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Sitemeter Crashing Sites When Viewed with IE7

Posted By Darren Rowse 2nd of August 2008 Blogging Tools and Services 0 Comments

Twitter is aflutter with blog owners wondering why their sites can’t be viewed at the moment and it seems that the commonality between them all is that they are running Sitemeter stats on their blogs and that they only seem to crash when viewed with IE7.

I’ve put an email into Sitemeter to get clarification on the problem but until it’s fixed the only way to have your blog viewed by IE7 seems to be removing Sitemeter’s code from your blog (as I’ve done here). It means your stats will be disrupted and inaccurate for today – but at least you’ll have everyone able to view your blog.

Will update when I hear more.

Update – Sitemeter have posted about the problem and say that they have resolved it on their blog. Read here for details.

About Darren Rowse
Darren Rowse is the founder and editor of ProBlogger Blog Tips and Digital Photography School. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Comments
  1. My partial sidebar was missing in the middle of redesigning my site. So obviously I thought the problem was my mistake. Screwed 3 hours of my life trying to fix the problem without any luck. Only has problem under IE7 and IE8beta1, everything else works like a charm.

    Let me put this on record, everyone who uses IE is an idiot (not you rowse); they should not have the privilege of using a computer or going online. We should all start using FF3, and give the guys from Microsoft a serious heart attack. FF3 is better than IE in every stretch of imagination. I am seriously thinking about making my site FF3 only, so that people who uses IE cannot visit my site.

    The guys from IE developers team has to be serious douches and incompetent for not being able to follow simple web standards; when everyone else has been doing it from the start.

    One more time: To the people in concern, if you use IE, you are hereby worlds biggest idiot!

    /rant

    Ok I feel a little better now…

  2. Wow, thanks for the update. I never use IE unless I have to, so I would have never figured this out if it weren’t for you!! I’ve pulled the code until it gets fixed.

  3. this is why i love pro blogger..helps bloggers stay on top of maintenance

  4. Thanks for the info Darren. Appreciate it.

  5. Another solution is to opt for HTML Sitemeter code instead of Javascript one. I have just changed and it works fine for me.

  6. I have pulled Sitemeter permanently. This happened sometime overnight or at least during the work day on Friday. There is NOT ONE WORD from Sitemeter acknowledging the problem, so users are left without any clue as to when they can expect the problem to be fixed. For all we know, the entire crew at Sitemeter is home for the weekend, and all out blogs will be worthless for users of IE7 for the entire weekend, at least.

    I use Word Press Mu. That means I have many blogs that have to be changed by hard coding. And that’s just what I am going to do. And if I’m going to waste that much of my limited time fixing someone else’s mistake (a problem compounded by their laziness), then I am not going to be using their code any more.

    I understand that mistakes happen. But I expect support.

  7. Thanks! I just pulled the sitemeter code from the sidebar of my site. I also noticed the Firefox was only partially loading pages on my site, but that was probably because readers were constantly refreshing the site in IE because of the error message dialog that was popping up.

    For what it’s worth, it took only 25 minutes for Typepad’s technical team to identify the issue and provide status info to their users this evening.

    Sitemeter has really shot themselves in the foot by making us all look bad. I’m sure a few people are (mistakenly) upset with the blog service providers as well.

  8. Why do you go for a public meter, when you have analytics and also always use a html based counter code rather than java based because generally java codes must be avoided and html based counter loads quickly.

  9. For the sake am not using site meter in my blog. so no worries.

  10. Mine still isn’t working, after I removed the sitemeter code and reset the WP-cache. Anyone else still having problems after removing sitemeter code?

  11. IE is the world baddest browser. It’s very easy to crash it only with some html or javascript. I wrote a post on that subject here.

  12. i am damn happy after i switched over to fire fox on a friends advice

  13. I went to the Sitemeter site, and copied the code in the Manger section and replaced the old code on the site with the fresh code, and the error went away. And yes, this does seem to be a common problem as I’ve seen multiple blogs of friends be affected as well.

    Thanks for blogging about this – please keep us informed as to any updates on this issues.

  14. This site is still crashing under IE7, and when viewing the source it looks like the sitemeter code is still there.

  15. Figures this would happen when my main Internet connection goes down. Not sure I as want to fix my blogs with an iPhone :)

  16. Yeah, re: kenny, I had to click the Stop button on IE7 to view this post in order to comment. Otherwise, the site crashed. I use SiteMeter on my site, tho, and nothing happened. The bug may be on some SiteMeter servers and not others? I’ve been using SiteMeter for years, so maybe my older server is not affected.

  17. Thanks Darren, and thanks Nirmal…I pulled the JS code and added HTML. It’s now loading properly in IE.

    Finally, thanks to James for pointing out TypePad’s fast response. Love those guys!

  18. Thanks for the heads up. I removed sitemeter from my blog and now it is viewable. When I tried to read this post though, every time I read a few lines, it would crash. I finally had to open it up in FF in order to read it.

  19. Oops, I spoke too soon. It’s messed up on my site, too, so I removed it. On one page, I had SiteMeter code with a CSS class, which made the meter appear like normal. But on other pages with no class tag, it crashed. I went to SiteMeter, but the site itself crashed, so apparently, they’ve got a bigger problem than they realize.

  20. Nothing like tech trouble eh?

  21. I had a similar problem last night, but it wasn’t only sitemeter. Several scripts I had running inside the body tag were responsible. So I put them all, including sitemeter java, into the footer after the /body tag.

    All was healed, but IE stole an hour of my life!

  22. Ya thanks for this, I’m having a problem with it too – just spent an hour with my brother fiddling with plugins and the like >:[

  23. so i will remove it quick ;))

  24. Hi Darren – As of now I still can’t open anywhere on your site in IE7 even though you say you’ve removed the code, so I’m in Firefox.

  25. The programmers at Site Meter must not realize that there are no weekends off when you provide a service to thousands, tens of thousands or more people around the world. Someone will have a lump in their throat once they know they have caused an issue effecting all of their java based users.

    Mark

  26. This is just the same old same, IE is a piece of total and complete SH-T!

  27. Thanks for the warning. I also thought I had done something wrong on my side.

  28. I was having issues opening Problogger a few minutes ago in IE7, but it is fine in Firefox. This will bring some more IE7 people over to Firefox. I just downloaded Firefox for the first time.

  29. Mine worked without removing the sitemeter code.

    I shifted my sitemeter code right above the close tag of body element and it worked fine. If sitemeter code is in a div tag, then the tag has to be deleted.

  30. Thanks DB Ferguson..

    I’ve replaced the Javascript code with a new one (also Javascript) from the ‘Manager’ tab….and it’s working now.

    Clear your cache before rechecking to see it works.

  31. Avani is correct – if you make the code the last thing in your template before the tag then it will load properly. Obviously it makes things look a little city, but its a good temporary fix until Sitemeter does something about this. You can see it on my blog if you need an example.

    Stupid IE. Stupid sitemeter

  32. It’s nice to say everyone should use FF, but frankly most “customers” out there use what comes with their computer, which is IE. If you’re an e-commerce site, you can’t be such an elitist. Ma and Pa Kettle haven’t heard of FireFox.

    I’ve spent all morning turning off the sitemeter badges on sites. What a pain.

    This week has been a real double whammy. First, the McAfee Yahoo.net thing, and now this!

  33. The surest way to anger all your customers, I think I’ll be looking for another solution for sure. AGH!

  34. At 2:15 PM Eastern Time (US) Saturday, it appears to be working correctly…

  35. I have always used Google Analytics, but when my husband started a (non-blog) website (www.TexasACL.com), Google Analytics combined with IE7 froze the site. He uses Microsoft’s small business website tool. I think the real problem here is with Microsoft products. I’ve never heard of a problem like this occurring with Firefox, which has been my exclusive web browser for years.

  36. Darren,
    Thank you so much for posting this. I noticed it last night, couldn’t sleep, and spent from 4am to 8am trying to figure this out. Many a curse-word were uttered, I have to host a blog carnival in a couple of days. Guess it’s time to get more comfortable with Firefox!
    Thanks again,
    Amanda

  37. It appears to be partially fixed now. It won’t crash your site in IE, however, sitemeters site is still having some trouble.

  38. thanks darren… i was wondering why my traffic is less today… and i think this was the reason as my major traffic visitors use IE and when i removed it came back to normal after an hour or so

  39. Sitemeter may be having problems, but that wasn’t the reason my blogs and some others were getting an “operation aborted” message last night.

    It was ANY javascript that was inside the <body tags for any site I went to last night, not just sitemeter’s code, ANY javascript.

    It seems to have fixed itself over night though.
    I had a bout with insomnia last night, so I kept trying to find and fix the issue, but it was almost every blog I went to, and even sites like Yahoo were affected.

    But I do thank you for posting that sitemeter is having issues today, I didn’t know that and because my sitemeter code is outside the <body tag, it’s definitely not what was causing the operation aborted messages last night on my blogs.

  40. Didn’t know about this problem. But hey, actually I didn’t like IE7 that much. Well I think it has to fix its bugs first.

  41. I haven’t really cared too much about sitemeter. I am pretty surprised to see that a lot others do not use it like me.

  42. Just to let you all know, I work in the hosting industry, and I don’t believe that this is just a Sitemeter issue. We’ve been dealing with a lot of FrontPage users (I know, I know) experiencing similar issues. Even sites that were not built in FP but have the extensions installed are having this issue. Looks like it might be a IE issue in it’s handling of Javascript and .htaccess files.

    Easiest fix we’ve found: Use FireFox (or anything but IE.)

  43. Eight ways to fix the problem plus the origin of the bug explained here: http://motls.blogspot.com/2008/08/fix-internet-explorer-7-with-sitemeter.html

  44. I don’t think its just an IE/JS problem. It resolved itself when I switched to SiteMeter’s HTML code, even though I have plenty of other JS on my site.

  45. Rejoice! The problem with Sitemeter has just been fixed! But don’t quote me on that – in case it crashes again.

  46. Thanks and i hope it wouldn’t crash again. People should transfer to mozilla firefox browsers because you will have a better browser experience in firefox unlike IE7.

    Thank you
    Charles
    Money Making and Blogging Tips
    http://www.resourcesandmoney.blogspot.com

  47. Charles: It’s not my job to tell my readers what browser to use. IE7 has been in use and pre-installed on computers for years. Its existence is a fact of life. Sitemeter’s Javascript button worked the day before yesterday. They screwed around with their code on Friday afternoon and then left for the day/weekend unconcerned or/or unaware that they had made their users’ blogs inoperable and unreadable on the numerically most popular browser there is. As of this moment, they have not communicated in any way with their users regarding this problem. I am at this moment changing all my Sitemeter buttons to Statecounter.com buttons. Sitemeter doesn’t even exist for me anymore. Let the company go under and all their employees lose their job. Sitemeter failed.

  48. That’s “statcounter.com” buttons. Sorry for the typo.

  49. Hi! Sitemeter is now back on line. Their blog describes what happened:

    http://weblog.sitemeter.com/

    I have replaced my sitemeter widget and it’s working! Thank you, Sitemeter!

  50. That’s OK, I use Firefox!

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