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General => Technical Help => Topic started by: Aguella on Saturday 26 July 25 02:40 BST (UK)

Title: FindMyPast newspaper error
Post by: Aguella on Saturday 26 July 25 02:40 BST (UK)
Hi

I'm having an issue viewing newspapers on FindMyPast. I've tried different browsers, restarting etc. These are the error messages I get:

via Chrome:
SyntaxError: Unexpected token '<', "<!DOCTYPE "... is not valid JSON

via Safari:
SyntaxError: The string did not match the expected pattern.

Is anyone else experiencing this? Does anyone have any suggestions?
Title: Re: FindMyPast newspaper error
Post by: mckha489 on Saturday 26 July 25 02:47 BST (UK)
Yes! I am giving it a rest. Must be their end.
Title: Re: FindMyPast newspaper error
Post by: Aguella on Saturday 26 July 25 03:21 BST (UK)
Ah! Frustrating, but at least I'm not alone  :)
Title: Re: FindMyPast newspaper error
Post by: GrahamH on Saturday 26 July 25 06:44 BST (UK)
I've just tried a search now (06:43 BST 26 July) and it is OK. A bit slow but it has been on and off over the last few days.

Chrome browser on Windows 11.
Title: Re: FindMyPast newspaper error
Post by: Aguella on Saturday 26 July 25 06:53 BST (UK)
Thank you, that's promising news, although as of this moment I'm still getting the same error!

I'm about to head out for the weekend so I've missed out on this week's chance to continue the research I'm working on (and really enjoying) which is frustrating, but talk about a first world problem!

BTW I've messaged FindMyPast to advise them of the issue so hopefully they're at the very least aware of it and all comes good for everyone soon.
Title: Re: FindMyPast newspaper error
Post by: GrahamH on Saturday 26 July 25 07:23 BST (UK)
I spoke too soon I'm afraid.

When I read the post I thought the whole search was going wrong so when I posted I had only brought up the search results based on a set of parameters.

I now find that it is OK until I want to actually display a page from the results.
At that stage the message "An error occurred SyntaxError: Unexpected token '<', " <! DOCTYPE " ... is not valid JSON" is displayed.

I have sent in a report to FindMyPast.
Title: Re: FindMyPast newspaper error
Post by: AlanBoyd on Saturday 26 July 25 07:35 BST (UK)
I just tried searches at BNA for three invented names and in each case I got a list of hits and was able to load the first one with no errors. So perhaps the problem is at the interface between FindMyPast and the BNA database.

I agree however that the BNA response has been very treacley over the past few days.
Title: Re: FindMyPast newspaper error
Post by: GrahamH on Saturday 26 July 25 08:51 BST (UK)
I have just tried again and I am able to display pages from results now.

However, the various searches I have run do not bring up complete results. Some hits which I know should occur, because I have repeated searches from the last few days, do not appear.

I just ran a search which said there were 3 hits in a particular date range but opening the results page presented 9 pages to choose from.

It appears that somebody has implemented an update without properly testing it before making it live.
Title: Re: FindMyPast newspaper error
Post by: Zaphod99 on Saturday 26 July 25 09:09 BST (UK)
It's slightly off topic but I get really frustrated by how different websites can look if you change from one browser to the next. Sometimes I'm instructed to press a certain link, or rather click on it, and it's not there but if I look at the same page in a different browser I can continue.

Zaph
Title: Re: FindMyPast newspaper error
Post by: GrahamH on Saturday 26 July 25 12:51 BST (UK)
It's slightly off topic but I get really frustrated by how different websites can look if you change from one browser to the next. Sometimes I'm instructed to press a certain link, or rather click on it, and it's not there but if I look at the same page in a different browser I can continue.

Zaph
I changed from Firefox to Chrome for that reason over a year ago.

Back to topic, FindMyPast seem to have stopped the JSON error from occurring but the site is still slow and serving up far too many "we are unable..............please reload" type messages.
Title: Re: FindMyPast newspaper error
Post by: Zaphod99 on Saturday 26 July 25 15:11 BST (UK)
Graham, I'm despairing with Chrome!  So many page controls just don't appear.  I'm trying Opera & DuckDuckGo.

Zaph