[Andy Castle]

Hi Steve,
In my Cmap tiles siteshot is returning 404 images for site URLs which apparently work OK. Sometimes there are other error messages returned e.g. 503. Is there any way of fixing this or working round it?

Here are some example URLs which return errors, but work:
http://www.theweald.org.uk/
http://www.sgs.uk.net/
https://www.police.uk/contact/

Andy
http://www.storrington.org.uk

[Steven Zahm]

@ Andy

SiteShot uses a service provided by wp.org called mshot in order to create the site screenshots. It is pretty much a block box to which I have not direct control over…

For sites where you are seeing the 503… my best guess is the site’s server firewall is blocking access, In the past I’ve tried other services which provide site screenshots, they too would also receive same message. So this leads me to believe that it is not the service but the site.

They may not purposefully be blocking, but they could be blocking something else which has the side effect of blocking these services.

The only real solution here is to take the screen capture yourself and add it to the entry.

In regards to the 404 message. I’ve seen this when the site being captured is too slow in responding or unresponsive at the time of being captured. The captures are cached by mshot for a period of time and that cache can not be flushed.

You will also get 404 when trying to capture a site with an incorrect or a redirected URL.

For example on this page https://www.storrington.org.uk/attractions/food-and-drink/ the entry for The Moon Pub. The website is http://www.themoonpub.co.uk/ but it seems that URL is actually redirected to https://themoonpub.co.uk/. Notice the difference? Try correcting the link to see if that fixes that entry. Keep in mind the captures are cached are it will take time for that cached capture to be refreshed.

Hope this helps. Let me know.

[Andy Castle]

Hi Steve,
Thanks for this: I recognise the issue with redirected URLs like the Moon Pub example and I’ve been dealing with those when I notice them.

The ones I quoted in my original request are not like that e.g.
http://www.theweald.org.uk/
http://www.sgs.uk.net/
https://www.police.uk/contact/

These ones have been a permanent problem. You can see how they appear on these pages of my site:
https://www.storrington.org.uk/amenities/education-schools/
in the concertina under Secondary Schools
https://www.storrington.org.uk/amenities/emergency/
in the concertina under Police, Fire & Ambulance

Please can you explain to me how “to take the screen capture yourself and add it to the entry”? Is there a way to override the standard cMap use of siteshot by exception? So in the examples of the three problem URLs, use a logo image instead of the siteshot?

That would provide an adequate workaround, but I can’t see how to do it in Edit Entry or the Settings. Doing it in the shortcode within the displaying WordPress page would mean I have to use the alternate image for all entries in the same category regardless of whether they get successful siteshots returned. That’s more tricky because quite a lot of my directory entries appear in multiple categories.

I’d be grateful for any advise on a workaround you can give me.

Andy.

[Steven Zahm]

@ Andy

RE: Please can you explain to me how “to take the screen capture yourself and add it to the entry”?

There are many ways to take a screenshot. I personally use Snagit. Though, that app cost money. There are many freely available solutions. After a quick web search, it seems Windows 10 even has one built in now.

After you take a screenshot you would edit the entry and upload the screenshot as the photo image for the entry.

RE: Is there a way to override the standard cMap use of siteshot by exception?

You need to edit the [connections] shortcode to make SiteShot the fallback image vs the primary image. For the cMap template you would use this shortcode.

[connections image=photo image_fallback=siteshot]

or add image=photo image_fallback=siteshot to an existing shortcode.

This will force that instance of the of the shortcode with cMap to display the photo image if there is one and if there is not, then will display the SiteShot image.

I would only do this for the shortcode instances where there is a problematic SiteShot website capture.

RE: So in the examples of the three problem URLs, use a logo image instead of the siteshot?

My example above was to upload to the entry’s photo image. The same can be done using the entry’s logo image too.

Just upload the screenshot as the logo image. Add this to the shortcode instead, image_fallback=siteshot. In this case the image option is not required since the default image to display is the logo.

Hope I’ve made this clear enough to follow and is helpful. Let me know.

[Author]

Posts