Certain posts take a extra long to post, possible bug

  • I ran into something really strange today. I have been using a 3rd party client to post my blogs, however, I tried to post one in WP admin, and the post was just stalling for ages when trying to publish it. It would be posted, as I could reload my blog and there it was just fine.

    First I tried to shorten the post, no luck, then I put in some plain text that was equally as long, went in just fine. I even deleted the ping urls as I thought maybe that was timing out.

    Eventually I narrowed it down to a url that was in the post, but it is just one url, and it need not be in the href, so a string will do.

    I had a link to amazon.com, which was causing the post to get posted, but the response page in WP admin was not coming back, eventually I get a browser timeout in Safari

    If you paste into a new post:
    https://amazon.com/-
    tell it to publish, not a draft, for me at least, it hangs. I can not seem to find out why, even
    https://amaz/-
    hangs as well, but some variations do not, it seems to be pretty specific to this url at least.

Viewing 12 replies - 1 through 12 (of 12 total)
  • Thread Starter ScottHaneda

    (@scotthaneda)

    I should have tested this more thorough, seems FireFox on OS X is ok, so this is just a Safari issue. Seeing as how none of the advanced editing tools show up in Safari either, there must be some user agent checking going on, and something is happening that should not.

    Is the the proper place to even report this stuff?

    I’m having the exact same problem when posting new entries or modifying old ones. The update is completed, but the admin page seems to hang. I’m using IE and FireFox in WinXP SP1 and WPv1.5, PHP4.3.10, MySQL 3.23.58 and Apache/2.0.50 (Fedora). It’s really anoying, but tolerable, since the modifications are completed and visible after a refresh of my blog. Please help!

    See this post. https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic.php?id=28662
    You all are not alone.

    Also, if you have pings turned on, or any links to other sites, it just takes longer to load because of all the pinks. And it isn’t just to other sites. The more links, internal or external, the longer it takes.

    Thread Starter ScottHaneda

    (@scotthaneda)

    I deleted the pings and it made no difference., so it seems to be that there are urls it is checking. My test case above was not long at all. This single post will cause it to hang:
    https://amazon.com/-

    MarsEdit does not have this issue, posts are sent right away with no trouble. What is it that WP is asking of amazon? Or other urls for that matter?

    This seems like a clear bug, where does one post a test case?

    Thread Starter ScottHaneda

    (@scotthaneda)

    I also want to note, thee more I think about this, the more I wonder what it really is, the sample case was just a line of text, it was not wrapped in an a href at all.

    Moderator James Huff

    (@macmanx)

    This is due to WordPress pinging (sending trackbacks to) all URLs in the post. The post is published as soon as you hit “Publish”, but WP won’t let you return to a new/empty post page until it receives a response from the pinged URLs. And, sometimes, pinged URLs take a long time to respond. This is an option in Options/Discussions, but the bug is the fact that un-checking the option does nothing to stop WP from pinging those URLs.

    Thread Starter ScottHaneda

    (@scotthaneda)

    I don’t get it, what is involved in this “ping” and what is the point, if I put in a link to amazon.com, what is pinging them going to accomplish, can someone tell me the real world uses where this is valuable?

    Can someone explain to me why a non href’d link is pinged?

    Moderator James Huff

    (@macmanx)

    Well, it’s to increase the ease of trackbacks. If you reference another blog’s post, you can leave a comment on the other blog letting it know that you have referenced it. Essentially, it’s about networking. In the Dark Ages (before WP), one had to line up special trackback URLs in a special field before posting in order to send out the trackback pings. To simplify things, WP just arbitrarily pings all sites referenced in the post. For some users it’s a positive and for some it’s a negative. That’s why the WP developers included the option to disable it. Unfortunately, that option appears to be malfunctioning.

    More on trackbacks: https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Introduction_to_Blogging#Trackbacks

    Thread Starter ScottHaneda

    (@scotthaneda)

    How about a bloacklist of urls that you do not ping, pinging amazon is just pointless, there are a ton that are pointless.

    Thanks for explaining this Macmanx. ANd I agree w. ScottHaneda that the pinging should be more discriminating and omit links that are pointless to ping. For example, I link a lot to online news articles. Why ping the New York Times merely because there’s a link to it in my post? And I also wish there was some sort of diagnostic that would allow you to see which link is slowing things down so you could (possibly) do something about it like delete it or whatever.

    Moderator James Huff

    (@macmanx)

    And I also wish there was some sort of diagnostic that would allow you to see which link is slowing things down so you could (possibly) do something about it like delete it or whatever.

    Your server access logs should display which links failed to return the ping(s), but some digging is required.

    Reviving this, since it was the first support thread I discovered that talks specifically about the bug I’m experiencing with a post page hang when I link to Amazon. A blacklist of sites not to try and ping is a great idea.

    Edit to say that unchecking “Allow Pings” for the posts in question has no effect when I hit the submit (either Save or Publish) button. I want to make it clear that whatever edits are made do show up. Quite the confusing little issue!

Viewing 12 replies - 1 through 12 (of 12 total)
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