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JMM
Experienced
Topic Author
Posts: 154
Joined: 02 Aug 2021, 11:18

Links to some of my X3 sites cause main page to not completely load

19 May 2022, 23:13

Hello Karl,

I am having an issue which I'm pretty-sure is NOT caused by X3 itself, but rather by the work-around that I'm using to get X3 to work with my non-Apache web server, which I will get to at the end of this post.  The problem happens when users click on my links on my various sites that take them to my non-Apache X3 sites.

To see the problem that I am referring to, I temporarily added 2 asterisk buttons to the footer of THIS X3 site of mine (which is hosted on Flamepix but that's irrelevant).  If you click on either of the 2 asterisk buttons at the bottom of the page, when you are taken to either new non-Apache site of mine, 99% of the time the page doesn't fully load (for lack of a better description), and there is substantial extra space between the logo & the menu items.  Note that occasionally it will display correctly, in which case please close the opened new window & click the asterisk buttons again.  This problem happens regardless if I am using an image or text for the logo.  A simple refresh of the page fixes the problem, but the initial page that users land on 99% of the time is messed up.

This problem seems to happen only when I use target="_blank" in my links.  Example:

This link seems to work fine:
Code
<a href="http://www.GalleryWings.me/>GalleryWings.me</a>
But this link causes the problem with the page not displaying correctly:
Code
<a href="http://www.GalleryWings.me/" target="_blank">GalleryWings.me</a>
As this problem seems to happen only when users are taken to my non-Apache X3 sites, I suspect the problem is with my website software's rewrite rules.

After having told you only a couple of days ago that the developers of my website software, Abyss Web Server, managed to give me instructions on how to add rewrite rules to my sites in order to match the X3 .htaccess rules, and that everything was working perfectly, I had forgotten about the above little problem.

Would you be able to take a guess at which line(s) in X3's .htaccess file are related to this problem, so I can have the Abyss Web Server developers tweak my Abyss rewrite rules to fix this problem?

Apologies for wasting your time with this problem, as it is not related to X3 itself.

Thank you in advance & have yourself a great day.

Regards,
John
Location: Burlington (Toronto-ish), Ontario, Canada
Self-hosted using Abyss Web Server:   AuroraWings.me   |   GalleryWings.com   |   PanAurora-Studio.com   |
Externally-hosted using LiteSpeed/Apache Web Server:   GenealogyWings.com/galleries   |
 
User avatar
mjau-mjau
X3 Wizard
Posts: 13993
Joined: 30 Sep 2006, 03:37

Re: Links to some of my X3 sites cause main page to not completely load

20 May 2022, 00:54

I have tested, and first of all, I think it's important to make clear that this has nothing to do with where the LINKS are placed. I see the same behavior if I click the link, as when I refresh in browser or just when manually inputting the link in a new browser window. It wouldn't be logical that the loading problem is in any way related to where the user came from previously.

I have tested your Abyss-hosted website, and everything is just really slow. One time, the document wouldn't even load. Here is a waterfall, where one image takes 30 seconds and logo takes 28 seconds. There are no errors related to this specifically, it's just slow.
Image

If I close browser dev tools, and allow some items to load from browser-cache, it's still very slow but it eventually loads.
Image

I don't see any issue with "extra space" and I don't see how this is related to .htaccess.
 
User avatar
JMM
Experienced
Topic Author
Posts: 154
Joined: 02 Aug 2021, 11:18

Re: Links to some of my X3 sites cause main page to not completely load

20 May 2022, 23:37

Thanks for the reply.

Regarding the speed issue:
I have tested your Abyss-hosted website, and everything is just really slow. One time, the document wouldn't even load. Here is a waterfall, where one image takes 30 seconds and logo takes 28 seconds. There are no errors related to this specifically, it's just slow.
From here my local Abyss sites load fast, and when I use VPN to connect from other locations in North America (Canada & US) they are fast too.  And I had a couple of friends test from Bermuda (in the Atlantic Ocean) and my local sites were fast too.  I did notice that when I tested using my VPN to connect from locations in Europe & Hong Kong, they were slightly slower, but not extremely slow.  So I can live with that.  And my upload speed is close to 1GB from here, so that's not an issue.

However, the problem that I had initially reported, it appears that I used the wrong terminology when I mentioned that the pages appeared to not fully load.  If you look at THIS page, you can see with slider-comparisons what I was trying to explain yesterday.  I took screenshots of the problem users initially see when landing on my Abyss sites, and put those screenshots into those slider-comparisons, so you can visually see what I was trying to explain yesterday.

I am not saying that it is .htaccess causing the problem, as Abyss does not use .htaccess at all.  The Abyss developers looked at X3's .htacess file, and gave me instructions to include "equivalent" rewrite rules that Abyss can use in order to obtain the same results that .htaccess has on Apache servers.  Those "equivalent" rewrite rules appear to be working, as X3 on Abyss works perfectly, except for the problem that you can see in the slider-comparisons in the above link.

I was hoping that maybe you would recognize what is happening, and be able to think of why it is happening, so hopefully the Abyss developers can tweak the "equivalent" Abyss rewrite rules for me.  As mentioned yesterday, when users arrive at those initial messed-up home screens, a simple refresh of the page fixes the problem, but it is that initial messed-up home screen that is annoying, and most users wouldn't know to simply refresh their browser to fix the problem.

Thanks in advance & have a great day.

Regards,
John
Location: Burlington (Toronto-ish), Ontario, Canada
Self-hosted using Abyss Web Server:   AuroraWings.me   |   GalleryWings.com   |   PanAurora-Studio.com   |
Externally-hosted using LiteSpeed/Apache Web Server:   GenealogyWings.com/galleries   |
 
User avatar
mjau-mjau
X3 Wizard
Posts: 13993
Joined: 30 Sep 2006, 03:37

Re: Links to some of my X3 sites cause main page to not completely load

20 May 2022, 23:48

I can clearly see that a low-quality image is displaying in your screenshot ... but I didn't see this myself. So this means it's showing the low quality image only "sometimes"? Are you sure this is not just a progressive jpg still loading? (progressive JPG will look like that while loading). Are we sure there is no "proxy" server in between that is serving images? Unless I can reproduce this from here, I have no means to diagnose this ... Also, I don't see how or why your Abyss server would "sometimes" choose to serve this, and I can't see how this is related to htaccess.

This is what I see from here, nothing like what you showed me. Image in slideshow loaded fine, but as you can see, the logo is still loading. I see there is some error in console. Could you try to temporarily remove the pws.php thing?  
Image
 
User avatar
JMM
Experienced
Topic Author
Posts: 154
Joined: 02 Aug 2021, 11:18

Re: Links to some of my X3 sites cause main page to not completely load

21 May 2022, 00:56

and I can't see how this is related to htaccess.
The only reason that I thought it MIGHT be related to .htaccess, is that other than Abyss ignoring htaccess files & I needing to use "equivalent" rewrite rules, my installations of X3 are stock out-of-the box, with no other modifications, and for each of those domains (hosts), Abyss points straight to their respective X3 folder, so X3 is the root of each domain.

As requested, I have removed all links to PWS from my footers, so the only items remaining & used in my footers are the 2 copyright lines, but I still have that same problem.

On my end, I have not seen the logo load slowly (but I just reduced the size of the logos anyway).  I temporarily increased the Autoplay Interval to 20 seconds (20000 milliseconds), but same problem.

The other thing is, and you can see this on all 5 sliders, but clearly on the 2nd slider comparison, notice how the grey menu bar is extra-tall on the Abyss (right) side of the slider, with all that extra space between the logo & menu items?

For my logos, I have set for GalleryWings.me:
Code
logo {
  font-size: 2.125em;   /* logo-size (only affects TEXT-logo)   */
  padding: 1em 0;       /* Adjust space above- and below logo   */
  margin-top: 0em;      /* Adjust margin above logo             */
}
.logo > img {
  width: 500px;         /* logo-size (only affects IMAGE-logo)  */
}
and for PanAurora-Studio.me:
Code
.logo {
  font-size: 2.125em;   /* logo-size (only affects TEXT-logo)   */
  padding: 1em 0;       /* Adjust space above- and below logo   */
  margin-top: 0em;      /* Adjust margin above logo             */
}
.logo > img {
  width: 750px;         /* logo-size (only affects IMAGE-logo)  */
}

I'm stumped.
Location: Burlington (Toronto-ish), Ontario, Canada
Self-hosted using Abyss Web Server:   AuroraWings.me   |   GalleryWings.com   |   PanAurora-Studio.com   |
Externally-hosted using LiteSpeed/Apache Web Server:   GenealogyWings.com/galleries   |
 
User avatar
JMM
Experienced
Topic Author
Posts: 154
Joined: 02 Aug 2021, 11:18

Re: Links to some of my X3 sites cause main page to not completely load

21 May 2022, 01:42

As a test, I created a new host in Abyss, and copied all that new host's settings from GalleryWings.me, so they're basically duplicate hosts but pointing to 2 different roots, and did a fresh install of X3 into that new host's root.

The only thing I did with that new installation, was I renamed the /panel directory (as I do on all my panels), disabled Diagnostics, and set a new username & password.

I added a 3rd asterisk at the bottom of the footer HERE to test this new X3 installation, and it is acting weird too.  I haven't seen it (yet) display low-quality images, but every now & then when clicking on that 3rd asterisk I will get a blank page, with only the green Share button on the left & Styles button in the lower-right.  Scrolling just scrolls up & down a blank page.

As with my other 2 Abyss X3 installations, it's not an X3 problem, and has to be something with Abyss (or my PHP settings), in any case out of your scope, but thanks anyway for looking into what might be causing the issue, I appreciate it.
Location: Burlington (Toronto-ish), Ontario, Canada
Self-hosted using Abyss Web Server:   AuroraWings.me   |   GalleryWings.com   |   PanAurora-Studio.com   |
Externally-hosted using LiteSpeed/Apache Web Server:   GenealogyWings.com/galleries   |
 
User avatar
mjau-mjau
X3 Wizard
Posts: 13993
Joined: 30 Sep 2006, 03:37

Re: Links to some of my X3 sites cause main page to not completely load

21 May 2022, 04:08

JMM wrote:The only reason that I thought it MIGHT be related to .htaccess, is that other than Abyss ignoring htaccess files & I needing to use "equivalent" rewrite rules, my installations of X3 are stock out-of-the box, with no other modifications, and for each of those domains (hosts), Abyss points straight to their respective X3 folder, so X3 is the root of each domain.
The htaccess is only responsible for two things: 1. rewrite urls so that pages work, and 2. rewrite urls so that resized images work. In your case, both work, regardless of speed. The htaccess also provides some add-on stuff for caching resources, but this is not critical for X3 behavior.[/quote]
JMM wrote:I added a 3rd asterisk at the bottom of the footer HERE to test this new X3 installation, and it is acting weird too.  I haven't seen it (yet) display low-quality images, but every now & then when clicking on that 3rd asterisk I will get a blank page, with only the green Share button on the left & Styles button in the lower-right.  Scrolling just scrolls up & down a blank page.
I think we should make it clear it has nothing to do with the links that you have on one website to another. When you click a link from one website that goes to another, it's the same as writing the link directly into a blank browser window, or when refreshing a page. The only reason it would be different, is if you server does a check on $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'] (where the visitor is coming from) and then does something wrong/strange based on that, but that would unthinkably silly.

JMM wrote:The other thing is, and you can see this on all 5 sliders, but clearly on the 2nd slider comparison, notice how the grey menu bar is extra-tall on the Abyss (right) side of the slider, with all that extra space between the logo & menu items?
I see something in your screenshot yes. But it doesn't really make sense to diagnose a layout-flaw caused by something not working/loading in the first place.

Checking your website from here right now https://www.gallerywings.me/, it currently loads fine (seemingly faster than before) and I can't see any errors. I can't really diagnose this without seeing the errors, but it's big clue just to know that the issue is inconsistent ... Sorry, but I can't make anything out of this.