CSS hosting

[HomeInMyShoes]

Why has MobileRead moved it's CSS file? Now it's hosted on cdn1.4dots.com which makes it unreachable for many places that have firewalls. Ours here filters social networking which is what cdn1.4dots.com is classified as.

This makes MobileRead look like it's 1995.

[Alexander Turcic]

cdn1.4dots.com is one of our hosts where we offload static content (e.g. images, javascript and CSS) to improve page loading performance. It doesn't do anything else.

Note that we made this transition in July 2010 and haven't changed it since. I am surprised it's now that you encountered problems with your firewall.

The reason why we're using 4dots.com and not mobileread.com is because this way requests to static files are cookie-less (yet another improvement in performance). Could you tell me the manufacturer of your firewall and/or the service who provides the filter rules?

[HomeInMyShoes]

Doubtful. Firewall upgrades more than likely here. It could be that the site is classified differently now and is probably filtered out as social networking/profiling. That classification is independent of anything MobileRead does.

It is what it is.

[Alexander Turcic]

I understand. Really strange since there are no web applications offered on 4dots.com. Is there any kind of information you get when you visit 4dots.com? Perhaps a firewall rule identification ID, or anything? We could get in contact with the company or whoever is responsible for the ruleset.

Perhaps we will change the CDN host to .mobileread.com. Only then we'll need to also adjust the cookie code to avoid unnecessarily sending it over for static content. Messing with cookies is always risky business though.

[HomeInMyShoes]

^Agreed it's messy. Generally social networking/social profiling tends to come up with some sites track the information and resell informtion to other marketers. I'm not saying that this one does that, just that that is the type of site that often fits into it and why many firewalls are configured to block first and ask questions later.

I'm one user. I doubt it's worth the trouble.

[Alexander Turcic]

Originally Posted by HomeInMyShoes

^Agreed it's messy. Generally social networking/social profiling tends to come up with some sites track the information and resell informtion to other marketers. I'm not saying that this one does that, just that that is the type of site that often fits into it and why many firewalls are configured to block first and ask questions later.

Ahh, no, definitely no such thing happening here. In particular 4dots.com, which has no active role other than serving static content such as CSS, JS and images.

I'm one user. I doubt it's worth the trouble.

But I do care! Plus, murphy's law, if it affects you, it's most likely also going to affect someone else (maybe they just don't know yet). Wish I could see some kind of output from that firewall in regard to why they're blocking our cdn host.

[HomeInMyShoes]

I'm not doubting that you care, but I am questioning the cost-benefit analysis.

WebSense is the firewall software. It uses categories to filter some stuff. In general 'Social Networking' gets a block.

This Websense category is filtered: Social Networking.

I'm working on a similar issue with one of our software vendors and their problem ticket system. To me it's just life.

[Alexander Turcic]

http://www.websense.com/content/URLCategories.aspx

"Social Networking - Sites of web communities that provide users with means for expression and interaction."

Funny they included 4dots.com but not mobileread.com. Really strange in fact, since there is nothing on 4dots.com. Hmmm. I'll look into it. Maybe if it's not too much work I could implement a setting in the User CP allowing for these cases to have the static content served from a .mobileread.com domain. No promises yet.

[Alexander Turcic]

Might also be worth a shot:

http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/...ed-by-websense

[zamana]

My company blocks several sites.

So, that's the way MobileRead looks like.

[Pablo]

Originally Posted by zamana

My company blocks several sites.

So, that's the way MobileRead looks like.

Exactly the same in my case. No more browsing MR at work...

[zamana]

And that's it

[Alexander Turcic]

We're in the progress of moving our CDN domains over to s.mobileread.com. I will keep you updated.

[Alexander Turcic]

Alright, we've moved the CDN domain over to s.mobileread.com. Please let me know if the issue has been solved for you.



Cheers,
Alex

[Pablo]

Originally Posted by Alexander Turcic

Alright, we've moved the CDN domain over to s.mobileread.com. Please let me know if the issue has been solved for you.



Cheers,
Alex

It will be some time before I get back to work (I'm on holidays right now), but when I do I will check first thing in the morning (either that or review some hundred emails, I haven't made up my mind yet )