It happens. Something went terribly wrong and your site is totally borked.
First, stop and take a breath. This is the web, some part is always broken and can be fixed. Second, you know more about the web than anyone around you right now so this is a moment of job security, not panic.
Now clear the room so you can think and see if anything on this list will help you set things straight, or at least get you closer.
A Page is Missing, Broken, or Funny Looking
First, figure out if the page is missing, broken, or just funny looking and follow the corresponding section below. If a page is missing, the URL will direct you to your custom error page. If the page is broken, the browser will display a text message. If at least some of the page shows up and just looks funny, an HTML error is the usual suspect.
Missing Page – It’s Gone
How to retrieve it? If you are lucky, someone else deleted it and you still have a copy locally. Connect to Backstage and put your local copy back up to Backstage, the page will now go live at the next scheduled deployment.
If you don’t have a copy of the missing page and the thought of recreating it makes you want to barf, the web team can go back roughly 45 days and retrieve an older version from Backstage. Older than 45 days? Whew, OK. Jeff can dig back through the monthly backups and get a copy. Honestly though, missing for 45 days? Is it really missed?
Broken Page – Error Message
Backstage and the live server “Fred” each display and different error message.
On Backstage the browser will display this:
An error occurred on the server when processing the URL. Please contact the system administrator. If you are the system administrator please click here to find out more about this error.
On the live site “Fred” the browser will display this:
500 - Internal server error. There is a problem with the resource you are looking for, and it cannot be displayed.
What happened?
This type of error message comes up when the server is having problems assembling a page. The server does not care about mismatched HTML that makes a page look funny, it will however have a cow if it cannot complete an instruction like a server-side include or other server command dealing with ASP or PHP.
How to fix it
A missing include file, or typo calling to a file or other command is typically the culprit. Go through the code and see if you can catch a typo or call to an include file you recently deleted.
Don’t feel bad asking for help looking for the error. As with proofreading, lost car keys, and that hat you just bought. A second set of eyes can catch the most obvious thing you missed right away.
Broken Page – Funny Looking
The page is there and while most of it is showing up, it is well, just wrong. Either the HTML is messed up on the page, or the template applied, which is made out of HTML, is applied incorrect or is broken.
Start Troubleshooting. Usually a <div> was not closed in the content area and that makes every other div go bonkers, slide off the page, overlap text etc.
How to fix it
Look at the code in Dreamweaver, it should highlight out of place tags with yellow. Don’t freak if you see a bunch. Start at the top and work your way down, one out of place tag can throw everything off and setting that straight can fix the whole page.
If the broken tag is in the non-editable region of the template
I am not going to lie to you, this gets ugly fast. Best bet is to rebuild the page.
- Detach the template. Go to Modify > Templates > Detach Template
- In the source code, not design view, copy the contents of the editable region
- Put that copied code somewhere safe, like a plain text file, not MS Word!
- Delete everything in the source code except
<html> <head> <title>Leave the title text in here</title </head> <body> </body> </html>
- Don’t worry about deleting any attributes in those elements (id=”blah blah”)
- Apply the desired template to this page
Modify > Templates > Attach Template - Paste your source code back into the editable region of the template, in source view of course
- Repeat paste for each editable region if you have multiple areas
- Save and preview!
Profile Page – Blank, Missing Content
Changing a University id without updating the corresponding profile page will cause a profile page to go blank because profile pages use the U id to pull the appropriate data.
Actually you will probably see @umn.edu and little of anything else when a profile page cannot find matching data.
More details
My U id is jeff. Therefore my profile page makes the request for my data with this call.
http://apps.cehd.umn.edu/people/admin/RSSFeed.aspx?id=jeff
Now let’s say I change my University id to my middle name, faruk. I just need to change the jeff to faruk on the call. Like this:
http://apps.cehd.umn.edu/people/admin/RSSFeed.aspx?id=faurk
Profile Page – Only Missing Image
This is actually easy. Either the person’s picture was deleted from the TARDIS, a rarity I have yet to see, or the person in question changed their name. That happens more than you think!
Remember the PeopleTool matches last names to the last name used to name the image in the TARDIS. Go into the people tool and look at the top of their profile info, what does the U list as last name?
Why did the name change?
Are you ready for the two big name change reasons?
Marriage
Whether taking the spouse’s name, hyphenating, or making up a whole new one, the name changed and the image has to be renamed to reflect that change.
Someone Got Cute
Sometimes people get super-cute and officially change their last name to Whatever PhD. Oh, I wish I was kidding about this. So you have to change the last name on their picture in the TARDIS to begin with, you guessed it, Whatever PhD.
I recommend making a copy to rename and leave the original. In this way if the U figures out what happened and changes the name back the system won’t miss a beat.
Remember!
If you were still on the edit page for a profile after you restored the image, you need to leave the edit page and come back for the image to appear in the drop down list.