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Fatal Error in Google Description

Beckley
Minted
Posted on Nov 25, '07 at 12:39 pm

Hi,

I just noticed that the Google result for my site (beckleyworks.com) shows a PHP error rather than any description or text. It says:

“Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in /var/www/htdocs/www.beckleyworks.com/mint/app/lib/pepper.php on line 56.”

That’s the line that seems to report pepper version conflicts.

AFAIK, my default peppers are up to date as is mint.

I can’t seem to reproduce the error, so maybe it’s been resolved and the next Google bot hit will fix it.

Thought I’d bring it up in case it was a bug.

Any thoughts?

Thanks, beckley

Beckley
Minted
Posted on Nov 30, '07 at 12:07 pm

FYI, 5 days later and it’s still the same.

Mint stopped recording hits 2 days ago, but a reinstall of 2.14 seems to have fixed that.

I submitted my URL to Google in hopes of a fresh bot hit.

Shaun Inman
Mint/Pepper Developer
Posted on Nov 30, '07 at 12:28 pm

The Mint Pepper PHP source code is never embedded in your actual pages (Mint is only linked via a JavaScript include—and even with the advanced .htaccess method of including MInt the Mint and Pepper classes aren’t ever embedded) so I’m not sure where Google got this error message from.

Beckley
Minted
Posted on Dec 13, '07 at 09:39 am

Apparently my site was hit again by the Google bot and the description is the same.

What’s happening is PHP is throwing an error instead of returning the html page, and it’s choking on that line. I can’t get that to happen in a browser. Very strange.

What sucks now is Google doesn’t seem to be finding and indexing my blog posts and I never had that issue before.

Beckley
Minted
Posted on Dec 13, '07 at 11:14 am

After another look, it sounds like the $Mint object is not being created by db.php when bots hit my site.

After installing the Crawlers pepper, I noticed that all three bots only seem to hit one of my subpages (/design). None of the bots read my index page, or crawler doesn’t notice that.

Regarding your response, Shaun: even though PHP is not embedded, it will send an error rather than the html if there’s a fatal error. The absence of a Mint object would definitely do that.

I uninstalled Crawlers to see if that does anything.

Shaun Inman
Mint/Pepper Developer
Posted on Dec 14, '07 at 09:59 am

No, what I’m saying is that the MInt source code should be in no way included in your page source code. Mint is linked (and subsequently loaded only by browsers not crawlers) as an external JavaScript file. Processing of an external file has no effect on the processing or errors of the file that links to it. If the Mint object or absence of the Mint object is causing an error in one of your pages then you need to revisit the installation instructions (accessible from your Mint Preferences).

On closer inspection of /design on your site this appears to be a problem with the Crawlers Pepper and not Mint. The Pepper developer would be better able to help you resolve this issue.

Beckley
Minted
Posted on Dec 24, '07 at 07:57 pm

Thanks. Yes, it was the Crawlers pepper. After uninstalling, it’s back to running like a top. Cheers.

mescobosa
Minted
Posted on Sep 26, '09 at 12:57 pm

I have had this problem for a long time. I had Crawlers but have long since uninstalled it. Are there any other suspects? If not I suppose I would have to do an “uninstall everything then add them back one a time” routine but lose all my history which would be a bummer.

Shaun Inman
Mint/Pepper Developer
Posted on Sep 28, '09 at 09:59 am

Why would you have to uninstall Mint to correct the content of a Google search result? If there is no actual fatal error being generated just use the form Google offers for web masters to have a listing updated or removed.

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Fatal Error in Google Description