UESPWiki:Archive/CP Problems Saving Pages

This is an archive of past UESPWiki:Community Portal discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page, except for maintenance such as updating links.

Problems Saving Pages

For a while now, we've had an occasional problem where large pages "disappear" for Internet Explorer readers. The page comes up completely blank when IE people try to view it (and, no, it's not just that the page takes a while to load; IE thinks that the page has been completely loaded but that it is blank). For whatever strange reason, this does not happen if you look at the page in Firefox, which means that our editors tend to never know when the problem occurs, and therefore we generally only find out about it when readers take the time to point out the problem. The pages where this has happened most recently are Oblivion:Places and Oblivion:Merchants.

Based on some experiences over the last couple days, I am now fairly certain that this problem happens when editors try to save a large page but the site is too busy to fully process the page within the 5 minute window set by our web server. Generally this only occurs when the page has a large number of templates on the page; see also an earlier discussion on Revamping Templates. It uses a lot of system CPU and memory to process any templates; when the site is trying to answer 100 other web requests at the same time it sometimes just doesn't have the power necessary to simultaneously do particularly complex work.

The main reason I'm bringing this up is that perhaps if our editors know what to look for, we can catch these problems earlier. First, if you need to edit a complex page (i.e., one with many templates), it may be best to not do it when the site is busy. Second, and more importantly, could all editors try to keep an eye out for cases where after saving a page, the site takes a long time to process it, and then displays a blank page instead of showing the actual page? If this happens, the chances are that page is now glitched for IE readers and needs to be fixed. Don't try to do anything right that minute (if the site was busy 5 minutes ago, it's probably still busy). Instead, perhaps put a note on the talk page saying that your save of the page glitched. That will let us know to follow up later and try to fix the page. Hopefully we can then fix these problems a few hours later instead of a few days later.

Finally, and perhaps, most importantly, what to do to fix a glitched page? What you need to do is "purge" the page. One way to do this is to click "edit" then in the URL that appears on the edit page replace the word "edit" with "purge". For example, the URL might read http://www.uesp.net/w/index.php?title=Oblivion:Places&action=purge. Hit return on the URL to make your browser load the purge request. Then wait and make sure that you are shown the page! If you don't see the page after it's done processing, the page is still glitched. Try again later ;) (N.B. the purge does not show up in the page history or anywhere else, because it's not a page edit.)

Thanks! --Nephele^Talk 14:04, 18 January 2008 (EST)

I finally took the time to read this. I will do the "purge" strategy if it ever happens to me. I have IE, and I have never witnessed a blank page unless an un-registered IP editor blanked it. but yes, purging the page will do. Is there any permanant "cure" (cuz I can't think of another word) to this? Good Job Nephele, highly appreciated. --Playjex 15:43, 24 January 2008 (EST)

Update: Daveh decreased the apache timeout earlier today from 300 seconds to 60 seconds. The decreased timeout has suddenly made problems with saving pages a very serious problem right now on the site. There are a large number of pages that can no longer be edited, because it is not possible for the server to process the edit within 60 seconds. I've also brought this problem up at UESPWiki talk:Upgrade History#Timeout Too Short (and for those who haven't been following the various discussions about site performance problems, the timeout change was largely in response to a discussion at UESPWiki:Administrator Noticeboard#Blocking Rogue IPs at the Server). As I stated at the Upgrade History discussion, it's possible that this is a sacrifice we need to make in the short term just so that the site no longer shuts for 6 hours per day (12 hours per day on weekends). But hopefully we can find some other more viable alternatives. --Nephele^Talk 22:10, 24 January 2008 (EST)

P.S.: Thanks for the feedback, Playjex. Yes, I would like to come up with a permanent cure :) But it's not something that can be fixed right away, in part because it's tied into the site's various performance problems. --Nephele^Talk 22:14, 24 January 2008 (EST)

Just for the record, when we say "blank page", we mean the entire page is blank. Pure white, without the tan background or the sidebar, header, footer, or anything else. This is not the same as a page which has had its contents deleted by a vandal or something. Those will still display the sidebar, background color, top-header, and footer, as well as any other non-wiki elements that display on every page. The "blank page" we're discussing here is a completely different phenomenon, caused by the server lacking the memory to render the page properly. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 22:27, 24 January 2008 (EST)

Do you get an IE error saying "Page cannot be displayed" or something like this, or is it completely blank? I have experienced the former, but not the latter. --DrPhoton 03:19, 25 January 2008 (EST)

I've seen both, but the completely blank pages are often a side-effect of the server being tied up. Not sure what causes the "Page cannot be displayed" error, but I've gotten that a few times even when the site wasn't having any problems. I think that error usually means there's a problem on your end, or possibly your ISP's, not the site's. Because usually when I get it, I have the same problem with all other websites as well. Sometimes if I reset the router, it seems to solve it, too, which makes it even more likely it's a local problem rather than something wrong with the site. (Or it could be just that in the few minutes it takes me to do a router-restart, the problem has corrected itself elsewhere. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 10:06, 25 January 2008 (EST)

The problem that I was describing here is one where the pages are completely blank without any type of error message. It's not a common problem; I've only seen it happen a couple dozen times over the last year. Now that I'm thinking about it some more, it's also possible that it's not specific to IE, but rather that it's related to whether or not you're logged in. When I've examined these cases in the past, I've always been logged in on FF, but anonymous on IE. And tying it to anonymous editors also provides a more satisfactory explanation of what's really going on behind the scenes: anonymous editors see a 100% cached version of the page, whereas users get a tweaked version (to get the personalized links across the top of the page).

Also, my earlier update has now been made obsolete. Daveh switched the timeout back to the original 300 second values... along with a few other major changes to the site's setup that mean that performance will hopefully be much better now. --Nephele^Talk 13:03, 25 January 2008 (EST)

[Rest of Discussion moved to Morrowind talk:Artifacts, as it's become specific to that page] --Gaebrial 08:31, 7 February 2008 (EST)