website from functioning. And while I'll again say we have added no scripts to the website - it is of course possible that scripts built into adverts are somehow causing your browser to misbehave.

(And those are devilishly difficult to track down with so many different advertisers overall - and even on each page.)

Incidentally - I use all of the popular browsers for testing purposes- and have never encountered this problem with any of them.

We will try to develop some questions we can ask you about your browsers, plugins, ad-blockers, etc. - to see if we can narrow this down,

We regret this happening.

If you find or develop [U]any [/U]success in dealing with this - PLEASE post it in THIS thread - even if you have already posted it elsewhere - so that others can see them.

Pretty sure you have a malfunctioning ad that is overlaying itself above the first 15ish links. No script/ad blocker is killing this ad, which makes the site functional again.

GreyBear-

The problem is with the Facebook Share button that sits in the header section next to the Tweet button. It's generating an invisible iframe that 1000px x 1000px. This iframe sits above all other content so you're clicking an invisible iframe instead of the content underneath.

The short term fix is to remove the Facebook Share button.

You're probably overriding the dimensions with the ones stated above. If not, then it's a problem with vBulletin or Facebook.

The long term solution is to use Facebook's Like button instead. I believe Share is the older version of their social plugin.

I removed the buttons. They are the same ones we've had for a long time.

More good information, many thanks.

As Calfans noted - the Facebook icons have been removed.

I sent you an email maybe 30 mins ago with some followup questions - please check for that? Thanks.

=GB

We think we have solved the odd Facebook Certificate Invalid problem - we found a script was triggered by clicking on the Facebook "Share" icon - that triggered the error message - we have removed it.

We hope now none of you will ever see that one again - but do let us know if you do.

We also have a good theory on the inactive links - we're closing in on that one now.

Emailed you back.

I need to dig deeper but users need not likely worry about the certificate issue. static.ak.facebook.com is a valid website used by Facebook to serve static assets (eg. images and javascript). I'm not sure why browsers would prompt for the cert, though, let alone say why it might not be valid. That requires more investigation.

If you haven't changed anything recently, it's possible it was an issue on Facebook's end. It's worth putting them back in again and seeing if the problem still persists. I checked with some share buttons I have and couldn't reproduce the issue.

Blame it Mark Z. He cut in front of me in line while getting coffee on Valencia.