Persistent spinners and broken Twitter feeds
If you see the spinner persistently displayed on a Plone page when you are logged in, fixing a broken Twitter RSS feed may resolve it.
Changes to Twitter's API mean that there's no longer an easy way get a Twitter RSS feed. The old approach, using a URL of the form http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.rss?screen_name=XXXX, produces an error message like this:
<errors>
<error code="68">
The Twitter REST API v1 is no longer active.
Please migrate to API v1.1.
https://dev.twitter.com/docs/api/1.1/overview.
</error>
</errors>
If you put such a URL in an RSS portlet, it causes odd symptoms in Plone:
- The portlet doesn't display.
- The spinner (
) is persistently displayed if you are logged in.
- The browser makes repeated requests (you'll only notice this if you have a plug-in, such as HTTPFox in Firefox).
To locate and remove a problem portlet:
- Visit a page the persistently displays the spinner.
- Move up the site by repeatedly clicking the penultimate item on the breadcrumb trail until you reach a page where the spinner disappears.
- Use your browser's back button to return to the previous page.
- Click Manage Portlets.
- If there's a portlet listed something like this
(without an X), click on "go here" in the following that should be showing near the top of the page:
- If there's a portlet listed something like this
(with an X), check that it's a Twitter RSS feed by viewing its edit screen. If it is, delete it by clicking the X.
- Check that the spinner no longer appears on the page.
I hope that solves a mystery for someone.