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Discussion: Broken Widgets (All suggestions welcomed...desperate for help)
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 Ms*Niland |
Broken Widgets (All suggestions welcomed...desperate for help)
Jul 4 2008, 5:10 PM EDT Hello again, As stated in previous posts, I am having problems with loading widgets at http://stbedes.wetpaint.com As I said in an earlier post, these widgets loaded fine up until 2 days ago; then they suddently stopped loading on any machine at school or my computer at home. The suggestion of clearing browser cache and cookies seemed to work fine on my laptop at home, using IE 7. I came back into school today to try doing the same on these machines, and it didn't work. The widgets still won't load, even after clearing everything. This is on IE 7 as well. I just went and asked our IT support guys for some help, and the pages wouldn't load on their machines either (using Mozilla and IE 7) and they are now stumped and suggested I aksed the site for some more input. These pages were created to use in a presentation next week to our Admin in a bid to convince them to integrate this technology (and support us to get the resources to do so)...but it is not going to be very impressive if I can't get the pages to load. Is it possible this is a site bandwidth issue? Are the site servers overloaded causing this problem? Any further help is much appreciated. Thank you. Do you find this valuable? |
 Jason_wetpaint |
RE: Broken Widgets (All suggestions welcomed...desperate for help)
Jul 4 2008, 6:49 PM EDT It sounds to me like there's a firewall or routing restriction on your school network that is preventing things from loading. I'm still having no trouble accessing those pages and seeing those widgets. Our servers are not having any trouble with anything on those pages. Something is actively preventing those widgets from loading. Are you able to see any other widgets on other Wetpaint sites? For instance, can you see the widgets on the following pages? http://www.wetpaintcentral.com/page/Google+Map http://www.wetpaintcentral.com/page/YackPack+Voice+Chat+Example http://www.wetpaintcentral.com/page/PictoBrowser+to+display+Flickr+Sets http://www.wetpaintcentral.com/page/Other+Widget+Examples Do you find this valuable? |
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Ms*Niland |
RE: Broken Widgets (All suggestions welcomed...desperate for help)
Jul 5 2008, 4:21 AM EDT I tried the site on my laptop last night, loaded fine. Tried to load it on a second laptop, wouldn't load. (Both using IE 7) This morning, the site is loading quickly with all widgets showing (including all those in the posted links) on the 3 computers in the house (all running IE 7 and Mozilla Firefox). So. I am still at a loss. Boggled by why it loaded on one laptop and not the other within minutes of each other...and then perfectly fine on all three this morning. I will not be back in the school until Monday morning to fiddle with those computers again. I will go back to the IT guys and question the firewall or any routing restrictions. Barring that, there seems to be no plausible reason why they won't load on those machines? Thanks for the input so far. Do you find this valuable? |
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Ms*Niland |
RE: Broken Widgets (All suggestions welcomed...desperate for help)
Jul 7 2008, 4:06 AM EDT I am back at school and the page still isn't loading; nor are the links that you sent for me to check (even though they did over the weekend on three separate machines at home). I will check with IT here and ask about firewall or routing restrictions. Thanks. Do you find this valuable? |
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Ms*Niland |
RE: Broken Widgets (All suggestions welcomed...desperate for help)
Jul 9 2008, 9:21 AM EDT I have tried everything I can think of on the machines at school to get my http://stbedes.wetpaint.com site to load. The widgets simply won't show up on these machines. I have deleted cookies and history, installed latest Flash and Java. The odd thing really is that the exact same widgets load perfectly on my blog (http://msniland.edublogs.org) here at school. Any new ideas that might shed light on why they will load via that site but cannot load wetpaint using the same widgets? Does this mean it cannot be a firewall or routing restriction, if they are getting through on that site on the school machines? Thanks. Do you find this valuable? |
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Jason_wetpaint |
RE: Broken Widgets (All suggestions welcomed...desperate for help)
Jul 9 2008, 10:47 AM EDT Widgets on Wetpaint sites are served from a specific server: widget.wetpaintserv.us If your school is blocking that server, it would result in exactly what you're seeing. Try going to the following URL. It's a widget here on Wetpaint Central. It should immediately redirect you to the widget. If it doesn't, that's a pretty good indication that it's blocked on your network. http://widget.wetpaintserv.us/wiki/wetpaintcentral/page/PictoBrowser+to+display+Flickr+Sets/widget/unknown/1229823987 Do you find this valuable? |
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Anonymous |
RE: Broken Widgets (All suggestions welcomed...desperate for help)
Jul 9 2008, 3:07 PM EDT The URL you gave me doesn't pull the widget from wetpaint; it redirects me to a blank page: http://www.db798.com/pictobrowser.swf Can you please send me another URL that you think would be suitable for this test at school? Thanks again Do you find this valuable? |
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Jason_wetpaint |
RE: Broken Widgets (All suggestions welcomed...desperate for help)
Jul 9 2008, 4:21 PM EDT It redirected you just fine. It didn't include the flash variables to load the widget, so the widget didn't load. This is as expected and it proves that you are not blocking our widget server. Now we have to figure out why the widget won't load while you're at school. What information did you get from your school's network administrators? In order to properly diagnose what's going on, I'd need to do an HTTP session capture to see what requests are getting through and what requests are being blocked. Do you find this valuable? |
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Anonymous |
RE: Broken Widgets (All suggestions welcomed...desperate for help)
Jul 9 2008, 5:32 PM EDT Oh, sorry. I thought I was supposed to actually load a widget on the redirect. Ok. I suppose then when I try the URL tomorrow at school it won't redirect me? My school's network administrators (bless them!) haven't given me much info at all! They did the most basic, cursory checks (if java and flash were up to date, etc)...then I asked them if it could be a firewall / routing issue, and was told they'd have to check higher up the chain (apparently that is done through someone higher up the admin chain in the area...). He asked me if this was a site I'd "made myself", which made me worry a bit as I didn't quite understand / see the relevance of that question, so tried to explain again what the issue was. This was all before I was able to get my blog working properly on the other site. Once I figured that out (and I do think that was just a java issue....every machine in the building is running different versions of outdated software...), I posted to you again to see if that was enlightening in anyway. Anyway, I will try to track them down again tomorrow and ask if the wetpaint server could be blocked and see if they have any more info for me. How would you do an HTTP session capture? Thanks for your perseverance! Do you find this valuable? |
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Jason_wetpaint |
RE: Broken Widgets (All suggestions welcomed...desperate for help)
Jul 9 2008, 6:29 PM EDT It's possible that the redirect won't happen from your school network. If it doesn't redirect, then we have a clear indication that your network is blocking our widget server or is blocking redirects. If it redirects, then we still need further diagnosis. There are a number of tools for capturing HTTP sessions. My favorite is called Charles. You can download it from http://www.charlesproxy.com/ For what it is, it's pretty easy to use. If you're not a heavy technical person, though, you'll be learning more about how the web works than most people ever get close to finding out about. Do you find this valuable? |
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Ms*Niland |
RE: Broken Widgets (All suggestions welcomed...desperate for help)
Jul 10 2008, 4:04 AM EDT Good morning, I am back at school and the link you gave me yesterday did not redirect. I encountered this URL http://10.2.1.10:15871/cgi-bin/blockpage.cgi?ws-session=2918547841 So, the widget server is being blocked? Does this mean if I ask them to lift this block (assuming it's that easy, to unblock one specific site?) and the widgets will then work at school? Do you find this valuable? |
