We've been experiencing a blogging misconfiguration error when posting. The problem was fairly simple. Our rebuild system rebuilds the main page and a giant index of all posts. Now approaching 1300 posts for the semester, the system was timing out on the rebuild of the giant index and giving the misconfiguration error. Nothing was misconfigured. It was just taking too long.
The error received while tracking back was the first sign of this problem. Trackbacks come near the end of the rebuild process. Even with track backs off, the problem slowly progressed in scope as the total number of entries grew. At some stage after midnight last night, it became impossible to post.
Attempting a few test posts on different blogs convinced me it was not just an issue with one blog. I then noticed how long the posting was taking and considered the rebuild process. That's when the solution struck me.
update: Rosie has, quite rightly, asked what the fix was. Well, at this point, I am no longer rebuilding the complete archives list with every post. That shortens up the time to build enough that the process does not time out.