As far as upgrading the forum software this is what I get when trying to run the upgrade:

The update process is starting. This process may take a while on some hosts, so please be patient.

Enabling Maintenance mode…

Updating Plugin Simple:Press (1/1)

Actually now some users are getting failed security check for regular posts as well without polls. 

How is it possible to have 3 unread messages when there are only 2 messages in my inbox and I have read them both? 

The first – and perhaps only question – is what has changed on your site that may be responsible for all of this? It has to be something unless it has been like this since day 1.

The security check thing just started but I haven’t really changed anything in that regard that I can think of. 

THe private message issue has been a problem from the get go. 

No caching introduced? The security check has been there for as very long time – although we did change the Ui a few versions back. All of this could be explained by caching…

I don’t know where in jetpack to turn off caching if there is any caching being done by them. Like I said cloudflare I put in a page rule to bypass caching. 

I don’t personally know enough about Cloudflare to pass a verdict on whether a simple url rule is enough to stop it. I DO know people have had many issues with it in the past and turned it off altogether. The important part of the question would be was cloudflare in use when these things were not happening. And if the answer to that is no then what happens if you turn it off totally again?

As to JetPack I do not believe it comes with any caching but it does come with an awful lot of junk that is turned on by default. Sadly – as it comes from the Automattic stable – it is notoriously problematic. But I think we should follow the caching question first.

well, there are folks that run cloudflare okay (see posts from @fidosysop-2 where he talks about config) but like any CDN its very sensitive to configuration for sites with dynamic data…

but I am seeing many js errors on your site… mostly that content is blocked… like infolinks and other… its running cross site scripts (not really cool)…  not sure if affecting site, since I cant do much as a guest…

@mr-papa – I think they are mostly advertising links…

Concentrating on the front end first – another possibility of course is that the AJAX calls are getting highjacked which may explain the nonce/security issues. Caching may also explain that but I see no evidence of that this morning. So it is back to a question on changes… Has anything been added to the website – ie., extra WP theme items or a new WP plugin – that may also be making AJAX calls?

By the way – if you used to use Vanilla forums there is still some inline JavaScript on page loads that should probably be removed.

I am going to start going through plugins to see if I can isolate anything. Will post back to see if I found anything. 

let us know what you find…