Saturday, August 02, 2008

Problems with Blogger and Site Meter

I have had a very frustrating morning. For much of the morning I have been unable to access any of my blogs. They just won't load. It appears that there has been a problem with Site Meter, my main stats package, that carries across to blogger.

With much reluctance, I have removed Site Meter for the present from this blog. I am hoping that Site Meter can fix the problem. In the meantime, my other blogs will continue to fail to load.

Postscript

The problem is still there and across the blogosphere. Neil, who uses Firefox, said that he could see the blogs. Looking at the comments on the Google blogs, there does appear to be some linkage to IE. It is IE that is failing to load.

Google itself has not commented. However, it is clear that Site Meter is looking at at least a minor commercial disaster since blogspot bloggers are now removing the Site Meter code in droves (I did so too on this blog as a test).

I cannot access the Site Meter site itself to find out what is wrong since that site too causes IE to abort. Blog comments suggest that Site Meter is unmanned at weekends. If so, that is a real problem for them because they may not realise until Monday that they have a bit of a crisis on their hands.

A little later

A google search on "site meter blogger problems" shows a growing avalanche. See Blog Herald as an example. I am only guessing, but Site Meter has probably had many thousand bloggers remove the code by now. It's not doing Microsoft any good either.

Checking google blog search, there have been 20 posts in the last 30 minutes telling people to remove their Site Meter code!

Next Morning

Well, everything seems to be working again, so don't have to to take the code of my other sites. It will be interesting to find out just what happened.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

This does occasionally happen with most extras one attaches; VodPod in my case has been known to do it. Sitemeter is undergoing changes at the moment, but so far hasn't caused my WordPress blogs to fail, or -- more to the point -- isn't affecting http://newfloating.blogspot.com/ either. New England Australia loads here quite happily too...

Jim Belshaw said...

Neil, the problem seems to be linked to IE in some way. Other browsers can continue to access the blogs. And it's not just me. I am going to check the latest blogger comments.

Anonymous said...

I use IE as little as possible, but you're right. Duncan Macleod, one of my Facebook friends, says "Duncan Macleod has discovered that Sitemeter is the reason IE 7 wasn't loading his blogs."

Jim Belshaw said...

I hit this one very early Neil because I started to blog early. I am not sure of the exact time the problem hit, but the blogs were working and then they were not.

Initially I thought that it was a problem with my own computer. It was several hours before I established that there was a broader problem.

There is a strange morbid fascination in watching this unfold. The speed of the spread of info on the issue is itself an illustration of the power of the internet.

Anonymous said...

Back in Firefox now, but I just tried IE7 and saw the problem. Nasty. Clearly something is upsetting the connection between Sitemeter and IE, maybe part of the changes happening on Sitemeter; as Facebook just did so it is revamping at the moment.

Jim Belshaw said...

Neil, it does seem linked to the changes Site Meter was making on its site. I hadn't realised just how strong a market position SM had. When sites like problogger go down, you have real trouble. As you say, nasty.