Ok, Elf or Elves,

Near the bottom of this page http://www.summitpost.org/washington-top-100/171584 there is an HTML table of the WA Top 100 finishers.

I added two lines for finisher nos. 50 and 51 (Phil & Al).

If you are logged into SP, these names and their completion information show up correctly .

However, if you log out, these names do not appear even though if I go into edit mode the correct names are there in the HTML editing boxes (instead of duplicates of the names above them, Tim & Linsey, which was my starting point for making the change: I copy-pasted the last two lines then intended to change the table fields as appropriate).

This problem occurs with ALL browsers that I checked (Mozilla, Chrome, and Exploder).
You can try it on your end and will see what I mean. I've confirmed with other SP users that this problem occurs.

Is this a problem with the SP code? I tried clearing cache, temporary internet files, and some other things but to no avail.

-Paul-

Seriously. Are there any elves out there with programming capability anymore? I think something's wrong with summitpost. It aint me.

I just created a new page identical to the other one: http://www.summitpost.org/washington-top-100/956337.

If you are logged in you see this message at the top:
IF YOU CAN SEE THIS BOLD TEXT YOU ARE LOGGED IN. IF YOU LOG OUT, THIS TEXT GOES AWAY. COOL? NO. SUCKS. AND I CAN'T FIGURE OUT HOW TO FIX IT.

If you log out the message goes away. Gone.
Explain that.

Note that it would appear to me the first creation of a new page (or the first edit of an existing page that hasn't been edited in a while) gets stuck in that "new" version even if subsequent edits get made directly afterward. But that stuck version only manifests itself if you are not logged in.

Klenke wrote:Seriously. Are there any elves out there with programming capability anymore? I think something's wrong with summitpost. It aint me.

I just created a new page identical to the other one: http://www.summitpost.org/washington-top-100/956337.

If you are logged in you see this message at the top:
IF YOU CAN SEE THIS BOLD TEXT YOU ARE LOGGED IN. IF YOU LOG OUT, THIS TEXT GOES AWAY. COOL? NO. SUCKS. AND I CAN'T FIGURE OUT HOW TO FIX IT.

If you log out the message goes away. Gone.
Explain that.

Note that it would appear to me the first creation of a new page (or the first edit of an existing page that hasn't been edited in a while) gets stuck in that "new" version even if subsequent edits get made directly afterward. But that stuck version only manifests itself if you are not logged in.

Paul, I didn't answer sinc I don't get the problem. Tested IE, Firefox, Chrome and always get lines 50 / 51 / 52 visible and aligned. So I got the impression you managed to fix it. But maybe I don't understand? The following screenshot is taken with Chrome but without being logged on. Looks the same for Safari (different ads though)

Klenke wrote:...

If you are logged into SP, these names and their completion information show up correctly .

However, if you log out, these names do not appear even though if I go into edit mode the correct names are there in the HTML editing boxes (instead of duplicates of the names above them, Tim & Linsey, which was my starting point for making the change: I copy-pasted the last two lines then intended to change the table fields as appropriate).

...

This must be the result of caching on the SP server side. With a few exceptions (like the front page and What's New), most pages on SP are cached. If you add two lines to your page, only those that are logged on see it right away, others only a day later. And as soon as you log off, you don't see it anymore either until the next day.

This method of caching on the server has been implemented a while ago, and apparently the performance of the site got a lot better. For the vast majority of the pages on SP that are not modified recently this makes no difference; unfortunately the new or changed pages, which obviously are the most interesting ones, suffer. I don't know how the caching works, so I can't say if this could be solved easily.

Something that comes to mind would be to use a dynamic list of pages that should be exempt from server side caching; whenever a page is edited (or even deleted), it should be added to the list. And to keep the list short, a periodic (e.g. daily) process should check the pages on the list to see if the last edit is more than a day ago, and remove the old pages from the list. But it would be up to Matt to look into this, and even if it's easy to implement, he still has to find the time to do it.

Rob, thanks. Yes, I think that is the problem (server side caching). As Gangolf noted, the original page (link in first post above) is now showing the correct table entries in both logged in and logged off mode. I think the caching may last more than a couple of days, though, because I think I still saw the table error (missing entries 50-52) a few days later after I originally posted this thread about it.

In fact just now I went into the the old page and deleted the section that contained the redundant "fix attempt" table at the bottom. It disappeared while logged in. But, sure enough, it reappears if I log out.

Last night I made some improvements to my Green Mountain page. If I'm logged in I get to see these improvements. If I log out (today), I see the old page again. So this confirms it's not due to any HTML thing I'm doing on a particular SP page.

Your suggestion in your last paragraph seems like a valid approach to me. Non-logged-in users shouldn't have to wait a day or two or three to see a 'correct' page. I don't know the prevalence of people being logged in all of the time on their browser vs. only on a session basis but the latter folks would be seeing a lot of new, but not up-to-date pages.

You guyz could always make an edit to one of your pages too to verify (or not verify) the problem is not just me.

I'm pretty sure it has to do with caching as described above. I've ran into the same issue creating trip reports lately. Only the first version of the TR was available to see when I'm not logged in. This has led me to make the header "PHOTOS ADDED ONCE THE CACHE UPDATES" to all my TR's when I post for the first time since I usually add photos after my original post so yeah, I've dealt with the same thing. It's not just you. It usually takes 24 hours for the cache to update from my experience. Frustrating as hell when you don't know what's going on. There was another post on here about the same issue which clued me into the problem but I'm too lazy to go look for it.

Non-logged-in users shouldn't have to wait a day or two or three to see a 'correct' page. I don't know the prevalence of people being logged in all of the time on their browser vs. only on a session basis but the latter folks would be seeing a lot of new, but not up-to-date pages.

It's been like that since SP was hacked about a year ago. I found out when I used to send my trip reports to family members and they could only see part of them (perhaps one photograph).

I don't think anyone likes the delays, but as I understand it, it is a result of the cache made for security reasons, so someone can't hack into the system and wipe out everything. Someone did do that and I don't think it was ever determined who it was.

I too hope the delay can be fixed.

Are there any elves out there with programming capability anymore?

Sadly, the only elf I know who knows programming is recovering from surgery. Matt is the only one that has access to the code. SP could use some more fixes/changes/improvements.

I just verified this problem doesn't exist for recently uploaded images. So that's nice.

Scott wrote:It's been like that since SP was hacked about a year ago. I found out when I used to send my trip reports to family members and they could only see part of them (perhaps one photograph).

I don't think anyone likes the delays, but as I understand it, it is a result of the cache made for security reasons, so someone can't hack into the system and wipe out everything. Someone did do that and I don't think it was ever determined who it was.

I too hope the delay can be fixed.

It was actually implemented before the cyber attack. Implementing caching had nothing to do with security. Caching significantly increases the speed of SummitPost by putting all of the pages onto the server's RAM. While logged in we are seeing the non cached version. In the non cached version the server has to make a request for that page outside of the cache that is on the RAM. Most of the viewership of SummitPost is from non logged in users, hence this significantly decreases the load on the server. As many of you are discovering, the biggest draw back is that guest viewers cannot see the updated page for 24 hours. I have a proposal of how to fix this:

Rather than re-caching pages every 24 hours (takes some server resource and is not up to date), it would be better to update the cached pages when the pages themselves are updated. This will decrease server load and allow for up to date pages.

Scott wrote:Sadly, the only elf I know who knows programming is recovering from surgery. Matt is the only one that has access to the code. SP could use some more fixes/changes/improvements.

Been pretty busy myself with college these days. I suspect that I'll have a more open schedule in December. Also can't wait for my arm to be totally free again.

I run into the same problem. Posting some new things on a page and send the link to friends and they cant see it...

About caching:
To update cache at uploading is an idea.
But there are some really good tools around they care about all the caching.
Normally a page will be updated in the cache when its requested by a client and the checksum or date of the original is newer than the cache version.

I think this issue should be fixed soon.