I did every tech support thing known to man with my browsers,phone and TV and router but I could not log in. Right now I am on Opera using a VPN. Was I IP banned? Why? Is it a mistake? I'm at a loss. Friends can access it in NYC so why it doesn't seem like a site issue and isitdown also said it's up.

I also often have issues with this site. Half the time when I open a thread it wont load or only loads part of it (i think in part it might be peoples signatures?). When that happens I just close the site down or go someplace else.

Doesn't look like you are banned. I'd guess someone in your region was, so your network provider IP was banned?

Send a PM to one of the site admins.

It's working now. Weird. Oh well. Thanks tho for responding.

Opera has bad defaults (something like 4x chrome or firefox) of opening too many connections to the server at once and can trigger temp IP bans for a few minutes. Note: Once logged in, the limits are higher, so be sure to log in first thing before Opera is flagged as doing a DOS attack and being blocked for a few minutes.

I suggest tweaking opera settings for sane values of max connections to server or use a different browser.

I did enable HTTP/2 support for the site, which should help keep opera from opening so many concurrent connections. That said, I don't use opera, so can't verify if it behaves better or not.

If everything works normally as soon as you enable a VPN, I’d suspect something related to your normal public IP or ISP route rather than the browser or devices. It could be an IP block, a bad route, or the site’s firewall/CDN rejecting your address. The fact that friends in NYC can access it doesn’t really rule that out, since they’re coming from completely different IP ranges. I’d check your public IP and, if possible, try another connection such as a phone hotspot without the VPN. If it works there, that would make the ISP/IP routing theory much more likely. If the site admins can check their firewall or server logs, they should be able to see whether your IP is being blocked.