Has hosting or infrastructure for the site changed recently (first week of March 2009)?

Very suddently I have having a great deal of trouble with the Chess.com site.  It started with not being able to see the chess pieces on the game board and in the analysis board.  I found entries on another topic and tried all suggestions lists (CTRL-F,  CTRL-F5,  deleting temporary files).  Then it went from bad to worse because I could not even get onto Chess.com and my Mozilla 3.06 browser showed me this message:

ERROR(2):  Domain does not match license key file domain (chess.com), please change the product path to match the domain under Admin CP > Settings > General Settings

This product will not work properly unless untill that value is changed.

Warning:  Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/support/public_html/swift.php:358) in /home/support_html/includes/functions.php on line 1623

18 hours later, I could access the site and see my pieces.  Then a little later that day, no pieces (Mozilla reports getting google-analytics for a long time and then even longer getting "static data" and apparently times out displaying "done" and no pieces).  A couple hours later, I could not get to the site at all again.

As of today, I can not get to Chess.com on three different computers, using IE6, IE7, Mozilla 3.06, Safari, and Chrome on three different computers (same ISP) and only just now can reach Chess.com from work.

The chat between participants of a small tournament I am in suggests others are having trouble getting onto Chess.com as well.  Did something change?  Is Chess.com being hosted by someone different?  Is there a new Java runtime I should download?  Any ideas?

hrmm... we haven't changed anything on our end. it may be an issue with your ISP routers or something. i'll have our technical team weigh in on this. very strange indeed...

Erik, the message about the domain licencing only happened once. It could have been a fluke.

Not sure why I am seeing slow response (again - that is in another forum thread we chatted about last Fall). I suspect my ISP on that one.

On the pieces not being drawn, is the board rendered using Flash?  Last night on one of the computers I was using I installed Mozilla and was prompted to load Flash when opening Chess.com.  When I did that both Mozilla and IE7 displayed the chess pieces.  It also seems to help to delete cookies.  I can't know that this is related, but it did work and I'm seeing others posting with the pieces not drawn.  I'd like to share what worked for me, but I'd I'd like to know if my actions really fixed something or were just coincidencidental. 

Thanks!  This is a great site and when I can't move I am reminded how much I enjoy it!

do you have any plugins installed on your firefox? i've heard the "noscript" plugin can cause problems with our site.

Yes I think so.  When I go to Tools>Download I see this list: Adobe Acrobat, DivX Player Netscape Plugin, DivX Content Upload Plugin, DivX Web Player, iTunes Application Detector, Java(TM) Platform SE 6 U1, Microsoft Office 2003, Microsoft DRM (network object), Microsoft DRM (Store Netscape Plugin), Mozilla Default Plug-in, QuickTime Plug-in 7.6, Scorch Plugin, Shockwave Flash, Shockwave for Director, Windows Media Player Plug-in Dynamic Link Library.

But, I am currently able to see pices at the moment using that browser.

Quick update - I am able to see pieces with Mozilla 5.0.  On the same computer I am unable to see pieces with IE7 running with "no-addons".

its clearly a cache issue. did you flush your cache? (go to OPTIONS and choose to delete all browsing history, etc)

Yes I did, and sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't.  Another time I reinstalled Adobe Flash and I was able to see pieces.  I have several computers (four) with various browsers and all have experienced the drawing problem and the inability to invoke the site this week.  Just now I tried using IE7 and now I can see pieces (no long delay getting to the point of drawing of the pieces - this time it was nearly instantanteous and viola, the pieces are there).  

Being a software person, I'm ready to blame my ISP for home and the different ISP for work (the problem has occurred at both).  But, I have had the problem clear after deleting my cached cookies, reinstalling Flash, and now, waiting around.  I am not a web programmer, but I wonder if my computers are sharing cookies via my router.  In any case. it is mysterious and I'm not the only one seeing it.  If you want me to try something, let me know.  I will keep trying to pin down what clears it up and post it here.

Thanks for listening!  Paul

very odd. note that chess.com does not use flash, so that shouldn't impact anything.

No kidding.  I really hate it when our customers call with weird problems that don't make sense.  Is there something I can do to collect data you can use the next time this happens?

nope. you've done fine :)

The following, which I will check the next time I have problems seeing my pieces, was posted by Soman on another forum topic about pieces not being drawn:

I've found a solution for my problem; maybe this will be of use to someone else... It turned out that it was not an internal chess.com problem afterall , rather google-analytics being blocked by my computer.

Go to C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc

In that folder, locate the the hosts file and change the properties so that it is not read-only. Open this file in notepad. Look for any entry of google-analytics and delete that whole line. Save file and close.