Your site’s not really down. If you give it a minute it will load once it times out trying to download the Sezwho CSS file. If you check your browser status bar, it will say something like “connecting to sezwho.com”. This happened before when Sezwho was under a DDOS attack. A quick fix is to temporarily disable the Sezwho plugin. But what about those of us who never want to have to go through this again?
To permanently fix the issue, you have to cache your Sezwho .CSS file locally:
1.edit wp-content/plugins/sezwho/cpratecomments.php
2.Comment out line: echo “<link rel=’stylesheet’ id=’szProfAndEmbedStyleSheet’ href=’$cpserverurl/widgets/profile/css_output/$platform/$theme_name/$version/$jstagname/$site_key/$blog_key.css’ type=’text/css’ media=’screen’ />\n”; (you have to do this in two places with the latest 2.6 version.)
3.Add the following line to your wp header.php file: <link rel=’stylesheet’ id=’szProfAndEmbedStyleSheet’ href=’LOCALFILEPATH’ type=’text/css’ media=’screen’ />
4. Upload a copy of your sezwho CSS file to where you pointed in “Localfilepath”.
Obviously, you need to have a backed up copy of the .CSS file to upload. This procedure will also speed up page loading time even when Sezwho is functioning properly. Note that when Sezwho is down, you can’t actually rate comments. However, you will see your icons and the ratings of the comments without any page slowdown.
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30 users commented in " Sezwho Got Your Site Down? "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a Trackback **********Great advice Turnip. I haven’t thought about doing this before, but it will definitely help speed up SezWho and help with that annoying speed time.
BTW, it should be noted that you can find your SezWho CSS file by right clicking on your blog, then go to ‘view source’ and find the URL that looks something like this: http://sezwho.com/widgets/profile/css_output/wp/blah/2.1/2.1/394afb8939cd21d750c1288e222956d4/487cdc38ac073.css
Then go to there, save the file, then upload as Turnip says.
Thanks so much for this info! I have been working with my blog trying to figure out why it’s slow. I also been trying to get on their site and now know why I can’t!
BTW, a fix to this issue was suggested weeks ago, but they never had time to implement it. They could either store a default css version in the plugin folder that activates if the sezwho website times out, or they could add a checkbox that allows you to store your CSS locally as explained in the above procedure. I would prefer they offer the checkbox option, since each time I upgrade the Sezwho plugin, I have to redo these changes.
My blog is on Blogger - I struggle with quite a lot of things. It probably takes me twice as long as most to complete a post as for some reason Blogger doesn’t put in my paragraphs - I have to go into the html and place breaks and paragraph lines in manually. I can do it from Windows live writer but if I want to add something and I usually do - once it has been published I have to go in through Blogger. If I have to go in again Blogger wipes out all of my gaps and paragraphs and I have to start again.
I put in the SezWho plug-in but, on my blog, everything goes to the end of each post and therefore looks as though the post itself is being rated. Also I have tried going on to other blogs where the plug-in is on their sidebar and as yet I haven’t been able to get any of these to work.
I have read through all of the paperwork and I may well have missed something but I cannot see any benefit to those of us who have free blog sites. It takes a long time to build up readers and visitors to a blog and if blogs are delayed in loading through plug-ins and too much flash it is easy to lose them.
In all truth, I think it is bad manners to judge peoples comments with a star system. People comment for two reasons - some to get a return visit and others because they feel they would like to leave their opinion. I personally don’t mind either - both take a fair bit of effort at least on Blogger with word recognition and so on so I welcome both and don’t really want them to be seen to be judged.
Does this work in Blogger or is there a different filename thingie for that ?
This is useful and would definitely be better if they provided a fix for the issue. Any blog plugin that can slow down your blog loading time will normally get removed if it happens too often… especially if you lose readers over the issue.
For Blogger, I have no idea. I’m only familiar with the wordpress plugin version. I believe the developers said they would be adding a CSS feature soon.
Nice tip to get fast loading time of my blog.I have bookmarked you…
I received this email from Sezwho today explaining the issue:
Hey Turnip,
How are you?
I saw your post about externalizing the css/JS… We are looking at that and will have something for it soon
We had an issue today with the service and it actually was related to EC notifications for comments. We moved some of the process to notify EC to a different machine so this should not happen again.
It turns out we had to send 150K notifications to send to EC and EC could not receive them fast enough. As such we kept launching new processes that caused the problem…In any case, we should have a fix in place in a few more hours
Just wanted to update you and apologize for the issue. I know it was not timing etc. but you know these things are hard to plan sometimes.
thanks, Jitendra
Heya Turnip,
Thanks so much I have been trying to figure out how to do this for the last week.
I have experienced problems before when things are cached offsite so I prefer to get a local copy of anything I can.
You rock.
Stuart
I haven’t noticed any lag times when loading any of my blogs which I just installed SezWho on earlier this week. I will keep this in mind if I every do have any problems.
Turnip, I do not see how all this is so wonderful. Course I can get grumpy when it comes to working on my site because something from someone else does not work. I have sezwho on my site, I see nothing but little people at the end of my posts and I am not messing with anything. If it works fine, if not, bleh
Etta, My code is a way to increase the performance of Sezwho. It won’t make Sezwho any different. For those who don’t like the plugin, it won’t make it any better. For those who do use it, it’s a fix to prevent server errors from taking a website down.
I tried to drop you an E-card to day but it seems to be going up in flames. Jeez Louise. Too much fun.
Beamer
It really really slows down my blog. I gotta get in their and tinker with it some. These look like good steps to help prevent that ikky slowness.
Well, I wish I understood these things better. I have bookmarked this post in case I want to give it a try sometime. Thanks for sharing your knowledge!
And, yes, another blog post pointing out a problem with SezWho.
Think I’ll avoid that little service like the plague…
Thanks for the tip, I didn’t implemented yet on my site, but twittered my friends about that mentioning your post.
Nice tips about this. I’ve encountered this and thought of disabling SezWho temporarily.. you save the day..
Why bother about sezwho? I install it couple days ago for one my blog and only there for less than 5 hours. I think using too many plugins will definetely slowdown your loading time, not to mention the overheated problem if you’re on a shared host.
I also noticed the slightly slower load time on my site after installing the plugin and would use your guide to integrate it to my theme.
I’d also take out the “(who’s this)” crap as I find it very annoying.
Awesome! I’m sure tip will surely help with a few other plug-ins that slow sites down.
I haven’t put this on my site yet, do you know if there are any stats on this yet? Is it helping bounce rates, etc. -
Well, great advice if I decide to put it on there.
I still can’t get SezWho to work with Drupal. It’s rather annoying and absolutely not user friendly (the code that is). I’m still working on it but it looks like I’d have to upgrade my drupal and that doesn’t look easy either…
Mommie
Yeah, I wasn’t home over the weekend, but when I checked my stats this morning, I was wondering what caused a HUGE hiccup in my traffic. Oh well, hopefully it doesn’t happen again!
hi there! saw your site on entrecard.
My blog isn’t slow to load either and I’m using blogger. What I have noticed is that even though I comment the star rating has yet to move on the SezWho Badge. Any suggestions?
other than the flood of comments on my boring entrecard contest article about sezwho, sezwho has yet to do anything for comments for me. It’s like people all flock to the boring articles and skip the real ones.
And an astute commenter there pointed out: Do you really want your entire comment history with every comment you ever made on every blog OUT OF CONTEXT following you to the grave. Does Sezwho give you any control of that?
I’m still reserving judgement on Sezwho. “Your entire comment history” being exposed is a good thing. It’s nice to know when a troll is being a troll.
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