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Bug 737967 - Informative 500 Error Page
Informative 500 Error Page
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Product: website
Classification: Infrastructure
Component: www.gnome.org
current
Other Linux
: Normal normal
: ---
Assigned To: GNOME Web maintainers
GNOME Web maintainers
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2014-10-06 02:52 UTC by Magdalen Berns (irc magpie)
Modified: 2017-10-29 13:48 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---


Attachments
GNOME "Grass" Themed static 500 error page (15.85 KB, patch)
2014-10-06 02:53 UTC, Magdalen Berns (irc magpie)
committed Details | Review
screenshot of top look (124.47 KB, image/png)
2014-10-06 02:57 UTC, Magdalen Berns (irc magpie)
  Details
screenshot of bottom look (126.68 KB, image/png)
2014-10-06 02:58 UTC, Magdalen Berns (irc magpie)
  Details
GNOME Foot fix (816 bytes, patch)
2014-10-06 17:35 UTC, Magdalen Berns (irc magpie)
committed Details | Review
Scrollable footer (87.18 KB, image/png)
2014-10-06 18:18 UTC, Andrea Veri
  Details
Remove horizontal scroll (750 bytes, patch)
2014-10-07 06:07 UTC, Magdalen Berns (irc magpie)
committed Details | Review
Tidy up html and add some aria roles (11.85 KB, patch)
2014-10-07 07:04 UTC, Magdalen Berns (irc magpie)
none Details | Review
Tidy up html and add some aria roles (11.72 KB, patch)
2014-10-07 07:44 UTC, Magdalen Berns (irc magpie)
none Details | Review
Tidy up html and add some aria roles (12.14 KB, patch)
2014-10-07 13:33 UTC, Magdalen Berns (irc magpie)
committed Details | Review
Footer not properly expanding (50.80 KB, image/png)
2014-10-07 13:43 UTC, Andrea Veri
  Details
Expand Footer Outwards (675 bytes, patch)
2014-10-07 13:55 UTC, Magdalen Berns (irc magpie)
committed Details | Review
Fix typo in URL with wwww instead of www (960 bytes, patch)
2014-10-07 14:43 UTC, Magdalen Berns (irc magpie)
committed Details | Review
Fix badly behaved footer (854 bytes, patch)
2014-10-07 15:07 UTC, Magdalen Berns (irc magpie)
committed Details | Review
set-min-and-max-footer-widths (661 bytes, patch)
2014-10-08 08:14 UTC, Magdalen Berns (irc magpie)
committed Details | Review
format footer within <page> tag (9.82 KB, patch)
2014-10-08 08:41 UTC, Magdalen Berns (irc magpie)
committed Details | Review
Patch with some requested style improvements (6.79 KB, patch)
2015-06-28 15:48 UTC, Magdalen Berns (irc magpie)
none Details | Review

Description Magdalen Berns (irc magpie) 2014-10-06 02:52:22 UTC
It might be handy to add a 500 page which has a reference to status.gnome.orgthat can be used across websites (rather than as part of the wordpress theme?) in case lots of people end up emailing the gnome-systemadmins when things go wrong (as this is currently published on the default 500 page).

I made a static html example of the sort of thing I mean and put this in a folder outside the theme. I think that way, the server can be set up to point to this page instead of the current default 500 page but it may need to be moved to /home/username in order to work properly, (i.e. out of this repository entirely) in order to do it's thing properly - I'm not sure. Perhaps this sort of thing is better implemented in php rather than as a static html page but please let me know what you think of the idea in itself and I'll see what I can do. :-)
Comment 1 Magdalen Berns (irc magpie) 2014-10-06 02:53:10 UTC
Created attachment 287791 [details] [review]
GNOME "Grass" Themed static 500 error page
Comment 2 Magdalen Berns (irc magpie) 2014-10-06 02:57:28 UTC
Created attachment 287792 [details]
screenshot of top look
Comment 3 Magdalen Berns (irc magpie) 2014-10-06 02:58:21 UTC
Created attachment 287793 [details]
screenshot of bottom look
Comment 4 Andrea Veri 2014-10-06 10:33:09 UTC
Magdalen, it simply rocks! I did push it already [1], whenever you have a free minute would you mind checking why the footer is scrollable and why the upper-right GNOME foot does not display properly?

Thanks a *lot*! I'm going to deploy this on the various machines!

[1] https://git.gnome.org/browse/static-web/commit/?id=370b0d6ebf9e35159c96a8442bd1dc320d8f2e45
Comment 5 Magdalen Berns (irc magpie) 2014-10-06 17:11:59 UTC
(In reply to comment #4)
> Magdalen, it simply rocks! I did push it already [1]

Thanks for the review and for pushing my commit!

> whenever you have a free minute would you mind checking why the footer is
scrollable

I'm not seeing that on my browser but I think I know what might be causing things to scroll for you, if I am right in my assumption I should be able to fix that at my next opportunity, if in the meantime you could provide a screenshot that might help confirm I have understood the problem you're seeing rightly though.

> why the upper-right GNOME foot does not display properly?

Ah ok. Sorry, I had not noticed that! I'll take a look.

> Thanks a *lot*! I'm going to deploy this on the various machines!

No problem! Thanks for the feedback.

Note: I might not get a chance to take a look tonight as I have a drama to take care of this evening and have to rush off out just now but I should get a chance to tweak everything tomorrow, right enough. :-)
Comment 6 Magdalen Berns (irc magpie) 2014-10-06 17:14:37 UTC
Review of attachment 287791 [details] [review]:

marking as committed since Andrea pushed to master with https://git.gnome.org/browse/static-web/commit/?id=370b0d6ebf9e35159c96a8442bd1dc320d8f2e45
Comment 7 Magdalen Berns (irc magpie) 2014-10-06 17:35:56 UTC
Created attachment 287871 [details] [review]
GNOME Foot fix

I went ahead and fixed the foot since I couldn't resist.

I really have to go off now though please let me know if the foot is still a problem for your browser.

Note: I think I am now seeing this same problem on http://www.gnome.org/ with firefox but not with chrome so I can fix it on the theme if you see the same problem there too.
Comment 8 Andrea Veri 2014-10-06 18:18:42 UTC
Created attachment 287875 [details]
Scrollable footer
Comment 9 Andrea Veri 2014-10-06 18:19:31 UTC
Previous patch has been applied and definitely fixed the issue, attached the scrollable footer screenshot.

Have an awesome day!
Comment 10 Magdalen Berns (irc magpie) 2014-10-07 06:07:59 UTC
Created attachment 287916 [details] [review]
Remove horizontal scroll

This removes horizontal scroll seen in screenshot attached to comment #9 for me.
Comment 11 Magdalen Berns (irc magpie) 2014-10-07 06:25:42 UTC
Review of attachment 287871 [details] [review]:

Marking as committed since Andrea pushed to master with https://git.gnome.org/browse/static-web/commit/?id=1f611d555626679ad67d3ca6e3a49900b149aff9
Comment 12 Magdalen Berns (irc magpie) 2014-10-07 07:04:45 UTC
Created attachment 287921 [details] [review]
Tidy up html and add some aria roles

I just thought I'd get rid of some irrelevant html code and add some aria roles to smarten things up with, make the lot more readable and hopefully more accessible too.

I have not checked the accessibility of this page properly (or at all yet, tbh) but I can do this later and make a fresh specific bug for that (if need be -probably, I imagine considering the use of the <iframe> tag going on in this page) since I have a feeling that might be a bit fiddley to sort out - maybe not.
Comment 13 Magdalen Berns (irc magpie) 2014-10-07 07:44:41 UTC
Created attachment 287923 [details] [review]
Tidy up html and add some aria roles

Sorry, spotted that I had missed one link list item.
Comment 14 Andrea Veri 2014-10-07 07:59:57 UTC
Applied https://bugzilla.gnome.org/attachment.cgi?id=287916 and that fixed the issue it seems, the latest patch you submitted does not apply correctly. Once you have a final copy of it would you mind rebasing it against HEAD?

Thanks for the awesome work!!
Comment 15 Magdalen Berns (irc magpie) 2014-10-07 08:34:02 UTC
(In reply to comment #14)
> Applied https://bugzilla.gnome.org/attachment.cgi?id=287916 and that fixed the
> issue it seems, the latest patch you submitted does not apply correctly. Once
> you have a final copy of it would you mind rebasing it against HEAD?

I'm not sure why that is but I think the folder name has changed? The server seems to have gone down so it's hard to check but I will have a look later and see what can be done then. :-)

> Thanks for the awesome work!!

Thanks for the reviews and pushes!
Comment 16 Magdalen Berns (irc magpie) 2014-10-07 13:33:26 UTC
Created attachment 287961 [details] [review]
Tidy up html and add some aria roles

Ok try this one: I think it should apply ok.
Comment 17 Andrea Veri 2014-10-07 13:43:16 UTC
Created attachment 287962 [details]
Footer not properly expanding

Applied, I see the footer is correctly not scrollable anymore but it doesn't fill the whole footer itself as you can see from the screenshot I made, after that is fixed we should be ready to go :-)
Comment 18 Magdalen Berns (irc magpie) 2014-10-07 13:55:12 UTC
Created attachment 287963 [details] [review]
Expand Footer Outwards

(In reply to comment #17)
> Created an attachment (id=287962) [details]
> Footer not properly expanding
> 
> Applied, I see the footer is correctly not scrollable anymore but it doesn't
> fill the whole footer itself as you can see from the screenshot I made, after
> that is fixed we should be ready to go :-)

Hmm. I am not actually sure how to recreate this one! It looks fine for me. How big exactly is your screen? ;-)

Anyway, for now here's my best guess at fixing it. Let me know if this works for you or not, please. Thanks
Comment 19 Andrea Veri 2014-10-07 14:18:46 UTC
My screen is a 14'' :) seems the scrollable footer is back too! by the way you can apply the changes directly yourself on the static-web repository [1] so we can speed things up a bit :)

[1] https://git.gnome.org/browse/static-web
Comment 20 Magdalen Berns (irc magpie) 2014-10-07 14:31:50 UTC
(In reply to comment #19)
> My screen is a 14'' :) seems the scrollable footer is back too!

Weird. I think I will do a browsershots run in that case. Bare with me...

> by the way you can apply the changes directly yourself on the static-web 
> repository [1] so we can speed things up a bit :)

I just noticed a typo in the recent 500 page commit where "Go to home page" has one too many "w"'s I will push the fix to that as long as you're sure?
Comment 21 Magdalen Berns (irc magpie) 2014-10-07 14:33:14 UTC
Also do you think I should link to http://static.gnome.org instead of https so the page shows up even if the certificate is not recognised or is there some compelling reason to use ssl here that I am overlooking?
Comment 22 Magdalen Berns (irc magpie) 2014-10-07 14:43:41 UTC
Created attachment 287966 [details] [review]
Fix typo in URL with wwww instead of www

My git privileges don't seem to extend to web stuff so I couldn't push this directly. Here it is anyway, just a minor fix to the URL typo!
Comment 23 Magdalen Berns (irc magpie) 2014-10-07 14:46:00 UTC
Review of attachment 287916 [details] [review]:

Marking as committed since Andrea pushed with https://git.gnome.org/browse/static-web/commit/?id=33ec8be0426b12c402ed8fd43dcc0638429f7683
Comment 24 Magdalen Berns (irc magpie) 2014-10-07 14:47:31 UTC
Review of attachment 287961 [details] [review]:

Marking as committed since Andrea pushed with https://git.gnome.org/browse/static-web/commit/?id=69ce7d51667595d330a4106bf8b625defacbafe5
Comment 25 Magdalen Berns (irc magpie) 2014-10-07 14:48:25 UTC
Review of attachment 287963 [details] [review]:

Marking as committed since Andrea pushed with https://git.gnome.org/browse/static-web/commit/?id=2e4d73fc5dd7acfdd58ccde1d8dd5f92459fe7a8
Comment 26 Magdalen Berns (irc magpie) 2014-10-07 15:07:16 UTC
Created attachment 287970 [details] [review]
Fix badly behaved footer

I think this might fix the footer but it's hard to tell because I'm not able to recreate the failure to expand, just the scroll. In any case, it seems to deal with the scrolling and hopefully the rest too.
Comment 27 Andrea Veri 2014-10-07 15:20:26 UTC
No luck seems that removed the scroll but didn't expand the footer! don't worry about that!
Comment 28 Andrea Veri 2014-10-07 15:24:23 UTC
Right now status.gnome.org is hosted at OpenShift and that means we are using the wilcard *.rhcloud.com SSL certificate they provide.

If we manage to install our own certificate I'll make the needed update :-)
Comment 31 Magdalen Berns (irc magpie) 2014-10-08 08:14:36 UTC
Created attachment 288031 [details] [review]
set-min-and-max-footer-widths

(In reply to comment #27)
> No luck seems that removed the scroll but didn't expand the footer! don't worry
> about that!

Ok this is probably going to bother me so please try this and see if it fixes the problem.... Besides the formatting needed fixing anyway ;-)
Comment 32 Magdalen Berns (irc magpie) 2014-10-08 08:41:50 UTC
Created attachment 288034 [details] [review]
format footer within <page> tag

I think the weirdness seen with the footer might have been because of a stray div so I tidied up the html and added some css which should hopefully contain the unruly footer better and make the code more readable.

There seems to be a slight bit of margin/padding on the right hand side of the footer so I am not 100% confident I've figured it out yet but theoretically this should be an improvement, let me know if it's not!

Note that 288031: set-min-and-max-footer-widths should be applied before this one.
Comment 33 Andrea Veri 2014-10-08 13:26:11 UTC
Applied both and seems to work great here! Thank you! I did also blog about the brand new 500 page at https://www.dragonsreach.it/2014/10/07/the-gnome-infrastructure-is-now-powered-by-freeipa!

Feel free to mark this bug as resolved!
Comment 36 Magdalen Berns (irc magpie) 2014-10-08 16:03:40 UTC
(In reply to comment #33)
> Applied both and seems to work great here! Thank you! I did also blog about the
> brand new 500 page at
> https://www.dragonsreach.it/2014/10/07/the-gnome-infrastructure-is-now-powered-by-freeipa!
> 
> Feel free to mark this bug as resolved!

Done! Thanks again.
Comment 37 Andrea Veri 2015-01-17 18:53:14 UTC
Hey Mag!

so I got a few comments on our 500 page I'd like to address:

1. the 500 page lists the current services status page but it doesn't say why the user was actually redirected there

2. I was thinking about removing the status page all together from the 500 page and linking to it from within the 500 page

3. I was also thinking about including some text that explains there was a problem and what the ways to contact us are. Something like: "Ooops...something went wrong and you triggered a 500 error", the ways to contact the GNOME Sysadmin Team are available at https://wiki.gnome.org/Sysadmin/Contact. Before contacting the team please make sure no planned downtimes or maintenances are in progress by looking at the Status page. (link to https://status.gnome.org/static/index.html)

4. Together with the text do you think we should include an image on top of the text which really gives the idea something went terribly wrong?

Thanks in advance!
Comment 38 Magdalen Berns (irc magpie) 2015-06-04 20:37:06 UTC
(In reply to Andrea Veri from comment #37)
> Hey Mag!

Hey,

Apologies for the delay, I only noticed this comment had been made for some reason!

> so I got a few comments on our 500 page I'd like to address:
> 
> 1. the 500 page lists the current services status page but it doesn't say
> why the user was actually redirected there

OK
>
> 2. I was thinking about removing the status page all together from the 500
> page and linking to it from within the 500 page

I am not sure what you mean. Can you clarify a bit better?
> 
> 3. I was also thinking about including some text that explains there was a
> problem and what the ways to contact us are. Something like:
> "Ooops...something went wrong and you triggered a 500 error", the ways to
> contact the GNOME Sysadmin Team are available at
> https://wiki.gnome.org/Sysadmin/Contact. Before contacting the team please
> make sure no planned downtimes or maintenances are in progress by looking at
> the Status page. (link to https://status.gnome.org/static/index.html)

The original idea of adding the status as an iframe to reduce the amount of emails you might get when the server is down somewhere or another. This is similar to how the error page was before before but with the status link. I guess you'll know whether people are clicking on the status link or not by the number of emails you get.
> 
> 4. Together with the text do you think we should include an image on top of
> the text which really gives the idea something went terribly wrong?

OK, So let me check I have understood:

Essentially, you no longer want the status as an iframe but as a link from a 500 page which has really visual explanation of the 500 error along with contact details (and aforementioned status link)?

Would you want it to work for other types of page errors or just 500s?
Comment 39 Andrea Veri 2015-06-08 18:36:34 UTC
Hey Magdalen!

I went ahead and fixed the page myself a while back [1], what we might want to tweak is how it displays on mobiles as it currently has a fixed width which doesn't play that well when the screen is smaller than the specified size. Do you think we can do something on that side? especially in regard of the sticky footer which still seems to be a problem both on the 500 page and on the other main GNOME websites.

Thanks!

[1] https://static.gnome.org/error-500/500.html
Comment 40 Magdalen Berns (irc magpie) 2015-06-15 21:31:55 UTC
(In reply to Andrea Veri from comment #39)
> Hey Magdalen!
> 
> I went ahead and fixed the page myself a while back [1], 

I see...

> what we might want
> to tweak is how it displays on mobiles as it currently has a fixed width
> which doesn't play that well when the screen is smaller than the specified
> size. Do you think we can do something on that side? especially in regard of
> the sticky footer which still seems to be a problem both on the 500 page and
> on the other main GNOME websites.

OK give me specifics and I'll make it happen. So far, I only understand the following:

1, You want the footer to behave itself
2. you want the page to be scalable
3. You want an accompanying image to visualise there is a problem

Is there anything else?
> 
> Thanks!

No problem ;-)

> 
> [1] https://static.gnome.org/error-500/500.html
Comment 41 Andrea Veri 2015-06-15 23:18:30 UTC
The three points you've mentioned should be it I'd say :-)

 1. the footer should go all its way down to the page (aka sticky footer)
 2. the page should scale well on mobiles (but generally smaller screens) as well (if possible and won't require too many efforts, I know the process would happen smoothly with a framework such as Bootstrap, I'm not sure it will be the same writing our own CSS rules)
 3. an image should ideally live on top of the text, this is totally optional as I have no idea what image we might want to place there :-)

Thanks a lot for all your help on this!
Comment 42 Magdalen Berns (irc magpie) 2015-06-28 15:48:04 UTC
Created attachment 306242 [details] [review]
Patch with some requested style improvements

Hi Andrea,

Sorry for the delay

(In reply to Andrea Veri from comment #41)
> The three points you've mentioned should be it I'd say :-)
> 
>  1. the footer should go all its way down to the page (aka sticky footer)

The patch does this for when the scaling is at unity (not tested on mobile though) but yet not sticking right to the bottom for zoomed in sizes. Although I had managed to get the zoomed in footer to scale but the issue is getting  the grass and community images to scale with it was fiddly. essentially so I'll have to figure that out to get the complete zoom experience and can provide a patch for that later (when I have a little more time) if ok?

>  2. the page should scale well on mobiles (but generally smaller screens) as
> well (if possible and won't require too many efforts, I know the process
> would happen smoothly with a framework such as Bootstrap, I'm not sure it
> will be the same writing our own CSS rules)

Zooming up and down seems to be improved. It could be better though it'd be good to see what you think before tweaking that since I have changed the design a little and I am not sure whether you'll think this is a better direction or not.

>  3. an image should ideally live on top of the text, this is totally
> optional as I have no idea what image we might want to place there :-)

I couldn't find a decent royalty free image for this so for now we don't have one. Perhaps it's worth us filing a bug and seeing if the design team would mind helping out?

> Thanks a lot for all your help on this!

No problem, sorry it's not completely right yet, but I hope you find this an improvement anyway!

Note that I have changed the text contents but this was really just to match the new  formatting approach for the page so I'm happy to make it sound friendlier/less formal language if you have a revised suggestion on that.

Let me know what you think!
Comment 43 Tom Tryfonidis 2017-10-29 13:48:29 UTC
Hey, i updated the error 500 page to use "Deneb theme". All minor issues that Andrea mention should be fixed now (sticky footer and scaling on smaller devices).

Magdalen, thank you also for your contribution as I updated the status page wording with the text you provided on the patch.