- 01.24.12
- Filed Under: Uncategorized
- 16 Comments
A few readers have expressed frustration this week because Style Me Pretty is failing to load for them.
What we think is happening
For those of you effected by this issue, your computer is trying to “look up” the IP address of our “cache.stylemepretty.com” server only to find that the server is not found. However, your computer can find the correct IP address for “www.stylemepretty.com”. Therefore you end up seeing a very broken page that looks like the following:
A slightly more technical explanation goes like this: When you browse the web, your computer uses a protocol called DNS to ask a DNS server to translate domains like “www.stylemepretty.com” into IP addresses. Then your computer contacts the IP address directly to request a web page, image, etc. The DNS server that your computer is talking to does not know how to map the domain “cache.stylemepretty.com” to an IP address.
What you can to do help
If you are having this issue we’d love to get some info from you. Please help us by answering the following questions:
1. What operating system are you using?
2. What is your public IP address?
To get the answer you may Google “What is my ip address?”.
3. What DNS Server are you using? Can you resolve “cache.stylemepretty.com”?
If you are using a Mac, please copy and past the following command into a terminal window and click “enter”.
/etc/resolv.conf ; nslookup cache.stylemepretty.com ; traceroute cache.stylemepretty.com
To open a terminal, window click on the spotlight magnifying glass in the upper right hand corner of your mac screen. A text box will appear below the magnifying glass. Type “Terminal” and hit return. A black terminal window will popup.
If you are using a PC, please copy and past the following command into a CMD window and click “enter”.
ipconfig /all & nslookup cache.stylemepretty.com & tracert cache.stylemepretty.com
To open a CMD window, open the Start menu. In the search box at bottom enter “cmd” and click “enter”.
Please take screenshots or copy and paste your results into an email. You may want to expand your terminal or CMD window before taking a screenshot.
Email answers to the questions listed above to info {at} stylemepretty.com . We’ll use the answers to help find a solution to this issue. Obviously, we won’t publicly disclose any of the information we receive via email.
A quick fix
If you’d like a workaround for this problem you can edit what is known as your “hosts” file and add the following lines at the bottom.
173.203.60.34 cache.stylemepretty.com
50.16.198.160 isa2.stylemepretty.com
Here are instructions how to edit your hosts file on a Mac and on a PC. It looks scary but it’s pretty easy. Your hosts stores domain and IP address pairs on a single line. By adding the pairs above you allow your computer to skip the DNS lookup and use the information provided in this file. I know this is not an ideal solution but it will solve your problem immediately.
If you are having trouble editing your hosts file or the quick fix above is not working for you please leave a comment below. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this has caused you!
One user had trouble editing their hosts file on windows. If you are following the directions at the link below make sure you are opening “windows explorer” when you change your file options preferences.
http://helpdeskgeek.com/windows-7/windows-7-hosts-file/
You can open windows explorer by clicking “Start” and typing “windows explorer” into the search box.
So far only windows users have encountered this issue. Any mac users having problems?
If you need help editing your hosts file here are some screencasts
* Windows Vista – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-N9cryU_fQ
* Windows 7 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DImy0En1-HI
I initially got the format of the hosts file entries backwards. I will fix this now.
my issue is different, i’m using safari on a mac and when i go to your site i can see that the site loads, but it completely locks up my browser and i cannot do anything else but force quit safari. i haven’t had issues with other sites. just smp.
Hey Melissa, that stinks. How old is your computer? How much memory does it have? Are you running OSX Lion or something older?
I have a mac and haven’t had a problem, but all of a sudden I can’t ‘pin’ from the post page anymore, only from the gallery of images. it takes more time to do it that way, which makes me less likely to pin images (or as many) from SMP. Hope that is helpful!
My Mac is quite new and max amount of memory.
Hey Melissa,
Can you be more specific? 4G of memory? 8G? 2G What version of OSX are you running?
Chandra, can you tell me when that started happening? This week?
Did you used to pin boards or single images on the front page?
i have a screen shot to send you – maybe youcna help fix my issue? please write back to me adn I’ll send it. thanks!
christy
8GB OS X 10.6
That’s a lot of memory. I’m running 10.7. I recently rant 10.5.8 without issue.
We have a slightly outdated jquery library. I’ll push it live on a dev site now. Can you tell me how that site loads for you?
Hey Melissa,
Is this site giving you any trouble?
http://www.stylemepretty.us/
Let me know.
That works!
Hey Melissa,
It might have something to do with an older version of jQuery that we’re using on our site. We’ll upgrade it sometime this week or early next week.
Best,
Tait