Problem with direct URL to meetinghouse map

Our quorums have been taking advantage of the maps.lds.org site to publish a direct URL to our meetinghouse locator map. The URL http://maps.lds.org/?unitld=101826 has been published in newsletters sent to less-active members. I think it is a great idea.

But I have experienced sporadic difficulty reaching that site. Often the site does not navigate to our unit's own map, but just stops at the home page for maps.lds.org. However, sometimes the link above does work. I have not been able to isolate symptoms of this sporadic behavior to discern any differences.

The direct URL syntax is not exactly documented, but intrepid users such as RussellHltn(and, I gather, our own quorum leaders) have discovered it and have been putting it to use. But now we are frustrated.

Does anyone have any clues? Should we not be using such a direct URL?

I tried it just now and what I noticed is a significant delay where it sat at the opening page before it went over to the ward map. I didn't measure it, but it felt like a good 10 seconds. If I didn't watch the bottom status bar that showed things were not complete, I might have assumed that it had failed.

When it does truly fail, can you search for the ward or do you get a message that might indicate that the backend is down?

RussellHltn wrote:I tried it just now and what I noticed is a significant delay where it sat at the opening page before it went over to the ward map. I didn't measure it, but it felt like a good 10 seconds. If I didn't watch the bottom status bar that showed things were not complete, I might have assumed that it had failed.

When it does truly fail, can you search for the ward or do you get a message that might indicate that the backend is down?

When I try that URL now, I wait until the status bar says Done. But I am left sitting on the home page for maps.lds.org. The site does not navigate to my unit's map, as it did when I used the URL several times a couple of hours ago. (I do recall some latency then, as you describe, although not as long as 10 seconds.) When I search for an address from the form, it works normally.

It seems almost as if the host site is tracking my usage and blocking repeated access to that URL from my IP address. Do I understand you to say that clicking on the link in my top post (with my unitID) works for you now? Very strange.

boomerbubba wrote:When I try that URL now, I wait until the status bar says Done. But I am left sitting on the home page for maps.lds.org. The site does not navigate to my unit's map, as it did when I used the URL several times a couple of hours ago. (I do recall some latency then, as you describe, although not as long as 10 seconds.) When I search for an address from the form, it works normally.

It seems almost as if the host site is tracking my usage and blocking repeated access to that URL from my IP address. Do I understand you to say that clicking on the link in my top post (with my unitID) works for you now? Very strange.

I tried a couple of different things and noted that I could get a map location only if I had logged in to LUWS. I clicked through the "map" link and saw my chapel. I then changed the unit number and could see boomerbubba's chapel. This worked for about 10 minutes, when I again had to click through LUWS to allow me to query unit numbers. Before I logged in, I was seeing the same thing that boomerbubba did - just the world map on the main maps.lds.org page.

My guess is that this is a new security enhancement and that your backdoor is gone...

boomerbubba wrote:Do I understand you to say that clicking on the link in my top post (with my unitID) works for you now? Very strange.

No, I used a different link. But your link might work if it work better if "unitId" was spelled correctly. It's "ID", not "LD".

And either way it talks about 7 seconds to resolve to a map.

RussellHltn wrote:\ But your link might work if it work better if "unitId" was spelled correctly. It's "ID", not "LD".

D'oh! It's case sensitive - Capital I, lowercase D. Correct link would be http://maps.lds.org/?unitId=101826

So much for my sleuthing abilities...

RussellHltn wrote:No, I used a different link. But your link might work if it work better if "unitId" was spelled correctly. It's "ID", not "LD".

And either way it talks about 7 seconds to resolve to a map.

That's not a lower-case "L" in my URL, but a cap "I" -- copied from the URL generated by the "Map" link in LUWS.

Right now, even when I am logged in to LUWS and access the link directly, the whole maps site just sits there and hangs without ever loading completely. So I think something on the host end is blocking me. Right now I am leaning toward oregonmatt's theory about aggressive security logic. I'll try later from a different IP address and computer, but this direct URL does not seem like a reliable address to publish.

Meanwhile, I created a simple custom map in my own account on Google My Maps. We may just use that link in the newsletters for a locator map. It would be nice to link to the church site directly, but the links have to work.

You are assuming that your link is a permanent/stable/static link instead of being dynamically generated frequently or periodically.

If you want to use a more permanent link, click the Send icon after navigating to your meeting house, and then copy and paste the link it generates. Unfortunately this link, however stable, is unweldy to type.

boomerbubba wrote:That's not a lower-case "L" in my URL, but a cap "I" -- copied from the URL generated by the "Map" link in LUWS.

Nope. It's a lowercase L. I couldn't see it in the sans-serif font of the forum. I had to copy and paste to Notepad to see it.

I haven't had a problem pulling the maps up since I got it right. Does the URL I posted in post #6 work for you?

oregonmatt wrote:I haven't had a problem pulling the maps up since I got it right. Does the URL I posted in post #6 work for you?

The URL in post #6 works for me.
Thanks,
Dennis

oregonmatt wrote:Nope. It's a lowercase L. I couldn't see it in the sans-serif font of the forum. I had to copy and paste to Notepad to see it.

I haven't had a problem pulling the maps up since I got it right. Does the URL I posted in post #6 work for you?

That link does work for me. But another variable is that I am now using a diffrent computer at a different location.

I see that the original link I pasted into the post above does use a lower-case "L" in lieu of "I," which I must have copy/pasted from the PDF of the newsletter. (Copy/paste operations from PDF are flaky sometimes, and have burned me before with other tranposed characters.) But I thought that earlier today I also tested from embedded links of my own, which I have captured in email messages I sent earlier today. And I was having problems with those, and they definitely worked at first.. Those emails contain an "I" not an "L" in the link.

So I will try again tomorrow. The links that failed for me are captured in the history log of the browser I was using. I may have raised a false alarm,

Meanwhile, this month's newsletter will probably carry the Google link (redirected via TinyURL.com) to be safe.

oregonmatt wrote:So much for my sleuthing abilities...

I have to admit I didn't see it right away. I had a working link and a non-working link and it activated my stubborn streak. Even after I posted the two links side-by-side in a editor it still took a careful letter-by-letter examination to spot it.

After retesting on the original computer I was using yesterday, I am ready to declare a false alarm. The root cause of all of this was the single bad character -- lower-case "L" instead of upper-case "I" -- in the URL. Further, I traced this error to the orginal Word doc that created the PDF of the newsletter. The cases where I successfully connected must have been when I pasted the correct URL from another source (my own email) or clicked on the link there.

I did have recurring problems on this computer connecting to maps.lds,org at all. The remaining symptoms were that the LDS Maps site would hang forever whether I arrived at the site directly or from LUWS, and even if I just went to the home page. But that seems to have been an artifact of my abortive testing of the bad URL yesterday. After I cleared all my cookies and temp Internet files for IE7, all is well.

So put this one down to pilot error. Mea culpa (which I think is Latin for "my bad"). Thanks to those who helped diagnose the problem.