Hi

We have UBBThreads running at:

http://www.hindunet.com/forum/

We are running into a problem of getting broken pages or blank pages randomly through out the forums.

I have read the other postings on the forums, but could not find any solution that was posted/shared by others.

Contact UBBThreads support, I got an answer the Banner ADs are the culprit and take them off and see if that would help. I would be really surprised to find out if this is the case. I will try this one route to see if that works. Mean while I am wondering if any one else that ran into this type of situation can share their experience with a solution that might have worked for them.

Also, if some one can could explain why would banner ads are bad for a PHP based UBBThreads. We are using the same banner ads in other parts of the web site and we have not seen this problem any where else. Why would UBBThreads treads be different.

Thank you in advance.

-Srinivas<br>Global Hindu Electronic Networks: http://www.hindunet.org/

I can't think of any reason why you shouldn't run banner ads on your site. Most people do.

The only thing I can think of is that you've got a huge list of forums and maybe between the large page and the banners it's somehow timing out the web sever before completing the whole page.

I couldn't tell what version you're running because you removed the infopop copyright notice in your footer. Note that the license agreement states you may not remove that. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="images/icons/wink.gif" />

Who told you that the banner ads were the culprit? How are you serving the banner ads up? Are they static or are you using banner ad software or some sort?

Josh
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Copyright Notice: We have purchased W3T (the grandmother of UBBThreads) and from that license agreement we could remove it. Of course, I did not read the agreement after that. I dont think we mind sharing that copyright information on the website. I will inform the concerned person.

The response I got from the SUPPORT suggested that we turnoff and see if that helps. My question is why would TOO MANY BANNERS be effecting the page-processing. It might show the slower response, but not breaking of the page itself. Also, we dont have too much traffic either, as we are a small community based web-site.

After posting the above, I looked at the FORUMS in detail to see what type of issues people had with banners and it seems many people faced problems with UBBThreads and banners. I have no clue if they all fixed the problem some how or just decided not to run the banners.

Here is how we have implemented banners on our system. We do use couple of different softwares on the backend for Banner Ad management. We have on Mod-Perl based system that produced different banners based on the regions. These banners are included in the web-pages thru SSI. I have the following code in the included header of UBBThreads software:

virtual("/includes/topad.shtml");

The "topad.shtml" has a mod-perl directive that inserts the real AD CODES. It seems like there is a draw-back of doing this way, as the server is making an additional HTTP request back to itself for inserting the topad.shtml, not a good thing if this were to be really true. I just came to this conclusion based on what I read in few mins and not yet verified if this is true or not. I am planning to convert this to PHP code so that I can do:

include("/includes/topad.php")

and make the path to includes a part of PHP recognizable directories. That I think might be better way than serving thru the topad.shtml.

Please share your thoughts and comments. Thank you.

-Srinivas<br>Global Hindu Electronic Networks: http://www.hindunet.org/

My original question about the copyright notice was because I couldn't tell what version it was - you did not specify in your initial post and you still skipped this question. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Razz]" src="images/icons/tongue.gif" />

Is it 6.1 something? Trying to determine if it's old enough to have templates. etc....

I browsed around several pages and didn't get any broken or blank pages.

I'd be curious to see a "view source" (the HTML output) from the page when it stops displaying or is blank.

Support probably suggested to turn them off to see if it solves the problem so that the issue can be narrowed down to a bug in threads, or server setup, or a bug in your ad scripts. That's basic troubleshooting and good practice when you are trying to track things down.

The short answer - a good majority of sites run banners on their sites. So that shouldn't be a problem. But the issue remains to track down the issue. My gut would say server configuration of some kind.

Are you running php as a CGI - I've seen incomplete pages alot on a client of mine who's host runs php as a CGI - but I'm not sure how that's a factor.

Beyond that, there's not many details to go from. The next time you see it - do a view source and seeing at what point the page stops generating the HTML might give a clue to what the troublemaker could be.

Josh
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Hi Josh

The version is 6.1.1 with few tweaks of our own. The box is a Cobalt RAQ4 with running PHP 4.1.2 and Apache 1.3.12.

It is very easy to reproduce the problem for me. Just go to the Test Forum we have there.

http://www.hindunet.com/forum/postlist.php?Cat=&Board=testforum

Click on the Post
Enter some test subject and message...
Click on Continue (leave the checkbox on Preview my post ON)

about 50% of the time you would see the next page stopping right after the CONTROL PANEL, that is:

Main Index | Search | New user | Login | Who's Online | FAQ

The top header is displayed with banner and then the control panel and it stops. If you are lucky to see the full page, hit "Continue" and post the message. Try to reply to that very post you just made. You will run into the BROKEN page soon.

It seems like only while posting and replying is when we are running into this problem. Not all the pages are giving the problem.

For your convenience..here is the last part of the code on the broken page:

<pre>
<table width="95%" align="center" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1">
<tr>
<td>
<table width="100%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1">
<tr>
<td align="center">
<a href="http://www.hindunet.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?Cat=">Main Index</a>
|
<a href="http://www.hindunet.com/forum/search.php?Cat=">Search</a>
|
<a href="http://www.hindunet.com/forum/newuser.php?Cat=">New user</a>
|
<a href="http://www.hindunet.com/forum/login.php?Cat=">Login</a>
|
<a href="http://www.hindunet.com/forum/online.php?Cat=">Who's Online</a>
|
<a href="http://www.hindunet.com/forum/faq_english.php?Cat=">FAQ</a>

</td>
</tr>
</table>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<br /></pre>

I appreciate any clues you may get from here. I will keep doing my testing this weekend and post any results I find here as well. Thanks.

-Srinivas<br>Global Hindu Electronic Networks: http://www.hindunet.org/

After looking - I really think it's something specific with either your banner software or some of your banners.

The page didn't really stop generating - what happend for me is that my page stayed stuck attempting to load one of the banners. Then my browser timed out.

I got page incomplete from a graphic which when I opened it up was a banner for a cruise or something.

So something is holding up the loading of some of the banners - then the browser gives up before it does the rest of the page.

You really should have a run at things without the banner stuff installed. That would help you narrow down the trouble.

Also - I can't remember if 6.1 had the Zlib compression option in the config file or not. If Zlib compression is turned on - you might try turning it off and see if that helps.

Really narrowing it down so you can pinpoint the trouble woudl be the thing to do. It seems to be a timeout issue of some sort.

Josh
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Thank you for the information. The support person also said about the browser getting crashed on the banners. But I have never experienced it myself so far any way.

Okay, let me do some more researching into it this weekend. Thanks.

-Srinivas<br>Global Hindu Electronic Networks: http://www.hindunet.org/

Hi Josh

I have turned off all the banners in FORUMs. I still see the problem of broken pages.

I would like to know if you can see the page crashing/timing out on your browser now.

Well more testing, I guess.

-Srinivas<br>Global Hindu Electronic Networks: http://www.hindunet.org/

Still have trouble. I'm curious about the other stuff in your header. It Does not validate at w3.org.

Try making a backup of /includes/header.php and /includes/header-insert.php then replace them with blank files. That'll get all the Javascript stuff out of there.

If that solves it, then I would work to get the code in your header to validate at w3.org.

Sort of keep narrowing it down. Maybe the banner specifically isn't an issue - but I still question the header. Particularly once I thought to check if it was valid.

You can see it At this link. Go through and fix all the validation errors with the javascripts and such that you have in your header. That may help pinpoint it.

You won't get the whole page to validate - as 6.1 wasn't yet totally XHTML compliant. But errors 1-4 (or 5) seem to be complaining that the script type attribute is missing.

Josh
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Josh

Thanks for the quick tips. Those missing TYPEs will be a problem with browsers. I have fixed them now.

I am wondering what is the best tool(s) you use for validating HTML/CSS etc. I have been out of HTML/CSS world for a while and not sure if there is one or two best that are out there that we should look to employ for our site checking and cleaning. If you know please let me know.

Thank you in advance.

-Srinivas<br>Global Hindu Electronic Networks: http://www.hindunet.org/

Josh

After fixing those TYPE errors in JS. I could able to see my pages with out BREAKING. Of course, I just did few times.. not thourough in any manner. But earlier I used to see the broken pages once every 2 or 3 tries. Now, even after 8 tries I haven't seen a single broken page. This is very good to know.

I definitely like to find a tool or tools that can point out any other blunders in HTML that are causing problems on our site.

Thank you very much.

-Srinivas<br>Global Hindu Electronic Networks: http://www.hindunet.org/

Oh well, I might have spoken too soon... I do see blank pages again. Back to the drawing board <img border="0" title="" alt="[Roll Eyes]" src="images/icons/rolleyes.gif" />

-Srinivas<br>Global Hindu Electronic Networks: http://www.hindunet.org/

That certainly can lead to problems.

www.w3.org will be your best bet. There's a link on the left for the HTML validator. You can give it a URL or feed it a page.

Did you try with a blank header.php and header-insert.php file? It seems to always hang for me on the posting page - and I wonder if the javascript is conflicting with the javascript on the posting pages.

Very odd indeed.

Josh
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Well, this is kinda FIX, finally.

For some reason using

virtual("/header.shtml")

from 'header.php' include is causing the apache/php to break the pages. The funny thing is that it seem to happen only while clicking on a link with query parameters.

The fix, is to remove "virtual" and make it as a PHP page by itself, so that I can do:

include ("header_html.php")

After doing this, my forums are working with out any BLANK screens. Any ways, I feel that this is truly apache/php thingy and nothing really to do with UBB code itself.

Just thought I would share the FIX, I have for my boards. Thank you Josh.

-Srinivas<br>Global Hindu Electronic Networks: http://www.hindunet.org/

Great that you tracked it down. It certainly was puzzling. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Smile]" src="images/icons/smile.gif" /> Glad you got it sorted. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="images/icons/wink.gif" />

Josh
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Most likely it would work if it ended in html or htm, as the shtml is already instructing the server to allow ssi to function. You're calling it to include twice it seems and therefore it trips over itself.

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Hi JC

Not sure what you mean by 'if it ended in html or htm'. Are you refering to the file extension? I really doubt the file extension made this a problem. On our server, .shtml is set up as SSI which in turn does its own thing. That is about it.

If the extension is the problem it should be the case every time it hits the page and not randomly as it was happening.

I really think the problem is with our Cobalt Server and the configuration:

Cobalt RAQ 4
Apache/1.3.12 Cobalt
PHP 4.1.2

When I tested UBBThreads with a test server on :

Redhat 7.3
Apache/1.3.20 (Unix) (Red-Hat/Linux)
PHP 4.1.2

It worked just fine. Of course, this is a test server where I just copied production DB and installed locally and tested.

It seems like apache/php is having some problem on Cobalts.

-Srinivas<br>Global Hindu Electronic Networks: http://www.hindunet.org/