Articles tagged as “error”

Here is a list of all articles tagged as “error”. If you enjoy the high-quality content that I provide here at Perishable Press, you may want to subscribe to our main content feed to stay current.

Important Security Fix for WordPress

The other day, my server crashed and Perishable Press was unable to connect to the MySQL database. Normally, when WordPress encounters a database error, it delivers a specific error message similar to the following: Default database-error message This customizable database error message explains the situation to visitors and circumvents any malicious activity involving exposed scripts, PHP errors, and other issues related to unexpected database issues. That sounds nice, but there is a problem The problem that I painfully discovered when ...

Best Practices for Error Monitoring

Given my propensity to discuss matters involving error log data (e.g., monitoring malicious behavior, setting up error logs, and creating extensive blacklists), I am often asked about the best way to go about monitoring 404 and other types of server errors. While I consider myself to be a novice in this arena (there are far brighter people with much greater experience), I do spend a lot of time digging through log entries and analyzing data. So, when asked recently about my error monitoring practices, I ...

Important Note for Your Custom Error Pages

Just a note to web designers and code-savvy bloggers: make sure your custom error pages are big enough for the ever-amazing Internet Explorer browser. If your custom error pages are too small, IE will take the liberty of serving its own proprietary web page, replete with corporate linkage and poor grammar. How big, baby? Well, that’s a good question. In order for users of Internet Explorer to enjoy your carefully crafted custom error pages, they need to exceed 512 bytes in size. Using proper doctype markup, your custom pages should include more ...

How to Enable PHP Error Logging via htaccess

In this brief tutorial, I will show Apache users how to suppress PHP errors from visitors and enable PHP error logging via htaccess. Tracking your site’s PHP errors is an excellent way to manage and troubleshoot unexpected issues related to plugins and themes. Even better, monitoring PHP errors behind the scenes via private log is far better than trying to catch them as they appear at random visits. Thanks to the magical powers of htaccess, there is an easy way to ...

Eliminate 404 Errors for PHP Functions

Recently, I discussed the suspicious behavior recently observed by the Yahoo! Slurp crawler. As revealed by the site’s closely watched 404-error logs, Yahoo! had been requesting a series of nonexistent resources. Although a majority of the 404 errors were exclusive to the Slurp crawler, there were several instances of requests that were also coming from Google, Live, and even Ask. Initially, these distinct errors were misdiagnosed as existing URLs appended with various JavaScript functions. Here are a few typical examples of these frequently observed log entries: http://perishablepress.com/press/category/websites/feed/function.opendir http://perishablepress.com/press/category/websites/feed/function.array-rand http://perishablepress.com/press/category/websites/feed/function.mkdir http://perishablepress.com/press/category/websites/feed/ref.outcontrol Fortunately, an insightful reader named Bas pointed out ...

Major Problem with cPanel Hotlink Protection and htaccess

There is a major problem with the “Hotlink Protection” feature of cPanel. To summarize the issue, allow me to quote a recent email sent to a completely unresponsive tech support department: ...The problem is that if I try to include any rewrite rules for permalinks, hotlinking, or blocking spambots, cPanel automatically enables its “Hotlink Protection” feature. And, even worse, it automatically adds every URL from every rewrite rule (even the ones for blocking spambots) to its “auto-discovered” list of URL’s for which image access is allowed. This means that every spammer that I am trying to block now has access to my images! If I try to remove the spammers directly from ...

Standards-Compliance Throwdown: MS-IE5/6 DNS/404 Error-Page Redesign

Default DNS Error page for Internet Explorer First of all, congratulations if you are geeky enough to understand the title of this article. Many would be like, "CSS, MS.. IE, error ..what..?" Whatever. If you get the title, you will get the point of this utterly pointless exercise. If that is the case, prepare for a delightful romp through geekland. Otherwise, save your precious time and stop reading here (exit strategy). Well, okay, for the seriously unenlightened, let us explain the object of our present focus: The default "DNS Error" page for Internet Explorer unfortunately ...

Perishable Press Unresolved Error Log

This post is hereby dedicated to the official logging of all unresolved and/or unexplained errors encountered during development or implementation of various plugins, extensions, themes, scripts, and/or anything else that results in bizarre and mysterious errors, bugs, or other anomalies. Further, we will also post any potential solutions, fixes, workarounds, or explanations for any errors logged in this post. This information is provided for reference purposes only -- please share any related information you may have concerning any of the errors described in this error log. Please use the comment form below or simply contact us directly. Thanks. 1. Firebug extension » conflict with Firefox 1.5 [ January 9th, 2007 ] Unexplained conflict ...

Disobedient Robots and Company

In our never-ending battle against spammers, leeches, scrapers, and other online undesirables, we have implemented several powerful security measures to improve the operational integrity of our perpetual virtual existence. Here is a rundown of the new behind-the-scenes security features of Perishable Press: Automated spambot trap, designed to identify bots (and/or stupid people) that disobey rules specified in the site’s robots.txt file. Automated disobedient-robot identification (via reverse IP lookup), admin-notification (via email) and blacklist inclusion (via htaccess). Automated inclusion of disobedient robot identification on our now public "Disobedient Robots" page. Imroved htaccess rules, designed to eliminate scum-sucking worms and other useless vermin. Automated tracking tools, designed to keep a close eye on any ...

HTTP Error Codes

A list of HTTP Error codes and corresponding definitions: Informational Codes 100 -- Continue 101 -- Switching Protocols Successful Client Requests 200 -- OK 201 -- Created 202 -- Accepted 203 -- Non-Authorative Information 204 -- No Content 205 -- Reset Content 206 -- Partial Content Client Request Redirected 300 -- Multiple Choices 301 -- Moved Permanently 302 -- Moved Temporarily 303 -- See Other 304 -- Not Modified 305 -- Use Proxy 307 -- Temporary Redirect Client Request Errors 400 -- Bad Request 401 -- Authorization Required 402 -- Payment Required (not used yet) 403 -- Forbidden 404 -- Not Found 405 -- Method Not Allowed 406 -- Not Acceptable (encoding) 407 -- Proxy Authentication Required 408 -- Request Timed Out 409 -- Conflicting Request 410 -- Gone 411 -- Content Length Required 412 -- Precondition Failed 413 -- Request ...

500 Error — Internal Server Error

There has been an internal server error. Report this error or contact Perishable (private). Leave a comment concerning this error (public). Return to the Perishable Press main index page. [ Custom 500-Error redirect page ]

404 Error — Not Found

Sorry, we were unable to find the requested resource. Report this error or contact Perishable (private). Leave a comment concerning this error (public). Return to the Perishable Press main index page. [ Custom 404-Error redirect page ]

403 Error — Forbidden

You do not have the proper Authorization. Report this error or contact Perishable (private). Leave a comment concerning this error (public). Return to the Perishable Press main index page. [ Custom 403-Error redirect page ]

401 Error — Authorization Required

You do not have the proper Authorization. Report this error or contact Perishable (private). Leave a comment concerning this error (public). Return to the Perishable Press main index page. [ Custom 401-Error redirect page ]

400 Error — Bad Request

There has been a bad request. Report this error or contact Perishable (private). Leave a comment concerning this error (public). Return to the Perishable Press main index page. [ Custom 400-Error redirect page ]