612403 - Handle email subscription (Curl) timeouts from Responsys

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(www.mozilla.org :: General, defect)

Description

[Eve Murto]

A user reported an error they got in trying to reach the newsletter signup page. They had already signed up (and got the thank you note) properly, but then when they tried to get to the sign up page again, apparently the screenshot was not working. 
(There is not link on the confirmation note leading to the signup page, so its not an issue with the confirmation note, I think.) 

See attached screenshot from the user. The URL is correct for this page - they should have reached the landing page (main signup page).  Don't know what precisely they were clicking on which gave them this error - can you figure it out? 

Eve

Comment 1

[Eve Murto]

Attachment: User reported issue - screenshot - shows error message

User sent in this screenshot of error message so we can see what happened for them.

Comment 2

[Alex Buchanan [:abuchanan]]

I've seen this happen before.  It's usually very rare.

I think this happens because of a delay between mozilla.com and Responsys servers when submitting an email address.  

For example, the user submits an email, it is sent to mozilla.com servers where it is submitting to Responsys servers.  The Responsys servers don't respond fast enough, and the Curl call on mozilla.com times out.  The "Service unavailable" message in the screenshot comes from Zeus.  Zeus didn't get a response from the mozilla.com webheads (because Curl was busy waiting on Responsys servers) so it shows that page.

The solution here is to handle Curl timeouts better, giving the user an error message, and asking them to try again.

Moving this bug to mozilla.com, since the problem lies there, most likely in /includes/email/responsys.php

Comment 3

[Alex Buchanan [:abuchanan]]

(In reply to comment #2)

> The solution here is to handle Curl timeouts better, giving the user an error
> message, and asking them to try again.

One important note here, is that it's common to get this error yet still be successfully signed up for the newsletter.  So asking the user to try again would make them sign up twice.  Maybe better to just time out and show the success message.

Comment 4

[Chris More [:cmore]]

Closing old Mozilla.org website bugs due to them not being relevant to the new Python-based Bedrock system. Re-open if this is a critical bug and should be resolved on the new system too.

Comment 5

[Anthony Ricaud (:rik)]

We switched to another newsletter provider.