Does anyone else have trouble viewing all photos when viewing a listing? Very, very often I can see only every third or fourth pic when I try to scroll with the arrows. I even use the right click to āLoad imageā or āOpen image in new tabā (works very occasionally). This is extremely time-consuming and very frustrating.
It doesnāt seem to happen on the app, just the web platform.
Any suggestions to overcome this problem?
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Yes - this happens to me too, and always has. I was thinking of asking this same question.
Did you try with different web browsers, up to date, and cleaned web caches ? Does it make it with all those softwares ? ( Exemples : google Chrome, firefox, opera)
I have tried with the two different web browsers I have and it is the same with both.
Ok but are they up to date, with clean caches etc ? 2 doesnāt mean a lot if they are old and outdated
I was thinking it was because I am using bad wifi. I travel most of the year and I struggle in some smaller countries with doing any work involving pictures, let alone videos. But it might just be a problem with Homeexchange. Maybe they canāt handle the bandwidth.
Yes they are.
Ok so could you try with a New one that you download and install today ?
Hi Etienne, I use Google Chrome as my web browser and it is up to date, and web caches have been cleaned. Still having the same problem viewing all photos. I donāt want to use another web browser, as that is inconvenient.
I understand that but it would be to confirm that the problem comes from your account and not from Chrome. Itās just a test, and the support would Ask you the same anyway I guess if you contact them
Yes! Iāve been having problems with viewing on website for ages! Have cleared cache and done all the other things mentioned. DId you find a solution? Thanks
Try to contact the support to Ask them
Thanks Etienne. I have already done that and followed their advice - cleaned cache, history, etc. - to no avail.
It seems a number of members are having the same issue with not being able to view all the photos on listings, and the advice weāve received from Support (clean cache, history, different browsers, etc) has not fixed the problem. How do we escalate the issue for action?
Contact the support again, no other escalation possible
Iāve looked into this from a technical perspective and it looks like CloudFront is failing to serve the images. This issue I expect predominantly affects customers who are a long way from wherever HomeExchange is based, as CloudFront is used to provide distributed caching of website assets. I recorded a video with lots of technical data in it and sent it to support today. Iām not sure posting links to videos is supported in these posts so I wonāt post it here yet, but I do have a screenshot of the error message I get when I try to directly access an image that is not working in the site
So, I got my first response from support today, and it was nice that they didnāt start by asking me to clear my cache. Instead they suggested the problem might be with my ISP. I personally still believe that the problem is one layer further out with the regional CDN CloudFront.
I did manage to discover a workaround. Not fully tested but if anyone who is experiencing this issue would like to try it out and let me know how it goes, Iād love to hear.
I am based in Australia, so I fired up a VPN and tried connecting to an Australian node. The listing still didnāt work for me. So then I tried connecting via a UK node, and the listing with all its images worked perfectly fine. Surprisingly, after disconnecting my VPN, that listing still continued to work for me even via a different browser/incognito window, indicating that retrieving the image in the UK caused the regional CDN for Australia to also refetch the image.
This fixed the specific listing I was testing with, but others are still broken for me.
So I suspect they at very least need to invalidate their CloudFront cache.
If anyone else is having trouble with images in listings, and has access to a VPN to test with, Iād be interested to hear how you go trying to load the images via a completely different country?
Latest update on this issue, Iāve checked with other HE users in my area and they all have the same issue.
Iāve also noticed that if I close and reopen the images over and over, eventually all the missing images will show up. It just takes several tries to get them all to show. Typically, one or two new ones will appear each time I close and reopen the photos. So there IS a workaround, though itās not great for usability.
And when I look at listings via a VPN to a different country (Iāve only tried the UK), they always load fine first time. So itās definitely something regional.
Thanks for all your efforts on this, Dylan. Iām located in Australia too, so I guess it is a problem for this part of the world. Not good enough, though, in my opinion. We all pay the same membership fees!
Well Iām glad you brought it up. Iāve been meaning to dig into it for ages. I have several friends who are also on HomeExchange in Australia and they all report the same issue.