possible to capture details/time when content intermittently goes missing?

[ICYUH8]

I have an affiliate link that has been reported by my visitors to be missing - sometimes.  When it's reported I would look (with a user account, not admin account) and everything looks perfectly normal and I see it.  

When I ask them to try again they see it.  But then inexplicably in a few days I'm notified by someone else.  Of course again it's there when I look.

 

I did see this once myself.  It was gone for about 10 minutes, then it returned.  By asking questions and my own experience seeing it for myself, I can say with full confidence the following:

 

- it is not browser cache related.  I logged in with different browsers and computers when it happened to me.  Cache cleared of course.

- it seems to happen with log in.  In other words refreshing the page won't bring it back or make it disappear.

- no correlation when comparing user profiles or settings

- server error logs do not show any clues to this problem.

- the affiliate (amazon) looked into it and escalated it.  They said the problem is not on their end.

- Firewall log shows no blocking of the link.  Web host has checked their side and also sees nothing to hinder the link.

 

This is a true mystery, and I think I checked everything I could for the source of the problem.

 

My Question:  Is it possible to put some programming in place that will detect when the link is not present and then maybe put any important details that will help determine the issue into a temporary log?  I'm wondering if there is a solution that is able to either read the html rendering or the page source and catch when the html output is missing?  I think it might be tough because it will be isolated to the current logged in member, and not a global missing for everyone at that specific moment.

 

Any help with this would really be appreciated.

[requinix]

Saying that a "link" goes "missing" doesn't actually tell us anything. You're going to have to describe, in detail, what this link is, where it comes from or how it's generated, and what "missing" means.

[ICYUH8]

It's just a basic href tag from amazon's web service.  I know it might sound silly but I'm not looking for a solution quite yet because I want to narrow it down (but I'm also very curious if there is code that can do this without slowing down page load).

 

So in a nutshell, is there a way to capture when an anchor tag (content) that is supposed to be rendered, is actually not (missing)??

[requinix]

All you've done so far is give extremely vague descriptions. This isn't some sort of magical spell. Stuff doesn't happen because someone waved a wand.

 

If things aren't working the way you want then you have to look at the code. If you want help reading the code to find out why something might not be working then you'll have to show us that.

[ICYUH8]

I will simplify this for you...

 

Does anyone know of, or think it possible; to use PHP or javascript to check one div for one specific piece of text on one specific page every time someone lands on it.  And if it doesn't exist then write to a file a time stamp and any specifics to why it's missing.

 

Is that easier for you to digest, requinix?

[Jacques1]

And I'll make this very, very simple for you: Nobody cares about the half-baked ideas you've come up with while trying to solve a problem you don't understand. You're clearly a layman, so your technical assessment is by definition irrelevant.

 

What we care about is an accurate problem description. This includes code or at least concrete data. Your “Um, I got this link and, um, sometimes it disppears.” is just babble.

 

Did you finally get that?

[kicken]

You could certainly add a small bit of javascript to the page that checks the DOM for the link and reports somewhere whether it's there or not. I'm not sure how helpful that'd really be though, it's not going to give you any indication as to why it isn't there.

 

It's highly unlikely that a single link just vanishes from your page and then re-appears later all on it's own. What's more likely is a either a coding error in your page that results in the link not being generated or your users running a browser extension that decides to strip the link from the page for some reason.

 

Unless you can provide actual code that generates the link, or at the very least a link to the page in question so someone here can look at it and possible experience the issue then there's really not much that can be done to help you.

[ICYUH8]

You helped Kicken, thank you.  At least now I know it's possible to find missing content.  My web programming is a bit rusty (a very modest self-assessment), but strong in Fortran & LISP/Scheme which will help me with the fundamentals I suppose.   Anyway, with your info I should be able to find an online tutorial that can walk me through checking the DOM.

 

To the two pretentious previous posters, why do you need to see my code?  I wasn't asking you to fix my code.  I was only seeking the answer Kicken so perfectly provided.  Just because you can debug someone else's code (and not at a 100% success rate, I'm sure) that doesn't measure your skill or impress anyone.

By the way, have you two ever bothered to look up the definition of 'Guru'?  It means squat when it comes to technical knowledge or ability.  It's a misnomer that has been accepted ever since the internet took off to be synonymous with someone that knows every detail of a particular subject of technology.  But alas, who said the internet doesn't lie, right??  

[Psycho]

I'm not seeing how Kicken's response was materially different from the others. You already know that the link is sometimes not displayed. What help is it to track it? If you were to do it client-side (i.e. JavaScript) you will need to implement an AJAX solution along with a logging process on the back end. For someone who's programming is rusty, it seems like a lot of work for no real value.

 

How about this:

 

1. When the link "disappears" check the HTML source. Verify that the link really isn't in the source code. It could be there, but some some malformed HTML is causing it to not display. Maybe there is a link but there is no text between the anchor tags or it is just spaces.

 

2. Rather than just tracking when the link isn't there, you should instead track the data that causes the link to display or not. This is why previous posters have stated you need to provide code. You state the link is coming from an Amazon service. So, you must have code that requests the "link" and then writes it to the output. You should implement logging into THAT process. Log the data that is sent to the service (if any) and what data is returned from the service. Also, if you have to convert the returned value(s) into HTML code, you should also log the resulting HTML.

 

Also, look in that code to check to see if there is any if/else or other branching logic around the process to produce the link. For example, if there is a time limit on the request, it could be it is taking too long and not waiting for the response.

 

If you were to provide the code that requests and produces the affiliate link, someone may be able to help with adding some logging to that process - which would be infinitely more valuable than just logging the fact that the link is there or not.

[Jacques1]

The OP doesn't even understand the basic problem and hasn't read any of the replies, so I think you're wasting your time.

 

The last language he learned was Fortran(!), and the way he talks about the Internet “taking off” sounds like he just discovered it yesterday. This is somebody who has spent his entire life in an intellectual coma. You cannot fix that in an online forum.