First View (Error: Timed Out)

Support
1

(thread migrated from sourceforge forum - originally posted 2/11/2009)

What an excellent testing app.! Thanks for all the effort to maintain it. Pagetest has really helped me speedup and improve my web site and blog.

I have a question about a recent result for a blog I am developing. Pagetest has helped me clear up many problems, but now I do not understand a result I have been getting.

I have added a 'share and bookmark" button from http://www.addthis.com/. Now tests on my main page and individual posts return this error: “First View (Error: Timed Out).”

I can not find any information in the online documentation as to why this type of error occurs, and the waterfall report shows nothing I can read as an issue, and the pages ‘seem’ to load really fast and complete in browsers.

Here are the two blog addresses I have been using to test:

  1. [url=http://www.porkopolis.org/pigcity/]http://www.porkopolis.org/pigcity/[/url]
    the main page, tested today, 2/11/09:
    [url=http://www.webpagetest.org/result/090211_11G2/]http://www.webpagetest.org/result/090211_11G2/[/url]

  2. [url=http://www.porkopolis.org/pigcity/clare-leighton/]http://www.porkopolis.org/pigcity/clare-leighton/[/url]
    an individual post, tested today, 2/11/09:
    [url=http://www.webpagetest.org/result/090211_11G3/]http://www.webpagetest.org/result/090211_11G3/[/url]

Any help would be appreciated. Thank you!

2

We’ve seen problems with that same button before on our properties as well. I’ll see if I can do some digging to see what the browser is actually waiting for but if you look at the bottom of the screen shot in both cases you’ll see that IE is still waiting for “something” but it’s not clear what it is. I can’t reproduce it on my desktop but the speeds are very different so there may be a timing problem with something the bookmark button is doing.

The “timed out” error happens when we wait 2 minutes and the test hasn’t completed yet. For us to consider a test completed we need to get the “Document Complete” event from the browser (onLoad) but that won’t happen if it thinks it still needs to download something. We also wait for 2 seconds of no requests but that can be overridden by checking the “Stop measurement at Document Complete” checkbox in the advanced settings (and isn’t the problem in this case - in this case IE never fires the onLoad/Doc Complete event because it gets stuck trying to download something).

3

Thanks for the reply, Patrick,

I looked back through the Test History and found a test I did on 2/07/09 before installing Add This. Really sweet results and I was happy:

  1. for the blog:
    [url=http://www.webpagetest.org/result/10SS/]http://www.webpagetest.org/result/10SS/[/url]

  2. for the web site:
    [url=http://www.webpagetest.org/result/10BX/]http://www.webpagetest.org/result/10BX/[/url]

I’m just a rookie at reading your results pages. I (sort of) see what you are describing in your reply, but I’m at a loss as to where to proceed or what to test…

I like Add This and already put some time in on getting it right, so I’ll be keeping it for now. I would like to know what is going on though…

Other information:

  • the blog software is Wordpress (using latest version, v2.71) and both site and blog are hosted at bluehost.com
  • I adapted the default Wordpress theme 'Kubrick" to visually match the rest of my site
  • the Add This code is in a php file as part of the right sidebar and it called after all other sections of the blog page except the footer.

Thank you again for a fine testing app!! Any other thoughts or testing suggestions would be appreciated.

DAN