I'm very sorry to hear of your problems with accessing the forums. I use Firefox all the time and never have experienced the same problem you're experiencing, so I'm not sure it's specific to Firefox.

There are so many individual variables between people who come here, as you can imagine, it's near impossible to properly troubleshoot each person who has a problem individually and personally. Over 50,000 people visit us everyday, so you can imagine we do a lot of testing -- both internally and externally -- to ensure the site is working continuously and reliably. Including the forums.

We use all different browsers. We have staff that access us from all over the world, with different Internet providers and different operating systems. We use both a variety of automated systems and services, as well as manual checks. Each and every day. If there's a problem on our end, we're aware of it long before anyone posts here and correct most things within a few minutes.

There have been, in the past 2 months, certain upstream provider network issues that we've been keeping tabs on. But these issues only affect performance, not accessibility of the site. We hope these will be resolved in a few weeks with the installation of some new networking equipment at that provider. But this would not prevent anyone from accessing the forums today.

I wish I could solve people's issues with accessing Psych Central... but the reality is that we can only do what we can to help people. Reboot. Try a different web browser. And if all else fails, contact your Internet service provider -- there may simply be an issue between them and our network that actually requires attention on their part.

DocJohn