My popular photos change when logged in...?

[Eriktank]

Why do my "popular photos" displayed look different when I log in or log out? Shouldn't they stay the same so I know what other users are seeing too??

[Andy]

Why do my "popular photos" displayed look different when I log in or log out? Shouldn't they stay the same so I know what other users are seeing too??
I see the very same display logged in, or logged out, as far as your popular photos. What do you mean by "look different" please?

[Eriktank]

:wink Sorry - I was pretty vague huh?

The actual pictures that show up in my popular gallery (on the homepage - not actually IN the popular gallary, but the ones that show up in the popular gallery window on the homepage) are a different set of pictures... for example - I have five pictures in my "Arielle" set that show up right now if I'm logged out... but if I'm logged in, they don't show up... instead, if I'm logged in, I get a lot more from my "Michelle" group...

Any reason these are different? I'd like the most popular to show up at the top of the popular gallary and those display on the homepage for both me and my users (logged in or logged out).

Your thoughts?

[BeachBill]

The actual pictures that show up in my popular gallery (on the homepage - not actually IN the popular gallary, but the ones that show up in the popular gallery window on the homepage) are a different set of pictures... for example - I have five pictures in my "Arielle" set that show up right now if I'm logged out... but if I'm logged in, they don't show up... instead, if I'm logged in, I get a lot more from my "Michelle" group...

I see something similar from time to time and I've attributed it to the caching of pages that the smugmug servers do. A cache tries to cut down on network traffic and speed up display of pages. If the caching mechanism thinks a page has not bee updated since your last visit it will display the copy it has saved in it's cache. Sometimes, and especially if the site you are connecting to has several front end machines with caches, you will see a recent cached page instead of a page with the most current information (a live page). Sometimes if you hit reload/refresh in your web browser you might be able to trigger the server-side cache to return a live version of your page that may be slightly different than the cached page.

[Eriktank]

Hi BeachBill - I've done CTRL+F5 to force a full refresh in IE7 and both ways (logged in and out) it looks the same... also loading it in FF does the same exact thing. I've kept my eye on this for quite a while (about a month or so), wondering if it was something I was doing, trying to figure it out, etc...

I'm convinced it is ranking the photos differently when I am logged in or out - but wanted clarrification that it was supposed to be doing that. Perhaps the ones I've given a thumbs up too only show up when I'm logged in?

Just trying to make sense of it all... :)

[Eriktank]

bump!

[BeachBill]

Why do my "popular photos" displayed look different when I log in or log out? Shouldn't they stay the same so I know what other users are seeing too??

Hey Erik,

I did some testing this morning and am seeing exactly the same thing as you. I started up my browser and typed in my smugmug URL. The homepage displayed in "logged out" style showing the top 12 most popular photos that I've been seeing for months.

Next I simply refreshed the page by hitting the reload/refresh button. Now it shows me as logged in (I was previously logged in when I closed the browser yesterday) and the top 12 popular photos are now a different set.

I scrolled to the bottom of the page and selected "logout". The next display of my homepage showed the set of top 12 photos I had previously seen when first starting the browser today.

I did a shift-refresh of the page just to see what that would do and I still got the same logged-out page with the same set of popular photos.

I saved screen shots from each of these steps and can provide them if Smugmug wants to see them.

What is really interesting is the logged-in version is constantly changing, and I'm not ranking any of my own photos. But I know others are and I know some of the photos they are viewing. The logged-in version is consistent with their behavoir. The logged-out version on the other hand is static. It's a snapshot of my popular photos from 2 or 3 months back. It appears as if Smugmug is just giving my a cached version of the page...

Aha it is giving me a cached version of the page. I scrolled down to my catagory listing. The logged-out version says I have 595 photos in my cars category whereas the logged-in version says I have 610. The logged-in version is correct.

I did some further testing to see if the problem is the browser cache or the server cache. I loaded my page in Safari (just installed two days ago) and the logged-out version of the homepage is a static page from *before* I installed Safari, so the problem is server-side. For some reason Smugmug is returning an old cached page when I'm logged out.

And to double check, I also cleared the cache in IE and Safari, shut them both down, restarted and view the logged-out homepage. Both are still the old cached version.

I'm seeing this issue in all three browsers (IE, Firefox and Safari) on Windows XP.

[Andy]

Hey Erik,

I did some testing this morning

Hi Bill, I've alerted our engineers on this. Thanks for taking the time to test, validate!

[Eriktank]

Bill and Andy - thanks and yes I've confirmed the same way more or less... I used a freshly installed windows XP machine to do the testing so it was an internet virgin :)

[onethumb]

Hey Erik,

I did some testing this morning and am seeing exactly the same thing as you. I started up my browser and typed in my smugmug URL. The homepage displayed in "logged out" style showing the top 12 most popular photos that I've been seeing for months.

Next I simply refreshed the page by hitting the reload/refresh button. Now it shows me as logged in (I was previously logged in when I closed the browser yesterday) and the top 12 popular photos are now a different set.

I scrolled to the bottom of the page and selected "logout". The next display of my homepage showed the set of top 12 photos I had previously seen when first starting the browser today.

I did a shift-refresh of the page just to see what that would do and I still got the same logged-out page with the same set of popular photos.

I saved screen shots from each of these steps and can provide them if Smugmug wants to see them.

What is really interesting is the logged-in version is constantly changing, and I'm not ranking any of my own photos. But I know others are and I know some of the photos they are viewing. The logged-in version is consistent with their behavoir. The logged-out version on the other hand is static. It's a snapshot of my popular photos from 2 or 3 months back. It appears as if Smugmug is just giving my a cached version of the page...

Aha it is giving me a cached version of the page. I scrolled down to my catagory listing. The logged-out version says I have 595 photos in my cars category whereas the logged-in version says I have 610. The logged-in version is correct.

I did some further testing to see if the problem is the browser cache or the server cache. I loaded my page in Safari (just installed two days ago) and the logged-out version of the homepage is a static page from *before* I installed Safari, so the problem is server-side. For some reason Smugmug is returning an old cached page when I'm logged out.

And to double check, I also cleared the cache in IE and Safari, shut them both down, restarted and view the logged-out homepage. Both are still the old cached version.

I'm seeing this issue in all three browsers (IE, Firefox and Safari) on Windows XP.

Hi Bill,

The "Popular" block issue is a bug, and I think we'll have a fix tonight.

The categories, though, doesn't look like a bug to me. You have two private galleries with 15 photos - so those shouldn't show up in the "logged out" view, meaning your categories look correct to me.

But I'm dumb often enough that I might be overlooking something. Can you tell me how I'm being dumb, if so?

Thanks!

Don

[BeachBill]

The categories, though, doesn't look like a bug to me. You have two private galleries with 15 photos - so those shouldn't show up in the "logged out" view, meaning your categories look correct to me.

Thanks Don. You are probably right. I just noticed that difference while testing the popular thing, and since I had just added about 15 photos a few nights earlier to that category (in a public gallery) it just seemed logical to me that the entire homepage was involved. :rolleyes

[Andy]

Onethumb fixed this, should be all set. Thanks for your patience, folks!

[BeachBill]

Onethumb fixed this, should be all set. Thanks for your patience, folks!

Hmm, I'm still seeing different images (just looking at the top 12 photos) in the popular section on the homepage as well as at /popular/ while logged in versus logged out.

Can you check my site Andy and see if you see the same?

[Andy]

Hmm, I'm still seeing different images (just looking at the top 12 photos) in the popular section on the homepage as well as at /popular/ while logged in versus logged out.

Clear all your temp files, c lose, reopen your browsers. Check again and let us know, thanks.

[BeachBill]

Clear all your temp files, c lose, reopen your browsers. Check again and let us know, thanks.

I had done that before replying, but I also just did it again, and tested on a computer that has never accessed my site.

Now I don't know which version of the popular photos is current on my site. Is it the version that I see when logged out or is it the version I see when logged in?

I can post screenshots if that will help.

[jfriend]

Clear all your temp files, c lose, reopen your browsers. Check again and let us know, thanks.

I see the same problem here.

I see different results for my popular photos too. I'm comparing Firefox (logged in) and IE (not logged in to this account). The first 11 are the same, but the next 7 are different. When I then log out in Firefox, I see the same popular photos as IE. When I log back in with Firefox, the popular photos change again to be different than the logged out IE and the logged out Firefox. Definitely something still wrong here.

[BeachBill]

Any update on this issue?

[BeachBill]

<bump>

Still seeing a different set of "popular" photos when logged in vs. logged out.

[ivar]

<bump>

Still seeing a different set of "popular" photos when logged in vs. logged out.Validated... Sorry for the hassle.

I'll go see if I can find someone to fix this once and for all.

[Andy]

This was to have been fixed by onethumb a week or so ago - but it seems not. We will bug him again about it, sorry for the minor hassle guys.

[BeachBill]

This was to have been fixed by onethumb a week or so ago - but it seems not. We will bug him again about it, sorry for the minor hassle guys.

Bump... just tested this again today. At the very least, can you tell us which set (logged in or logged out) is the correct order of the 'most popular photos'?

Logged in...
http://primarycolors.smugmug.com/photos/261996039_QdA7w-L.jpg

Logged Out...
http://primarycolors.smugmug.com/photos/261996020_5yrBu-L.jpg

[BeachBill]

Bump... thanks for the new "Visitor View". It makes it really easy to see this is still broken. Any plans to respond to this issue?

[wayne861]

There has been a different view logged in or logged out for as long as I can remember. There are two different views that get rotated, but the most popular photos do not change, even if you rotate them to reset the count.

I agree, the Visitor View is great!

Wayne