So, just for kicks, I tried the 2 links above again.   At first I was thrilled, it worked!

Then I realized that both links were going to group 10.

Then it got really bizarre.  I clicked on Mohave County, which should go to the main forum page.  But, it didn’t, stayed right at group 10. 

As I clicked around, I ended up with the breadcrumbs showing the business group, but displaying the fun group.

Even clicking on the header “High Desert Dirt FORUM” link only got me to group 10.

Is there some index to rebuild?

Or could I have messed something up when I edited the breadcrumbs?

— and another thought.  Didn’t you ask whether the fire district was the only public group?   Maybe it didn’t work for you either?

I see 5 groups as guest…  About (9), Fun (10), Business (8), Lake Mohave (7) and Mohave County (3)…

on the road so I dont have all my tools to see if anything is messing with the query arguments (ie the group= stuff)…

dont think it will help, but perhaps try going to forum – toolbox – housekeeping and flushing the general cache…

Assume this is version 5.7.5.2 (the latest)?  I just tested the group query arg on multiple test sites and here, and it works fine…   however, the one thing you are doing different is displaying the main forum on you wordpress home page… shouldnt matter, but I dont have a test setup in that exact configuration…  

but if there was a problem with above, it would be all or nothing… it would not be intermittently working… that still sounds like caching…

I did flush the general cache,  but it made no difference.

I again went to the links above, group 10 went to FUN as is should.  Then I clicked on the 2nd link, group 8, and just like last time, it showed the businesses in the breadcrumbs, but still displayed group 10, FUN.

Did that SEVERAL times, same thing every time.  FUN works, Business doesn’t.

Also clicked on the link above to group 7 (fire district) and same thing, correct in the breadcrumbs, still shows FUN.

So weird. And really NOT fun!

Just switched themes for a minute to see whether I messed something up, but same problem in barebones.

I don’t know how having the forum be the front page could impact it, but I’ll try that late night.

So I tried it in Chrome, but I clicked on the biz group first and then that got stuck. 

The fun group and fire district displayed correctly in the breadcrumbs, but it kept pulling the business group.

So whatever I click on first, that gets “stuck.”

Can you try a test for me? 

Can you temp change your home page to be other than the forum page? Just create a dummy page and assifn that as the home page. So the forum is only accessible as a site subpage. 

See if that makes any difference… Rule out the one situation I couldn’t currently test as mentioned precjosjly. 

Tried that and all the groups (from the links here) just loaded the main forum page.

Sigh ….

So – this morning I am seeing different behaviour. Seems like no matter what IU select I am always delivered a topic called ‘FUN’ as per the one in your previous attachment.

So lets go back to the beginning and look at this differently. It’s back to the old question. Something must have changed to trigger this bizarre behaviour. A new WP plugin being activated maybe. Something like permalink redirection being used… It has to be something…

So it’s happening to you too, I’m almost glad. 

The way it’s been going for me is that it stays with the FIRST group I load, so I’m guessing that you clicked on the FUN group first?

Yesterday when I temporarily moved the forum from the front page, it loaded the forum main page no matter which group URL I clicked on.  The front page was the first one I loaded.

And a couple days ago I tested by going to the BUSINESS group first and then that “stuck.”

It “feels” like a redirect, but it’s only temporary because eventually it gets unstuck and starts all over with whatever group you click on first. 

And it also applied to the main forum page, but NOT to any other forums or posts.

Sometimes I think I’m cursed!

But all of this is classic caching…. Are you sure there is no cache in action here because this is exactly what I would expect to to happen

I don’t know how I’d find out.  I disabled the lightspeed plugin.

And, why would it ONLY!!!! cache group links?

no, we have seen various oddities on your site with the groups since looking at it…  and as Andy says, it acts like caching…  and something we cannot replicate nor has it been reported before… so just trying to get to the bottom of it…

I also see your Headway theme doing some level of caching

<script type=’text/javascript’ src=’https://forum.highdesertdirt.com/wp-content/uploads/headway/cache/responsive-grid-js-https-e6e6939.js?ver=4.9.6′></script>
<script type=’text/javascript’ src=’https://forum.highdesertdirt.com/wp-content/uploads/headway/cache/block-dynamic-js-layout-front_page-https-8bc6950.js?ver=4.9.6′></script>

but doesnt appear to be likely cause…  still something seems to be interfering with the group id query args…  any other plugin or theme that does anything with groups?  like another plugin that might user the same query arg?

might be worth a couple other quick tests…

one, switch to the default wp theme…  and try again…

two, disable all other wp plugins… and try again…

I turned all the plugins off and it made no difference.    Strangely I was still stuck on FUN, even though I started with the fire district and I don’t think I’ve done anything yet today.

I actually had moved the forum to the subdomain by itself because I had interference with other plugins.

And, I already changed the theme to 2017 yesterday when I took the forum off the front page, so I know it’s not Headway.

And I also already switched to the barabones theme recently for testing, thought I might have screwed something up when I customized.

So it’s none of these ….  If you want to look around yourself I’ll be glad to send you the login.

And what else did you find that’s weird?  I’ve only noticed the group links.

doubt we will see anything from the admin side, but couldnt hurt either…  if you can pass along a temp account to us via PM, we can take a look…  Please send to both YellowSwordfish and Mr Papa, and be sure to link back to this thread so we know what its about…  also, please make sure the account is both a WP admin and has SP admin capabilities…

still acts like caching but who knows…  looking at some of the http response headers, there seems to be some caching headers though often its a miss…  are you running any caching on the server such as x-cache, memcache or apc cache?

next step after looking in admin would be to get ftp access so we could do some debugging…

I pm’d you, but regarding caching, I have no idea. 

And it’s not my server, I just have an account at SiteGround and I hate it.  Not good support, have to find a better host. 

Can I see about caching in control panel?

I would think you could see any site caching in your web host control panel…

okay, played around some more… there is definitely some sort of caching going on…  I cant really explain it..

but, if I turn on some debug output (our data inspector), it works EVERY time…  all the inspector does is display some additional information on each page so we can tell what is going on… fundamentally, the entire page generation is the same, just a couple extra ‘print’ statements..

so if go to any page with the inspector on, it works great… as soon as I turn off the inspector, every page load where we try to go to a group goes to the last one that worked properly…  that is similar to what you have been reporting how occasionally the first one worked but none else and rest went to the first/working one…

I dont know if its some sort of page or opcode cache… or how the inspector changes how that works…  perhaps its some sort of query arg cache???

this is quite odd… might be worth looking at your host panel and see if any caching… or query your host..