Big blank space redux [solved]

Bobadventures · Post by **Bobadventures** » Wed Nov 14, 2007 9:59 pm

Hi. A while back, I asked if anyone else saw a big blank space between the comic and the navigation buttons when they went to the "first day" page of my comic. Several people told me no, so I figured it was just some fluke with my own browser and didn't worry about it.

Well, on my Stats Page lately, I have noticed a big discrepency between the number of people going to my first day page and the number continuing on to my second day. I can't help but wonder if it's because some of them are seeing this big blank space where the navigation buttons ought to be. The buttons are there, mind you, but you have to scroll down to them and might easily miss them. The problem is only on the first day page, and I have no idea what could be causing it.

In the center of the blank space is a tiny blue question mark icon that normally represents an image that has failed to load. If I try to get the Image Address of that icon, the result is http://bobadventures.comicgenesis.com/c ... 060502.jpg, the same URL as the comic image abovbe it, but with an extra "bobadventures" between "comics" and "20060502." (The regular comic image's URL is http://bobadventures.comicgenesis.com/c ... 060502.jpg)

I am using Safari version 2.0.4.

My comic is The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob! at http://bobadventures.comicgenesis.com

Help! Thanks.

Spike tailer · Post by **Spike tailer** » Thu Nov 15, 2007 12:37 am

to me it looks like there is just a big "unseen" picture
I use the Internett Explorer (MS) and Ive seen "pictures" like that
many times before, I tried looking at the source (even though Im not as
really good with HTML) but I couldn't find ***todays comic*** anywhere
(I dont think it really matters) im not sure how to fix the problem, but
I think u should try to look over the sources to see if everything looks
alright to you

Dr Neo Lao · Post by **Dr Neo Lao** » Thu Nov 15, 2007 2:20 pm

bobadventures.20060502.jpg, will be the sample image that you submitted when you registered.

If you deleted it from the public_html/comics folder, make sure that you also deleted the html page for it which would be public_html/d/20060502.html

If the image has been deleted and the html file has been deleted but it's still showing up, then run a Full update to clear the navigation buttons and get them to point to your proper first page.

If that does not work, there is a workaround. In both your index amd daily templates, remove the ***first_day*** tag and replace it with a link directly to the proper first page (and then run a full update so all your pages get changed).

@ spike tailer - you normally wouldn't see any of the keentags on the final page (the one that you see with a browser) unless it was written incorrectly.

Bobadventures · Post by **Bobadventures** » Thu Nov 15, 2007 11:06 pm

Thank you! I'll try that.

Bobadventures · Post by **Bobadventures** » Fri Nov 16, 2007 9:01 am

No dice. There was only one occurrance of 20060502 in my public_html/d folder, and all that deleting it accomplished was to make my "first page" button link to an error message saying the file does not exist. Fortunately, doing a full update restored it to normal-- "normal" being a big blank space underneath the first day's comic.

I also tried your workaround, by replacing the ***first_day*** tag in my index and daily templates with a regular link to the first page, and the only change it made was to make my "first page" button actually appear on the first page. But the big blank space with the unloaded image icon was still there. So I changed it back.

Did I do everything right? I was careful to empty my browser's cache every time I checked the page after changing something.

I'm really baffled by this, and I'm afraid it is costing me readers.

Here is the complete text of my indextemplate, if that will help:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0
Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html lang="en" xml:lang="en"
xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head><title>***comic_name*** - ***todays_date***</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;
charset=iso-8859-1" />
<link rel="alternate" title="***comic_name***" href="/rss.xml" type="application/rss+xml" />
</head>
<div class="keen_ad" style="display:inline;">

<center>

***advertisement***
</div>
<div class="main">
<center>
<img src="/images/RayBanner.jpg"><br />
<br />
<center>
<h1>***comic_name***</h1>
<h2>by ***author***</h2>

<center>
***todays_comics***
<br />
<br />

<center>
***first_day*** ***previous_day*** ***next_day*** ***last_day***

<br />
***calendar***
<br />
<a href="//bobadventures.comicgenesis.com/GalleryTest.html"><img src="/images/GalLogo.jpg"></a>
<br/>

Kindly send all comments, queries, compliments, complaints, criticisms, praises, death threats, and statements of apathetic indifference to: jimcleave@aol.com
<br />
<br />
<a href="//bobadventures.comicgenesis.com/LinkTest1.html"><img src="/images/linksbtn.jpg"></a>
<br/>


<center>

<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.onlinecomics.net"><img src="http://www.onlinecomics.net/images/bann ... 468x60.gif" width="468" height="60" border="0"></a>
<br />

<script language=javascript type="text/javascript" src="http://ss.webring.com/navbar?f=j;y=boba ... pt><center> <table bgcolor=gray cellspacing=0 border=2><tr> <td><table cellpadding=2 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr><td align=center> <font face=arial size=-1>This site is a member of WebRing. <br>To browse visit <a href="http://ss.webring.com/navbar?f=l;y=boba ... s;u=defurl"> Here</a>.</font></td></tr></table></td></tr></table> </center></noscript>
<br />
<br />

***comic_name*** is hosted on <a href="http://www.comicgenesis.com">ComicGenesis</a>, a free webhosting and site automation service for webcomics.
</div>
</body>
</html>

Dr Neo Lao · Post by **Dr Neo Lao** » Fri Nov 16, 2007 1:33 pm

I just went to your comic and this is what I see when I click on the 'first day' button on the front page.

Is it still wrong or has the update cleared it? I don't see how changing the ***first_day*** to a direct link would have failed...

Bobadventures · Post by **Bobadventures** » Mon Nov 19, 2007 10:18 am

Huh. Well, I've never seen that error message before. I don't know how or why you got it.

ANYWAY... The problem is FIXED. Sigh, I feel foolish, and I should have figured this out long ago. I went into the public/d folder, and finally noticed, way down at the bottom of the list where I hadn't looked before (since I was looking for a duplicate of the first day image, naturally, up top) that there was an extra file called "bobadventures.20060502" instead of just "20060502." Deleting it fixed everything.