Anyone having problems viewing the blog?

I received this note from a reader:

When I go to your blog, the normal array of sidebar, header, etc., appears for two seconds, but then disappears, and then a full width post column appears with no sidebar and the header having been reduced to the title with no picture…

Puzzling.

I haven’t seen that in any browser.

Anyone else?

Another reader writes from London, saying:

Quick observation: I’m researching at the National Archives in London just now and their wireless network does not allow me to visit the websites of the Catholic Archdiocese of Westminster, the Anglican Diocese of London, and indeed your own blog, among others, because they fall under the category of “traditional religion” which, the server tells me, is “always filtered.” Well I’m sure glad that no researchers can have their research sullied by those anti-intellectual institutions. I do not know how far this filter reaches, nor whether it is the expressed policy of the NA to restrict access to religious sites, but in any case you can add this to the list of irritations of the week.

Also, it is time I ask about the blog on hand-help devices, phones and iPads, etc.

How’s it going?

UPDATE:

I disabled the special iPad theme.  The iPad should now load the regular blog theme.

(From my iPad.)

UPDATE:

iTunes feed problems again.

I give up.

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
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66 Comments

  1. chcrix says:

    I am not having problems viewing.

    However, over the last few days I have noticed annoyingly poor performance with viewing. Scrolling down produces sluggish and tediously delayed screen updates.

    I fixed it myself by using no-script to deny WDTPRS the ability to invoke javascript.

    I don’t know what changed, but it seems to me that it was near the time the site went to multiple i-tune feeds.

  2. acardnal says:

    I’m experiencing NO issues today. Using Mozilla Firefox Ver 11.0/Windows 7/Intel Core i3 Processor.

  3. Jason Keener says:

    I was getting the same thing for the last two days or so. I’m using Internet Explorer. Blog looks normal now.

  4. philologus says:

    More technomysteria:

    For those of you who use an iPhone 4s, try this experiment. Use the speech to text tool on a text message and see if the software will recognize the word ‘sin’. For me, it is always understood as ‘send’, no matter how clearly I articulate the word. Overall I have found the speech to text software highly competent; but apparently it denies the existence of ‘sin’.

  5. Jason Keener says:

    I spoke too soon. I refreshed your blog’s home page, and it looks weird again without the header, etc.

  6. Ttony says:

    Father, I tried to post a moment ago and got a WordPress error message telling me I was posting too fast!

    What I said was that in Windows 7, IE9, I got this problem until I logged in to the site. While logged in, I tried opening the site in a new tab, and the same problem ocurred.

  7. Alexis says:

    The National Archives in London comment is very interesting. Perhaps the poster could inquire as to the extent of and reasoning behind this oddity.

    No problems viewing here…

  8. mamajen says:

    Wow. It’s disgusting to me that institutions have filters like that. Absolutely crazy.

    And, yes Father, I hate to break it to you, but it appears there is a problem with your website. When logged in it opens fine, but if I am logged out, I can duplicate the problem described. I tested it in IE 9. This most likely means that some essential bit of code is loading when the user is logged in, but if the user is logged out something is not compiling properly.

    Another curious thing I noticed when I did have the problem is that it asked me to download your hamster SWF file.

    Have you made changes to any code recently?

  9. Jerry says:

    I haven’t experienced any problems with the formatting of the page, but on refreshes it takes a VERY long time to complete loading, during which time I am unable to use the scroll bar. This has been happening for at least two days, and only on this site. Windows Vista; Chrome 17.0

  10. Joel says:

    Weird. I have the exact problem described as the emailer. When I logged in to write this comment, the blog looked normal.

  11. acardnal says:

    I have gotten the “posting too fast” error several times over the last week or two. I assumed it had to do with simultaneous posting by me and another commentator. I just reposted my comment a few seconds later and it accepted it.

  12. dans0622 says:

    Same problem here. But, it does not take logging in to make the blog appear as it should–just clicking on an individual entry brings up the appropriate post in the normal format. Using IE.

  13. Mary Jane says:

    No problems for me! Using Firefox (latest version) on a MacBook Air, OSX 10.6.8.

  14. acardnal says:

    Yes to above. Refreshing the WDTPRS blog does take much longer than it did a week or two ago. I attributed that to switching the blog to WordPress hosting by I could be wrong. Maybe “mamajen” can add something.

  15. mamajen says:

    After a little bit more experimentation, it seems the problem does not exist in Chrome whether I am logged in or not. For some reason IE is having trouble loading the sidebars (including the top and bottom menus in that category), but everything else loads fine. It makes me wonder if something in one of the sidebars is causing the issue for IE. Internet Explorer is notoriously fussy about code. Other browsers can work it out just fine even if it’s not perfect, but IE often balks.

  16. Mariana says:

    Yes to the above, here, too. I’m in Scandinavia.

  17. jbas says:

    It seems to load more slowly than usual, and I, too, have gotten the “too fast” message (Google Chrome).
    Isn’t the Church of England an established ‘church’ still in England? How can a state agency deny access to a traditional religion (Christianity) that has official status in one of its constituent members (England)?

  18. Mary Jane says:

    IE, btw, is eeeeevil. Just sayin’. :)

  19. Gregg the Obscure says:

    I access WDPTRS in three ways:
    1. domiciliary desktop with updated Firefox and NoScript – no problems whatsoever;
    2. Kindle Fire using Silk – slower than usual during the last few days;
    3. workplace desktop with (mandatory) IE8(!) – extremely slow the last few days.

    On the two machines where this site has slowed down other sites haven’t followed suit.

  20. Sandy says:

    No problem on the website, but I first see you in Google Reader, Father (which I click from email). When I read the entries in Reader, a lot of the pictures will not appear, though some do. Anyone know why? (They show up as a square/rectangle with a little symbol in the middle.)

  21. jenne says:

    On IE (latest download) – same problem. No top links or side just the posts show. But when going to post, it all came back. (logged in or not logged in – is the same) I find your blog loads very slow on IE (my laptop), I’ll check Safari and Firefox – but your blog is slow (as is patheos stuff)

  22. mamajen says:

    I’m still working on it and have found the same as jenne. Whatever the problem is, it’s on the blog homepage only it seems. I will keep digging to see if I can narrow it down further.

  23. cpaulitz says:

    When I go to you Fr. Guarnizo post, I can’t see the two responses.

  24. mlwalker1972 says:

    I am on an iPhone. I downloaded your page as a web app some time ago. For a couple of days it has been unreliable (it would say it couldn’t open a file or something, and then the web app would close). Today seems to be better though :)

  25. jenne says:

    Safari, Firefox on mac – good as I stated above. I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary on my Droid phone (I do link out of igoogle homepage and I have direct bookmark)

  26. Andreas says:

    The page appeared without difficulty during the past couple of days. However, today has been quite bad as the page takes forever to load if it does at all. When it appears, it does so in segments…sometimes freezing and not responding to any inputs from me.

  27. MrD says:

    I have to use an alternative browser on my iPad because the mobile site appears with no option to change to the normal site. The Safari browser on iPad will not allow me to change how it appears either.

  28. Woodlawn says:

    Yes, had the same viewing issue earlier today. Would appear normally for a second or two, and then things would appear as described. Issue seems to have resolved itself.

  29. Charivari Rob says:

    Home desktop PC with Firefox working fine.

    Mobile (LG Android): not so good. Takes a while to finish loading some pages, randomly refreshes and bounces me to the top of a page even as I’m scrolling through text. It is probably just my device as I have been having memory space issues, but I haven’t been having the same performance troubles on other websites as here.

  30. wanda says:

    I am having the same experience as your origional questioner. When I come to your page the banner accross the top is there at first, but then disappears and the page becomes a plain white page with the texts., etc. Your page only looks like what I am used to seeing when I click on the ‘leave a comment.’ Then that page looks like the good ol’ Fr. Z page I am used to seeing. Not sure if this makes sense, I am not very techy.

  31. mamajen says:

    Okay, Father, I have discovered a problem…I don’t know for certain if it is the problem, but it very well could be. I noticed that this problem only exists on pages where the date is displayed in big bold letters (ie. at the top of the homepage before the blog posts). I can replicate the problem on any page that displays the date in that format, such as archive lists and category lists.

    Looking at your source code, I saw that the div controlling the format of that date has an “id” rather than a “class”. An “id” should be used only for elements that appear onceon the page. As you can see, you have that large date format more than once on your homepage. Tweaking the code so that the div is assigned a class rather than an id may very well fix the problem. If you don’t know how to do this, I am happy to explain in more detail, or even fix it for you if you would feel comfortable with that.

    As I said, IE can be very finnicky about imperfect code, so although this is not a major issue, it could very well be the root of the problem.

    [Interesting. Now if I can find that…]

  32. julie f says:

    Whoa, your reader managed to access the wireless at the National Archives?! I’ve spent vast amounts of time at Kew and I could never get a working connection. Maybe I should try again… maybe the times I tried before were before they introduced the “traditional religion” barrier and the connection was being jammed with people writing angry comments at Rorate……

  33. frjim4321 says:

    No problems on this 7-year-old bloated Dell XPS, XP SP3 o/s with 89 simultaneous processes running.

    Explorer and Chrome both render the site appropriately with the occasional exception of an unfriendly mention by robert brown.

    Yes there really are 89 processes running on this machine. Too many cool applications out there. The constant external backup drive is a huge resource hogging, mirror everything all the time . . .

  34. APX says:

    Your blog for the first time cause my safari on my iPhone to crash today.

  35. Stephen D says:

    Same problem here. Started today 15 March.

  36. Bryan Boyle says:

    Good here in central NJ on: MacBook Pro under Lion, on my iPhone 5.1, and iPad 5.1, using both safari and firefox.

    That includes the full site and those modified/adjusted for mobile devices. Yes, I have the iPad app, and it looks and is working fine, at least for me.

  37. pm125 says:

    Internet Explorer on Windows 7. Last night the blog lost header, and side info. When I shut down there was a warning to wait for 8 updates. This afternoon 5:00 wdtprs came up with no heading or side – at first – after few minutes the missing parts reappeared and all looks in order.
    ( except my missing toolbars …)

  38. Marie Teresa says:

    windows 7
    IE 9

    your homepage is missing the header and sidebars and other info at the bottom of the page.
    however, these items are in place when i open a single article.

    (btw, you do a great job )

  39. Jacob says:

    cpaulitz says:
    15 March 2012 at 2:24 pm

    When I go to you Fr. Guarnizo post, I can’t see the two responses.

    The two replies indicated are I believe the two trackback links.

    Since the Yellow Dog widget was removed, I have been able to access the blog once more without massive problems. Thanks for taking care of that.

  40. frjim4321 says:

    On March 15 at 22:04 UTC the text editor in an adjacent post is bolding text not intended to be bold.

  41. LittleGal says:

    We have been wondering most of the day what was wrong. We assumed you were working on your blog. When we first go to the site we see the full page with header and sidebars as usual. Within a few seconds the screen switches to a cropped page without the header and without sidebars. My husband was especially looking for the sidebars so he could go to Amazon and buy something! So our experience (on both of our machines-a Dell desktop and an ASUS laptop-agree with your first reader note.

  42. Ttony says:

    Julie F: TNA at Kew does not offer anything other than severely restricted access to the Internet, the same as any other UK Government location, but you can always use their Internet cafe behind the reception desk if you can’t access anything from your portable device.

  43. No problems with PCs using Firefox, but (as mentioned above) with Safari on the iPad the mobile site appears with no option to change to the normal site or to improve the minimal appearance (no header with picture, thumbnails of the posts, etc).

    For a longtime WDTPRS user this is so unsatisfying that one inveterate WDTPRS user in my houseold has simply quite visiting WPTPRS because she uses only the iPad.

  44. StanTheMan says:

    Blocked and labeled as “Traditional Religious” is common where I work when I want to relax and read something online during lunch.

    What is really upsetting is if I try to go to the Remnant Newspaper website. That site is blocked and the reason given is : “Hate”. I took a screen shot of it, printed it and sent it to the editor, Michael Matt.

    Yes, traditional Catholicism is now being filtered out along with the American Nazi Party.

    I can’t complain. It isn’t my computer after all. But I do wonder about America.

  45. mamajen says:

    Father, I just need to run and make dinner for my family, but I can come back later and explain in more detail in case you’re having trouble finding each piece of code you need to tweak. It’s a relatively easy fix.

  46. I disabled the iPad theme. All iPads should now load the regular theme.

  47. acardnal says:

    FYI Fr. Z, maybe it’s just me but the site seems to be loading and refreshing faster now.

  48. mamajen says:

    Okay, here are the directions (assuming your theme is set up the way I suspect)*. And BTW, further investigation reveals that the problem is twofold–not only is an id being used multiple times on the same page, but it is not referenced anywhere in the stylesheet! The browser is looking for something that isn’t there.

    Go to Appearance -> Editor

    Choose “Main Index Template” from the menu on the right. In that file, search for a line that says:

    and delete the id=”date” part, changing it to just:

    (there may or may not be multiple instances of this that you will need to change.) Click “Update File”.

    Then, choose “Archives” from the menu on the right. Search for the same line and make the same change as above. Click “Update File”.

    That’s all you should need to do to fix that particular problem. Hopefully this will resolve the issue!

    *Caveat: If you use any kind of caching plugin, you may need to disable that while you edit the theme files in order for the changes to “take”.

  49. mamajen says:

    Sigh. It says I’m allowed to use the code tag, but it didn’t display it… here are the instructions, again–in order to not break your blog I’ve had to place spaces in between the brackets, but they won’t be there in the actual code.

    Choose “Main Index Template” from the menu on the right. In that file, search for a line that says:

    and delete the id=”date” part, changing it to just:

    (without spaces)

    (there may or may not be multiple instances of this that you will need to change.) Click “Update File”.

    Then, choose “Archives” from the menu on the right. Search for the same line and make the same change as above. Click “Update File”.

  50. mamajen says:

    Argh! It keeps filtering out anything that even remotely resembles code…let’s try this one more time.

    In the files mentioned above, look for something that says div id=”date” (within brackets) and delete the id=”date”, leaving only the div (within brackets).

    If this comment doesn’t work right I will just email you.

    [The problem is, that line isn’t in index.php.]

  51. Southern Baron says:

    The problem with TNA at Kew restricting their wireless network so severely is that the institution exists as a repository of information and one can never tell what that information may prompt or require. One can go there to research matters pertaining to traditional religion, yet one cannot access a website via their wireless (not even their own terminals, just their wifi) that pertains to that ‘traditional religion’ as they or their ISP have defined it. This restricts knowledge.

    They don’t need to know that I just wanted to check Mass times after the archive closed…

  52. Yes, back to normal, looking fine on the iPad now. Thanks, Father Z!

  53. Michelle F says:

    I have never had a problem viewing your blog, Fr. Z. I am using a Toshiba netbook (NB205), running Windows XP Home Ed. (SP3), and Mozilla Firefox v.3.6.28.

    I did, however, just get directed to a web page that told me I am “posting comments too quickly.” I don’t know why it would say that since I type rather slowly, and I gave the “post” button only one little click. Perhaps several users trying to post comments at the same time causes a problem?

    By the way, congratulations on being labeled “traditional religion” by the National Archives in London! Too bad they block it, but it’s a nice compliment!

  54. Martial Artist says:

    Father Z,

    Running MSIE 9 and experiencing no problems viewing the blog.

    Pax et bonum,
    Keith Töpfer

  55. Elizabeth R says:

    I have no problems at home, but at work I am denied because you fit into the “traditional religion” prohibition (however, the Vatican, CNA, Cardinal Dolan’s blog, Creative Minority Report, and many others are allowed).

    Since I found that restriction annoying, I added your RSS feed to Google, which allows me to read you during lunch.

  56. oldcanon2257 says:

    @Elizabeth R

    Wow!!! When I read your comment above about the organization you work for actually using web filtering to block Fr. Z’s blog and there’s even a “traditional religion prohibition” category for web filtering, I was so amazed that my jaw literally dropped just reading it. The first thing I immediately related was Fr. Z’s recent post about those seminaries run by modernists where access to traditional Catholic sites were also taboo.

  57. acardnal says:

    When one uses a computer that is owned by the company (private property) you work for or the government (public taxpayer owned) you work for (whether federal, state, county or municipal), you are subject to their rules and policies to include monitoring and limitations on access. Sorry. All quite constitutional.

  58. oldcanon2257 says:

    @acardnal

    I do not dispute the constitutionality of the actions. I’m just amazed because as a network admin, I have implemented and worked with various web filtering solutions (both appliance-based and hosted), but this is the first time I’ve seen a “traditional religion”-type category for blocking sites.

  59. pm125 says:

    This is curious, but probably meaningless to viewing (I’m not doing iPod transfers). The top line bar of addresses to the right of the forward / backward arrows has the site name preceeded by an icon. W for two other WordPress sites (TAC & Abyssum) – but wdtprs has the e icon representing int. explorer.

  60. dans0622 says:

    Had problems yesterday. Am having no problems today.

  61. The feedback has been helpful.

  62. Banjo pickin girl says:

    i get a lot of boxes that say there is a script running that will cause explorer to run slow. i get a lot of boxes that say “stack overflow” too.

  63. mamajen says:

    Sorry Father, I’m not sure where that date line may be called out since I’m not familiar with the specific structure of your theme. It could be in another theme file or even in a plugin.

    In any case, I think your moving the social icons from the bottom of the posts to the top seems to have resolved the IE display problem, for whatever reason! I no longer have the problem whether I am logged in or not. I seem to remember having a similar issue when I tried one of those social plugins on my own blog. Sometimes it’s just tough for the browser to resolve all the code because the plugin sticks it in an odd place.

    The div issue you still have isn’t ideal, but as long as it’s not causing problems for anyone it can probably be left as is for now.

    Here’s hoping WordPress, iTunes, et al give you a break for a while!

  64. benedetta says:

    The itunes thing is annoying for sure. But, I am happy to come to the blog to hear the LentcaZts.

  65. erinalicia says:

    The site ALWAYS crashes for me on Safari on my iPod touch. Although if I’m IN the twitter app and go to your site using the link in your tweets, it does not crash as much. Once I “view in Safari” though – always crashes. Frustrating.

  66. ipadre says:

    Thank you for removing the iPad theme. I like the normal look in Safari.

Comments are closed.