Sidecar Library Links Non-Functional?

First let me congratulate you on using a top quality security company as Malwarebytes. I have subscribed to their newsletter and blogs for over 10 years. First rate. 

But I'm not sure what is going on. The library works for me, but for you AND Peter to experience this is not just a one-off. But I see in your screenshot a reference to the URL "7248eO.mytemp.website". That is not even a proper web address! Where did that come from??! When I enter that into a new tab it redirects to our website. I am suspicious...

Do me a favor - both of you. Please attempt to open the library page and some documents using a different device. A PC, a laptop, or your phone. If this warning continues then please take your cell phone/laptop somewhere else where you can get on some other wifi network and try again. This is important to help me narrow down the issue. Is it local to you guys somehow? Or more widespread? 

I would ask some others to try to access some of these documents and let us know here. 

Hi Jerry,

Hey man, thanks for looking into this so quickly Sir! 😎 

My cell phone doesn't have Malware, but selecting any of the Hal Kendall's book and article links, Sidecar Resources, Technical, History or other information that would be stored on our site is what is not coming up.  All external links to other websites seems to work.  So the cell phone goes directly to the second screenshot I have in the first post.

Same is true on the laptop, except for the addition of Malware screen interceptions.

Hope this is helpful. 

If you want I can go to Micky D's in the morning with the laptop, and cell phone to see if that changes anything.  Just let me know Amigo!

Jerry,  Scott,  and  Peter, I  can confirm the  same  problems with the  Sidecar  Library  as what  Scott is experiencing.  Just tried every  link on the  Sidecar  Library  page, and less than  half of the  links work....December  2nd, at 4:15 pm, Pacific time. 

Update 8 pm CT - Ok I see now. All of the local files are not available. FYI, these files are maintained in the Media Library of the Wordpress application. I can see them there, the files are in the Media Library, but somehow they are not being displayed when we click on them. So something has changed and now the hunt begins for that one little setting somewhere...

This is what is not fun about being a webmaster! 

Update 9 pm CT - I see the issue now. Somehow the URLs for the files have changed to point to a strange domain - mytemp.website. I am on hold now calling our Internet hosting customer service to ask about it. 

I've been on hold for over an hour and now it's time for bed. Try again tomorrow. 

You Sir, are a Superstar!

Wordpress needs to learn that Superstars are not meant to be put on hold.  The future of the universe depends on them. 🤩 

Final update - Two versions - short and not-so-short

Short Version - The links (URLs) for the PDF documents in the Media Library were incorrect. I had to edit each of them to replace with the right URL. 

No-so-short Version - If you like sausage-making read on. 

After 1.5 hours with tier 2 customer support we finally figured out what happened. 

First, a little background. Last year (May-June 2023) we were having severe performance issues with response times and I was running out of storage space on the server after I uploaded 120 old Sidecarist magazines and the Yahoo 'Sidecar Talk' Knowledgebase (huge projects). 

I figured out how to offload a bunch of local files (PDFs) from our server to Amazon Web Services (AWS) S3 ("Simple Storage Solution", their cloud storage). The advantages were/are that the files are removed from our server and copied to the AWS S3 storage so when someone clicks and downloads a PDF the AWS server processes that request and it is less work for our server. Bonus! Saves storage and speeds up our server!

Fast forward and last August (2024) we renewed our internet hosting service. To save money and take advantage of 'new customer' discounts I purchased a new account and let our old account expire. The downside is that I had to move and rebuild the entire website on the new server. No big deal, I have nothing but time...

In the transition our hosting service migrated our website to a temporary server. In that process they automatically changed all of the internal links to the temp server domain. That is why you were seeing the references to r802something.mytemp.website. After I cleaned up and migrated everything to the new account and server I thought everything was golden. 

BUT, I didn't think to check the links to the PDF files! DOH! And no one noticed until Scott H came along (+1 for Scott). It took us over and hour to understand what happened and link it back to the account transition! 

The fix was to edit each and every link to the PDF files and change the URLs from the 'mytemp.website' to the AWS S3 storage link. 

So I saved us a bunch of money but it bit me in the end. As they say, "No good deed goes unpunished." 

Now you know a little more about how things work behind the scenes. 

Jerry

Awesome job Jerry!  Man what a crazy amount of work.  You are a good man, and an exceptional Web Master (just stating facts, not blowing smoke).

One correction, it was Peter Pan (@peter-pan) who actually found the broken links.  I just reported it. 

Figured you only need one person's picture on a target board to pattern that new shotgun.  Might as well be my ugly mug who is the recipient of a hot target load... or 25.  😉 

 Congratulations for such a lot of patience. Or as my father in law used to say: "Con paciencia y un garrote hasta los verdes se apean." = "with patience and a club you even get the green ones down."

In former times it used to be part of my work to check and test software programs until their limits. Sometimes my error claims got fixed up to 6 years later. One even is still not fixed since my claim in 2002, I lost the fun to such tasks and admire you for that deep dive.

Best regards.

Sven