Overview • Workspaces • Pages • PBworks Editor • Troubleshooting the Editor
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Common Causes of Problems
PBworks is a very complex site, and the editor uses many advanced browser functions that may conflict with a school or business's internet filter. Before contacting support about the issue, it's best to contact your local network administrator about the problem. Here's a link you can refer them to, which contains a lot of useful information about the service:
Guide for Network Administrators
Elements on the page
HTML and Javascript
When adding experimental Javascript, HTML, or CSS to your pages, you may encounter a wide variety of issues. You may have saved something on your page that interferes with the editor, and prevents it from loading. This can come from a variety of causes, but commonly, it's caused by some improper HTML or Javascript on the page itself.
A quick way to test to see if this is the case, is to try to enter edit mode on another page. If you can edit other pages, then the problem is most likely due to some content on the page itself interfering with the browser, and not your internet connection.
Also, if this does happen on every page, follow the steps below and revert the "SideBar" page of your workspace back to the oldest version. Even if the problem does not clear after reverting the SideBar page, it is helpful to revert this page to a state with no customized HTML or Javascript, to eliminate that possibility.
To recover the editor after adding something that blocks the editor, follow these steps.
- Click the History link in the lower right corner of the affected page.
If the link is not there, you can always find the revisions history in the more menu of any page listed in the file browser. Click on "Files" along the top of the workspace:
And then click the More menu, next to the page that is showing the problem:
- Once you've found the page revision list for the page you need, you'll see a list of links which hold a date and time. Clicking on any of these links will show you what the page looked like when it was saved at that specific time.
The first link on the list will be the current version of the page. Since that version doesn't allow the editor to load, we'll want to access the version of the page that did, so click on the second link in the list.
- After clicking on the second link, you'll see the previous version of the page (one version back). At the top of the page, there will be a bar, which will hold a link to revert to this version. Click on the link to "Revert to this version."
- Check to see if reverting the page to this previous version has helped in bringing the editor back. If not, you may need to revert to an even older version. Please note, that as you revert the page, the revision list will grow longer (since each reversion counts as a revision). So, if you do need to revert back further, you'll have to select a date which is earlier than the one you selected previously.
Note: Perform this operation on the "SideBar" page of the workspace if the editor spontaneously stopped working all of a sudden. Most likely a change or code in that page is disrupting the editor.
Embedding the page into another website
Embedding the PBworks editor into another website, using an IFRAME, will cause the editor not to load properly. If the address bar of your browser states a URL that is not PBworks.com, then you are either using a different service or the service is being embedded inside another site, neither of which is supported.
Contact Support
If the problem of the editor appearing blank persists, even after reverting the FrontPage and the SideBar to the very first version and verifying that you are editing on PBworks.com or a properly set up custom domain, please contact support immediately through the "Help" link on your workspace. Here's a list of things you should tell Support, so we can fully address the problem:
- What browser, and what version of web browser are you using? Instead of reporting the kind of browser with just the name, use the text you see in the yellow box when viewing this page.
This is your browsers "User Agent" which is how your browser is technically reporting itself to our service. If you are using Firefox or Google Chrome, please make sure you using the most up-to-date versions of those browsers. For Internet Explorer and Safari the service is well-tested and works well in all those browsers, as long as the parent operating system (Windows or Mac OS X) is fully up to date with the latest security patches.
- Does the editor fail to load on every page, or just specific pages? Providing the full URL (web address) of the page you are concerned with when logging in to PBworks is best.
- If you're using Firefox, what add-ons are you using?
- Are you connecting to PBworks through a work or school-owned internet connection? Can you try accessing from home and see if the problem comes up?
The answers to these questions will be vital to determining what is wrong with the editor on your pages.
Content doesn't appear in the View mode
This issue can occur after content containing HTML code (such as text from MS Word or the Web) has been pasted into your workspace page, because the pasted HTML can interfere with your workspace's own HTML. Reverting the page version to a previous revision using the "Page History" link is one quick solution. Copying all the content in Edit mode and pasting it into Notepad (or another Plain Text Editor) to strip the text of any HTML before reinserting it back into the workspace page is another way to resolve this issue.
Pasting Safely
When you want to add content from an external source to your workspace, sometimes pasting is an easy way to do this, but please be aware that there's a safe way to paste information. Pasting text, tables, or other information from MS Word, Excel, or other websites can insert a significant amount of HTML code that can interfere with your workspace page's code and cause undesired effects.
Pasting Text
To safely paste text into your workspace page, please first paste the text into Notepad (for Windows), TextEdit (for Macs, need to choose plain-text format setting) or another plain-text editor and then copy the plain text and paste that into your workspace. Running text through the plain text editor strips the information of any formatting or other HTML that can upset the proper functioning of your workspace page.
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