A number of you are still mentioning you can’t get this site to load right. The blog loads quickly and perfectly in both IE and Firefox for me so I don’t know what the issue is nor can I see what could be wrong to try and fix it.
I’ve tried deleting every widget that could be causing the problem,
re-formatting things, and a multitude of other fixes–none of which
seem to be changing things as I continue to get email after email from people saying they can’t get the site to load. I’m honestly at a loss as to what to tell
you and Typepad didn’t seem to have any answers either.
Does anyone have any ideas for me? I certainly do not want to cause difficulty for people trying to visit here; the last thing you need is to experience frustration over trying to load this blog!
I’d appreciate any input or thoughts from those of you more techie than me. We’re working with a designer to have the site re-designed so that it will be more professional-looking and more organized, but I want to get these problems resolved before we switch over to the new format.
Any help or ideas? Thanks so much!
Update: Someone mentioned perhaps I need to get my own hosting? Does anyone know if that might be the case or at what point I’d need to do that? My site is currently receiving around 18,000-23,000 visitors/day–at what point does one need to make the switch?
Update #2: Thanks for all the input. If anyone wants to send me a screenshot of what they are seeing on their end (well, if it’s messed up, that is!), that would be extremely helpful as I try to determine what the issues are. I’m also thinking perhaps switching to dedicated hosting would be a good thing to do.
{ 76 comments }
I just wanted to let you know that I’m on a mac and use Safari as my internet browser. I don’t have any problems with the page loading.
You know what though? I have the page bookmarked. And it’s bookmarked as moneysavingmom.typepad.com
I don’t know if that might make a difference for someone else.
Sometimes I have trouble if I’m in IE. When that happens I switch over to Firefox and things are usually okay. If not I refresh the page and then it’s fine.
It may just be me, but did you used to have the little coupon widget? A couple of the blogs I read got those around the same time I switched to Firefox version 3, and all those sites would no longer load in Firefox without crashing the browser. The widget worked fine in IE. If you did have the coupon widget, there should be a way to make it only visible to people using IE.
*******************
Money Saving Mom here: I did but I pulled it because I was thinking that might be the issue. However, I’m still receiving complaints that the site isn’t pulling up, so I’m afraid that wasn’t the issue.
I’ve had problems seeing things on the site, but haven’t emailed about them. Even when I refresh, it doesn’t always work. But I’ve found that if I scroll down to “Recent Posts” on the left sidebar, and click on the individual post I want to read, I can usually access the entire thing that way.
It’s an extra step, but honestly, it’s worth the inconvenience!
I have trouble loading the page quite often. I usually try to refresh. If that doesn’t work I go to another site and come back. It will usually load after that.
I was haveing problems too, however, I discoverd hitting the refresh button works everytime???? Don’t know why but it works then!
I am on a Mac and I am using Firefox 3.0. I only occasionally experience problems, but nothing that keeps me from visiting your site. And it does seem some of your hard work has payed off, since I seem to be having fewer problems.
I have had problems, too. Some times only part of the page shows up. I am on a Mac and use Safari. I go to Biblical Womanhood first and then click on the green pig!
That is the only way I know how to do it, which like I said does not always work.
Carla
I see you’ve gotten rid of the Twitter widget, because that was what I was going to point to. I had one and anytime Twitter was down (which is quite often) the site would hang when trying to find out your status. Oftentimes even when they weren’t down just trying to have a widget ping the site and get your status took forever and the whole page would hang there waiting for that information. But I don’t think you have it anymore so I’m not sure what else it could be. Perhaps some people might need to clear their browser cache to see the non-widget page load properly?
If refreshing is what gets your site to work again for people, my hunch is that your site is just simply busy with all the traffic coming in!`
Congratulations! (Now if only Typepad’s server would accommodate for all that extra traffic!)
I have also been having issues. Part of the page will load, then nothing below a certain nmon-specific point (usually in the middle of a sentence in a post). Sometimes refresh works, and sometimes it doesn’t. I usually access this at work, and we have a strong firewall system bc of data we store; so I have been chaulking it up to that. If it helps, I am using IE6.
I have had problems also and thought it was just my computer!! I use IE, I try to refresh and usually only half a page or so will show up. I usually keep trying and eventually I am able to see it all. Not sure either what the problem is, but as another said, it is worth it to keep trying! Thanks for all your hard work. I love your site(I think I am addicted-I am checking several times a day sometimes-I don’t want to miss anything!!)
Crystal-
by no means am I Techie! But I know on my blog when I loaded the coupons, my blog was slow to load. I removed them and reloaded then using a different layout, it seemed to work. I also notice that I can only have two of the coupon bar ads, if I add more my blog starts to load slow again. Maybe you can try that. I also noticed that this afternoon when I went to your site it did load just fine !!! Hope this helps. Sorry I am still learning
I keep hanging up trying to load links to other sites. Both in IE and Firefox. This time it hung on bp2.blogger.com, the time before this it was on pagead.googlesyndication.com
My browser just says Read and the link in the lower left corner where it *should* say Done.
Sometimes the page will load only partially for me, but then when I refresh it, it works fine. I’m using the latest version of Firefox.
Crystal,
I’ve had the same problems with your site, I use Firefox.
I don’t know anything about Typepad, but does their free hosting have a limit? What I’m wondering is that because your site is so popular maybe the server your site is hosted on can’t handle the traffic at times?
I also read your blog in Google Reader so it hasn’t been a problem if I can’t access the site directly.
I have had multiple problems too but I find that normally hitting the refresh button fixes it
One thing that I’ve noticed is that Sitemeter often hangs up the page. I have a developer’s extension on my Firefox that tells me all the sites that are loading, and Sitemeter hangs almost every time, often timing out the rest of the page.
One of the coupon widgety things would also hang about half the time, but it may be the one you removed since the page loaded okay this time.
I had problems where it would “hang” after the first part of the page (using moneysavingmom.com) but refresh fixed that. I have found that if I use the “moneysavingmom.typepad.com” then all is well. I use Firefox. HTH
I had the same problem — but it turned out to be my “bookmark” or “Favorite” link.
I deleted my link and searched for “Money Saving Mom”; once at http://www.moneysavingmom.com I rebookmarked the page and it has been working ever since
hope it helps
As I mentioned in my email the other day, the problems for me started immediately after switching to FF3. However, it *was* working okay in IE that day. When I came here today, part of the page loaded – about 3 entries worth – and then it just quit, plus I got a 404 error. However, clicking on an individual post title, or on the archive link for a month works fine.
I use IE and I will come to the page and only 1 section will load and then I refresh and sometimes that fixes it.
When it does not load, I click on your header for the whole page, and then it loads just fine.
Switching the bookmark to moneysavingmom.typepad.com seems to work for me too. I use IE and had the same problem with only half the page loading – refreshing didn’t fix it.
Hey Crystal,
After I downloaded Firefox 3 I absolutely could not get to your site – it always crashed the browser (only on your site did I have this problem). After a few days of this I decided to delete Firefox 3 and go back to Firefox 2. It’s not easy to do because it looks like Mozilla really wants you to keep Firefox 3. I had to google it for a while to find an active link to Firefox 2.0.
In the future I won’t be downloading anything when it’s completely new. Too many kinks to be worked out. Firefox 2 is available for usage until the end of December ‘08.
Sounds like everyone has their own way to getting to read what the precious Crystal has to say that day. We’re not going to let a little computer gliche keep us from your wisdom of the day. I just refresh the page when my computer does it.
You might want to contact your host provider. My site was crashing due to traffic early on and they uploaded software for me. I have not had a problem since. Getting your own server is a good idea as well.
Best wishes!
~The Bargain Shopper Lady
Hi Crystal,
I love this site and every once in awhile I’ll run into problems loading it. I’m running on the latest version of IE.
I’m not very techie myself and would love it if you could pass along the name of your site designer if you are happy with their work. I really need one for several sites!Or perhaps one of the techie’s commenting on this post could email me?
Thanks,
Trixie
farmhomelife at sbcglobal dot net
Your site looks fine to me right now. I usually read you in google reader, so I’m not often over here.
I would think with 18,000 to 23,000 visitors a day, you’d definitely want to start looking into your own hosting. I’m not sure how much traffic Typepad can accomodate, but that’s a lot of traffic.
If you do look into your own hosting, make sure you get a host that accomodates some sort of Virtual Private Server. You may not need it to start out, but with your traffic, I could see a shared server becoming an issue.
Congrats on the high numbers!
I use IE and have noticed the same problem. I thought it was just me, but then you posted about others having the same issue. One thing I’ve noticed is that when you are adding to your site, that’s when I mostly have problems. I will try to load it, it won’t load, I hit refresh and sometimes it still won’t load all the way, but then when I come back after a few minutes, it loads fine and there’s a new post. So maybe it has something to do with adding new posts and people trying to load it while you’re adding? That was my thought.
I haven’t had a bit of trouble getting your site until this week. It pulls up fine, then suddenly will drop off and I get “cannot find server” as a message but I can retrieve it by refreshing the page. I use Internet Explorer.
I just have to refresh my page (sometimes 2-3 times), and it always works after that.
I too had been having problems loading the entire page. However, each time today it has came up with everything there.
Maybe it’s fixed?
Crystal I noticed when I hit the links to your sit it doesnt come up fully, there are things missing but if I go to http://www.moneysavingmom.typepad.com it all comes in just fine. It may be just as simple as fixing your link address. Good Luck!
I have occasional trouble loading the site, but all I do is refresh the page until it loads 100%. That works for me. I just assumed it was my connection or my computer.
I had to restart my router and since then your site has been loading fine.
Hello!
With the amount of traffic you get, it is quite possible that you need your own hosting.
We have been using Lunarpages (lunarpages.com) for 2 years with our church, and have been very, very pleased. I know their hosting comes with Wordpress, but if you can get ftp address to the free account you are using now, you may be able to zip up your whole blog and move it over without too much effort. I’m not sure. I have not worked with Typepad before.
You might check into Godaddy’s hosting too, as they tend to be a little cheaper, but you don’t get as much space. Then again, if you don’t need it, why pay for it?
What I would suggest for a temporary fix is that your viewers try doing a Ctrl-F5 when they have problems. This does a more complete refresh, and might help.
By the way, I do web design, and don’t mind helping out. I am very grateful to you for all the work you do. Feel free to email me.
I too thought it was just me! I’m using Firefox 2.0.0.14 (and from comments here probably won’t upgrade anytime soon!)
Earlier I noticed it seemed to freeze on Twitter, which you have removed. Here are a couple from today:
read pagead2.googlesyndication.com is where it seemed to “hang”
later I got posts thru the one about free tacos at Jack-in-the-Box. Nothing on the right side loaded.
read http://www.moneysavingmom.com is where it seemed to “hang”
I reloaded the page (which usually works) and got 3 additional posts below the free taco one.
I said earlier I didn’t have problems, but reading the comments reminded me that sometimes I do. Sometimes it will say “page not available” and that the server timed out or something like that. I always thought it was my internet connection, cuz other pages do that sometimes too. I just refresh and it always works the second time.
I think it was those coupons because another blog I read comes up slow too.
I read on another blog that once she added the coupons she had a page on her sites visited called hack and then had multiple windows that kept popping up, which happened to me too. 40 windows and I couldn’t close them cause as soon as I did more and more kept opening.
I thought it was the Coupon widget in FF3. I haven’t crashed since then.
I am on a Mac and using Safari. The last couple of days, part of the page will load for me, and then either the rest of the page will just not load (usually stopping in the middle of a post), or it will load a bunch of gibberish. Refreshing the page does *not* work for me, like it does others: I have to go to a different site and then come back. (But I do!)
Would it help you and/or your designer if those of us having issues sent screen captures — or would that just overload your server even more?
I had problems shortly after you switch to typepad, but I haven’t recently. I have you saved in my favorites under – http://moneysavingmom.typepad.com/ and that works for me.
You site loads slowly for me and sometimes the right sidebar doesn’t load at all.
I would definately switch to your own hosting. I use Bluehost (www.bluehost.com) and love it. I’d definately recommend it.
I have problems with your site where part of the page just disappears. I have had some people tell me they can’t see my site either. I am still on blogger though. I use AOL for my browser.
Hi, I was having problems loading the page, but only after I was “upgraded” to Firefox 3. So I “downgraded” back to my good old Firefox 2. I love this site & your Biblical Womanhood site, and didn’t want to sacrifice it for a new browser.
Like many readers I’m also having problems in both IE and Firefox with loading your page completely. But after reading the other comments I’ve found it’s only for moneysavingmom.com!!! So I think it might have something to do with your domain name hosting. If I use the moneysavingmom.typepad.com URL in either IE or Firefox I have absolutely no problems! Good luck, I know how frustrating these technical problems can be!
whatever you did, the website is now working for me. thanks! mistyG
I use IE and have had trouble. Refresh works sometimes but not always. Most of the time I just check back later. Your site is the only one I have trouble with.
I’ve never had a problem loading your website. I use Firefox v3.
I am working in IE with Vista. The page rarely loads the first time completely. Generally, hitting F5 to refresh a few times does the trick. I just figured it was something on my end. Good to know it is not just me. Not sure if Vista is the culprit or not. Although, the previous site always loaded in Vista. So maybe not.
I’ll send you a screenshot next time I have trouble getting MSM to load. It happens to me about once every three or so days. Usually it just has your blog title, maybe the top one or two sidebars like “welcome” and “have a question” and then the whole rest of the page is blank. I’m running IE on a 6 mo old dell. Hang in there with your problems. You won’t lose me, I’ll keep hitting refresh or close/open as long as I need to!!
I am on a Mac and use Firefox 2.0 and I seem to get hung up while it is trying to load your site meter. It takes too long, and I get a “connection was reset” message. When your page does load, I have big gaps on your sidebars. I have tried in Safari, but get the same loading issues. HTH!
I think someone mentioned this- but I really think it might be the coupon printer (I noticed you removed it). I sometimes see this happening on my site, too- and I have a coupon printer, as well.
I have not had any problems with your site today.
Jenetta
http://www.FrugalFreebiesandDeals.com
Looks fine to me. Except there are days when the site just wouldn’t load at all. It’ll be blank or ’seem’ offline. Happened a few times.
Crystal.
First, a big thank you for all that you do.
I just want to also say that I use internet explorer and have the hardest time getting your new site to upload ever since the recent change. i’m glad i’m not alone. unfortunately i’m not tech savy but hope someone here can help
Hi there! Your site comes up fine for me. I read it in Firefox (Windows) but also read it sometimes in IE.
My 2cents for hosting is to go to Webmasters.com. I’ve used them for many different sites for over 7 years and they are very reasonable. And very user-friendly. They have alot of extra options that many other hosting companies make you pay extra for. It’s only $120 a year (& this includes your domain name!!).
No, I don’t make anything for saying this (unless you go thru my site) – I just hate to see people pay crazy prices (like GoDaddys) for something you can get for a reasonable price.
q’s anyone? email me at my spam email: tingar at hotmail dot com and I’ll give you my real addy.
You have issues with the hosting. You need to get new hosting because the server is being overloaded with the requests to pull the site up. It’s nothing that you are doing, and nothing that you can change. Depending on the actual hosting company that you are using you might be able to just ask them to do some tweaking to your account. This would save you from having to relocate your site.
I have had trouble fairly often in the past week or two. and as recently as today. Its not really that it is slow to load because a part of it pops up almost immediately then no more even if I wait awhile. And its seldom in the middle of a post, but the whole post is not there although everything is there along the sides all the way down.
I use IE.
Yay! It’s now working for me as well, both in IE and in FF3!
I don’t know if you changed more today, but I haven’t had any problems this evening.
I’ve never had problems
oops…sorry… I meant to say, I’ve never had problems but if you so choose to host your own site (which requires a bit of coding), I suggest hostmonster.com. I work at a church and the site is relatively cheap, but gives lots of flexibility, as long as you’re willing to figure out the details
I am simply amazed at how many people are reporting issues with this. I’ve never had one problem loading or reading your site. I do read through Bloglines and then click over when I want to comment or read more thoroughly. I also use Firefox.
Crystal,
When the page comes up I repeatedly get only “half” of your writing. Like others, if I hit refresh (sometimes repeatedly) it finally loads.
I have not had any problems, and I am upgraded to FF3, so I don’t think FF3 is the problem.
I am not really that techie, but I do my own website, and am at the “Wow; THAT’S how that works” stage lol, and I’m wondering (having not actually SEEN the goofed-up page) if the page is loading slowly and, thus, the CSS is not getting a chance to load. That would explain why the page shows up fine after a reload. (I have this problem sometimes if my internet connection dies partway through loading a blog.)
Also, if you (or someone you employ
) are creating your pages in something else and then uploading them…I host my site through Edmunds Enterprises (www.edmunds-enterprises.com). The price is VERY reasonable, and I’ve been very happy with them. (I’ve used them for several years now.) But they don’t have a pagemaker or anything, so you have to be pretty comfortable working from scratch.
I use Firefox and emailed you last week about having trouble loading your new typepad page. I still regularly have trouble. The next time I have it, I will try to remember to do a screen shot and email you, but for now I will just tell you what happens: Typically it will load the first post or part of the first post, occasionally the first few posts. Then the rest of the page is just white and never loads.
As far as your own hosting goes, I don’t really know what all of that means, but GoDaddy.com is offering $2.99 domain transfers (or new domains) w/ hosting starting @ $4.49/month. You may want to check into that?
Crystal, I’m curious what level of Typepad you use. I noticed that you don’t have your header up, and I don’t know if that’s because you don’t want to use it anymore, or because you are on the lowest version of Typepad.
Personally, I use Typepad Pro (the 3rd level), and I’m wondering if that’s what you would need to do based on your readership (or maybe even Premium, or a small business level, I’m not really sure). The extra money is worth it to me for the ease of use that I get with this level.
As for switching to a self-hosted, here is my two cents. I recently spent months preparing to switch over to Wordpress.org, hosted by Bluehost (who are great, btw). Although I loved using Wordpress in many regards, I had sooo many difficulties.
In order to use something like WP, you need to either be quite techie yourself and committed to really learning to get around technical issues, upgrading, sometimes complicated and buggy plugins (like widgets), among many other issues. For me, my theme turned out to be buggy, and wreaked havoc for my entire blog.
In the end, I switched back to Typepad (where I had originally come from and happily had not closed down my blog yet), over a month ago, and I could not be happier. It was definitely the right decision.
If you do choose to go with WP, I would spend the money to hire someone to help you, to make sure that everything is set up just right, and there’s nothing funny lurking below the surface. Once you get going with it, it can be a wonderfully user-friendly blog platform. Just keep in mind that there is no real user support, and your host can’t really help you either.
I suppose another option is Typepad’s self-hosted option, Movable Type. I don’t know much about it, but I imagine that you would have an easier time making the switch, since it’s all done by Six Apart and you would get some support from the help center.
Anyways, long comment but just my thoughts based on my recent experience with switching around! Hope you find a solution that works for you, though personally your site looks great on my computer!
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Money Saving Mom here:
I have Pro, but maybe I need to move up? The next level up looked like it was too much for what I needed but I’ll have to check into that again and maybe discuss it with Typepad.
(Oh and the reason everything is Plain Jane right now is because I’m working with a designer and will have a complete new look soon. But I’m just keeping it as is until that is finished!)
I am on a PC with IE. Your page does not completely load. It started when you switched from blogger to typepad- problems ever since- also very slow to load.
Just to let you know, hopefully this will help you in some way, the web page didn’t load fully and it seemed to be stuck on “pagead2.googlesyndication.com” That’s what it read down in the bottom of my browser where it normally says “done” left hand corner.
Does that make any sense to you?
Rochelle
I am still having some trouble accessing your blog directly. It either loads very slowly, does not load at all or only loads the latest article posted leaving the rest blank.
Sometimes I can access the rest using the refresh button, but not always.Also, when I click on one of your links to print a coupon,etc.,I encounter the same problem when I hit the back button to return to your blog(I often only get the lastest article.) What I have begun doing -since it works fine every time- is to begin at Freebies4Mom’s blog and click your blog name on her sidebar. Your blog comes up immediately, no problem.
I’m going to echo what a lot of other folks have said. I’m using IE and keep getting the first post or two of your blog, then it’s just blank. It often just cuts off mid-sentence. Hitting refresh often helps. I’ve been visiting your site for months and have only had this problem since you had to move your blog following the issues with Blogger.
I noticed that you’ve removed the printable coupons from your sidebar, but I’m still having the same issue, so that may not be the fix.
Wish I had some advice for you, but I’m so not a techie! Thanks for working so hard to bring us all the great deals!
Whatever you did it worked! I was trying on Firefox and IE and it would always say Page not available.
I am seeing several little red X’s where images should be. Using IE7.
As far as hosting, I use and LOVE MomWebs. It’s owned by a work at home Mom (Kelly McCausey of WahmTalkRadio), the customer service is the BEST I’ve found, and I host multiple (over a dozen) sites for less than $9 a month.
Link is: http://www.carrielauth.com/momwebs.html
(My affiliate link.)
I have not had any trouble getting your page to load as a whole since you moved to typepad. The only issue I have on my screen is right under the cut your grocery bill, recommended savings account, and grab the button headings in the sidebars. For some reason there is a little red x like there is a picture missing. I don’t know what is supposed to be there but have never seen anything but the x. That however is not any big deal, the rest of the page loads fine.
I’m not sure if you have found a hosting site yet but I found this company advertising http://www.1and1.com they seem to have MUCH better prices than anyone else. Good luck with your search!
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