What might make a site glitchy?

Site URL: https://www.birminghamearlyyearsnetworks.org/

Hey all,

I just started a temporary retainer for a public organisation with a site built in 7.1.

I've not done a huge amount of work on it yet because each time I try, the site crashes! Squarespace doesn't seem to have any problems today, so I'm wondering what, if anything, can make a site particularly glitchy? And if there's anything I can do to help it.

Thank you! 

On 10/9/2021 at 4:44 PM, LouiseDrever said:

I've not done a huge amount of work on it yet because each time I try, the site crashes! Squarespace doesn't seem to have any problems today, so I'm wondering what, if anything, can make a site particularly glitchy?

All Squarespace sites are served from the same infrastructure, so if Squarespace was glitchy, we'd all be feeling it.

Squarespace are also really good at posted a message on their status page within half-an-hour when anything serious is wrong. If nothing has been posted and you are experiencing performance issues or 'crashing' on a particular site, then it's often an issue with custom code (if you've added any to the site) or with your device and/or connection. That being said, there are always a number of lower priority bugs that Squarespace don't publish. I created an unreported bugs and changes thread where Circle members can share these.

Can you describe the issues you are currently experiencing?

@paul2009 Thanks, yes I'd checked the status page and had seen there was no issue.

The issues are that pages suddenly become unresponsive half way through editing (in particular, when adding a link to text in a markdown block. The little 'link' button just doesn't do anything.)

I didn't build the site, I'm taking over a retainer from the person who did. There is a bit of custom code so I might try and tidy that up and see if it makes any difference.

There are also a lot of duplicate pages which have been kept as a "back up". I've never heard to anyone doing this before and wondering if that is slowing down the site, at least?

1 hour ago, LouiseDrever said:

Pages suddenly become unresponsive half way through editing in particular, when adding a link to text in a markdown block.

Thanks for sharing your experience. This particular error has occured before, and I have just been able to reproduce it myself - adding a link to a Markdown Block.

I recommend you report this to Squarespace Customer Care. I'll also add this to my bugs thread too.

1 hour ago, LouiseDrever said:

There is a bit of custom code so I might try and tidy that up

Regarding the custom code, definitely address that too. It's not the cause of this error, but the code isn't very good and uses a library with known security vulnerabilities. 

On 10/10/2021 at 1:31 PM, paul2009 said:

Regarding the custom code, definitely address that too. It's not the cause of this error, but the code isn't very good and uses a library with known security vulnerabilities. 

Thanks so much for looking, and sorry for the mega late reply!

Re. the glitches, I actually realised that when I moved the Markdown Block, the link menu was hiding underneath. But the page has still been crashing and again, so glad it's been reported.

Re. the code, can you expand on what you mean by the library with security vulnerabilities? Is that in relation to the JS? 

Tidying up the CSS is next on my list... 😅

25 minutes ago, LouiseDrever said:

can you expand on what you mean by the library with security vulnerabilities? Is that in relation to the JS? 

Yes. To summarise, a vulnerability is a weakness in software that can be exploited to attack a website. Squarespace takes care of everything on their platform for you, but if you add third party software like JavaScript or jQuery, they don't keep this up to date for you.

Your site currently loads an old version of jQuery using this line:

<script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1/jquery.min.js"></script>

The latest version is 3.6.0 and can be loaded with this line, although you will need to test that your custom code still works correctly:

<script src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.6.0.min.js" integrity="sha384-vtXRMe3mGCbOeY7l30aIg8H9p3GdeSe4IFlP6G8JMa7o7lXvnz3GFKzPxzJdPfGK" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>