I made some changes to the error handling routines related to external links. The outbound traffic links from the entire site are written to a database table. When there's a lot of traffic on the site sometimes the links don't get written to the database properly. So when you click the link the server can't find the row in the database to know where to send you to. It spits out the generic "link expired" page.
We actually store the outbound links in the database for 2 hours from the time they are generated. That's typically plenty of time. Most users don't stay on the site for more than 2 hours at a shot but some do.
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nietzsche Deactivated User
5470 Posts 8/03
Posted - Oct 17 2006 : 6:45PM
It doesn't happen frequently. Maybe two or three times in the past few days. It's probably because not "most users" and stay on for more than two hours.
I just had this happen for the first time a minute ago. It was the links in the second post in this thread. (I hope you can see it before this link expires.)
If you run into this problem jsut refresh the page with the link in it. That will create a few new link with each refresh. Then you can clickety click and all will be well.
I set up a log file that will record any instances of the 'link expired' page. I also moved the indexes for this table to a different drive array which should help. In the past 24 hours since I made the change it doesn't look like the 'link expired' page has been displayed. I'll keep an eye on it though.
Different issue. The links are there but the content isn't. I haven't looked at that page in years. I guess it needs updating.
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john thomas Deactivated User
1168 Posts 6/06
Posted - Oct 19 2006 : 9:34PM
I just got a 'link expired' message when I checked the link I had made in my last post in the Best Porn DVD Covers of 2006 thread. I'd only just made the post so I guess it was an example of this:I'm only mentioning it so you can check if it recorded in the log file.
At a quick glance it looks like the expired link errors are happening in small batches around the same times that certain database maintenance jobs are running. (Backups and stuff like that.) There have been 42 instances of the expired link page since 11:41 pm last night and roughly 26,000 clicks in that same period. 0.16% of ourbound clicks hit an error page.
I have been keeping an eye on the log files. I may need to change some of the database maintenance schedules so they only occur at off-peak hours. (Off-peak for us might actually be the time that folks from Australia are visiting the site though.)
We send out an average of 500 - 600 clicks every 15 minutes which shouldn't be a problem for the database server. It's just that when some of the reindexing functions and backups are running the database isn't available for writing for a minute or two. If a link gets generated in one of these no-writes time periods it will cause the error.
I noticed people were seeing the expired link page more often based on entries in the error log file. So I made the Expired Link error page a little more descriptive and useful.
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Posted - Oct 16 2006 : 9:41PM