Now Playing page goes blank!

[Busby]

I wonder if anyone else has had this problem..

On my site I have 2 i-frames showing the number of listeners and 'now playing'. The listener count is a simple html page and the 'now playing' is php.

Both pages however suffer from the same problem. They both refresh every minute but after a while the page no longer displays any text. If I refresh my browser it will display again for a while before doing the same again..

I wondered if anyone else has come across this and what solution they have found. I have tried IE 6/7 and Firefox and all are the same..

Many thanks

[Jkey]

increase the refresh rate.
make sure your php has "exit;" when its finished.

[Busby]

Many thanks for the reply..

I can increase the refresh rate on the html page and but as I have a scrolling window in the php page and its already set to the shortest time to allow the title to display before refresh..

[Jkey]

can you post the html/php here or give me a link
to the page ?.

[Busby]

http://www.1mix.co.uk/nowplaying.php

Sorry, I forgot - both pages are now php - but my previous html one did the same thing..

If you want to see the i-frame you can see this on the home page http://www.1mix.co.uk/

Many thanks for your help..

[Busby]

I see the url is blocked..
1mix[dot]co[dot]uk/listeners.php

[Busby]

I just had a closer look and I find if I just load the 'now playing' page in my browser I get 'page cannot be found' error message after a couple of hours..

Hope this helps

[Jkey]

i will look at in to for you busby when i
have 5 mins spare ,also deleted that post for you


Edit :- When you get a page cant be displayed on these
now playing scripts over a long period of time
that is usually related to your connection.
This is true if when you refresh your page it returns.

[Busby]

Originally posted by Jkey
i will look at in to for you busby when i
have 5 mins spare ,also deleted that post for you


Edit :- When you get a page cant be displayed on these
now playing scripts over a long period of time
that is usually related to your connection.
This is true if when you refresh your page it returns.

I am happy that the problem isn't a connection issue as I have had the problem for years, and I monitor my station all day and all night and there is no break in the stream..

I am aware of an Ajax script elsewhere on this forum which does the same thing without the need to refresh the page - but its way over my head I'm afraid

[Jkey]

Ok worked fine,however the page going blank issue
is most probably caused when your script fails
to receive the data from your SHOUTcast server.

You need to ensure that if something goes wrong
and your script cant connect to your server
that it returns some time of debug msg like
"Now playing Not available" or edit the php
script so it attempts to reconnect if it failed
to connect the first time.




J.

[Busby]

Hi

Thanks for the reply..

The script returns 'server offline' if it can't retrive info from the shoutcast server - and the listeners page shows '0 listeners'

I have tried this with a blank page with just 'Hi' on it and it does the same thing

Back to the drawing board - sorry

[Busby]

Sorry to give a heads up on this one - has anybody had any further ideas please?

[dotme]

Originally posted by Busby
I just had a closer look and I find if I just load the 'now playing' page in my browser I get 'page cannot be found' error message after a couple of hours..

Hope this helps

That's a webserver error, not a shoutcast error (In other words, I know you monitor your stream - but what about the website?)

That error usually is a result of the station website being down, not the stream. So, some possibilities to explore...

1) The webserver/website occasionally drops. If that happens at the moment a page refresh happens, the result would be a "page cannot be displayed" error
2) The hosting company has something in place that blocks repeated attempts to pull a web page. If that's the case, try increasing the refresh interval.

If it turns out that it's the website that occasionally goes offline, the fix is there - not with the PHP code etc...

Hope this helps

[Busby]

Hey - remember me?

I remember chatting with you just before you got listed on iTunes - wow - things have changed somewhat...

I have done extensive testing on this and this is what I have found..

I have dedicated server which runs my station and has SAM running on it. My website is hosted elsewhere and so are the 'Now Playing' and 'Listener Count' pages. In all there are 4 pages - all .php but html pages do the same thing. All these pages are hosted on the same server.

When I get the 'page not found' messages they appear at different times on each of the pages. It happens on any server - I have tried several. If you do a manual refresh they come back.

Hope this helps..

thanks again!