topic Re: Story Maps not loading in ArcGIS StoryMaps Questions

Story Maps not loading

NancyMontes_de_Soto — Tue, 02 May 2023 18:32:56 GMT

I am getting a blank page when I am trying to open several of my story maps. I created the story maps long ago, and in the past I had seen a sad face sometimes, but this time I am getting a blank page. I refreshed the page several times and that worked some times but not others. I am using Google Chrome. But I also tried in Microsoft Edge and Firebox - same issue. They were working fine a couple of week ago. Any help?

Re: Story Maps not loading

AbbyE_Esri — Tue, 02 May 2023 19:32:00 GMT

@NancyMontes_de_Soto

I'm sorry you're experiencing this issue. Do the stories begin to load and then give a blank page, or is the web page white as soon as you load the page? Could you send a link to one of the stories if it is public so I can take a look?

--Abby

Re: Story Maps not loading

NancyMontes_de_Soto — Tue, 02 May 2023 19:44:03 GMT

I get the title and the blue thing on the left side...

Re: Story Maps not loading

GIS_Fox — Tue, 02 May 2023 21:24:40 GMT

@AbbyE_Esri , we have the same issue, our public facing storymaps have failed to load and the full white screen is the same as @NancyMontes_de_Soto . All storymaps we have are down.

Re: Story Maps not loading

SaraJL — Tue, 02 May 2023 21:40:28 GMT

I also just reported the same issue!

Same thing here - white screen in all of the browsers. Tried clearing out the cache - I can access it in Edit mode on admin permissions, but not in View mode. Republishing doesn't fix it. Chrome Incognito window doesn't fix it.

Duplicating the project fixes it - the new project works just fine, but the original project still gets hung up. But I don't think it's realistic to just keep duplicating projects if they crash.

I was working with tech support - they say it's a known issue, but they don't have a fix for it. Here was my post on it: https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-online-questions/story-maps-freeze-at-loading-screen/m-p/1284977#M51863.

They just told me to wait it out and said that others were reporting the same issue - but ESRI themselves can't verify the cause. Oooof

If anyone learns anything knew - let us know! I'm out of troubleshooting ideas.

Re: Story Maps not loading

OwenGeo — Tue, 02 May 2023 22:09:47 GMT

@NancyMontes_de_Soto -- Your screenshot shows the web address for an ArcGIS Hub site, not a StoryMap. Do you have a link to a publicly shared story that we can check?

Re: Story Maps not loading

GIS_Fox — Tue, 02 May 2023 22:10:42 GMT

Some of our users report the issue is no longer present, and I can see this as well but am still seeing some slowdowns or access issues to the data embedded in the published Public storymaps. 4pm Mountain Time for resolved mostly. Non-hub site linked storymaps have been affected.

Re: Story Maps not loading

SamPalmer — Tue, 02 May 2023 22:22:44 GMT

I'm at the same org as @NancyMontes_de_Soto. The issue doesn't appear to be limited to just her hub-linked storymaps, I'm seeing it intermittently for all of our storymaps. Here is a random example:

https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/7dcbd4729b4040fc8db1e43df294eede

It will load sometimes, and not others.

Re: Story Maps not loading

OwenGeo — Wed, 03 May 2023 00:13:13 GMT

The issue of some stories not loading has been resolved. We are investigating the root cause and monitoring our infrastructure closely.

Please post here if you continue to observe this issue.

Re: Story Maps not loading

StefanieWenker — Wed, 10 May 2023 00:00:35 GMT

We had this issue today again on May 9th. https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/ac3d883595614326b9071fbc49ccc251. It seems to be intermittent. It won't work and then sometime later it does.

Looking at developers mode doesn't help, it just says error.

Re: Story Maps not loading

OwenGeo — Wed, 10 May 2023 00:08:05 GMT

@StefanieWenker -- There was a period of time earlier today where a similar issue was detected. The problem has been resolved, and our team is looking into ways to deter this from happening again.

Please let us know if you are still seeing this intermittent loading issues with any of your stories or collections.

Re: Story Maps not loading

ErinCourtney — Wed, 10 May 2023 20:35:48 GMT

Hello @OwenGeo,

We are experiencing the same issue. We noticed it starting last week, but after we republished everything, and after a day or so, it seemed to resolve the issue. We have a public facing collection, https://storymaps.arcgis.com/collections/245f2bb7556a408fb24fd02842415b73 . Some of the maps load and others don't. There is no consistency as to which ones work, and sometimes we get the spinning wheel of doom for 5 minutes, sometimes just a blank screen, and sometimes it loads no problem. We have tried Chrome, FireFox and Edge, cleared cache and incognito. At times we will see the "waiting for...." message in the bottom left of the screen.

Any suggestions are appreciated!

Thanks,

Erin

Re: Story Maps not loading

OwenGeo — Thu, 11 May 2023 01:20:50 GMT

@ErinCourtney -- Hello and I'm sorry you are seeing an issue with your stories. The issue you describe does not sound like the same one mentioned in this thread. The issue mentioned in this thread was caused by a temporary issue where portions of our back-end infrastructure failed to respond to requests to load a story, and users who encountered this issue saw a completely blank page. That issue has been resolved, and republishing would have had no effect in this case.

You mentioned that your maps are not loading and/or you see a loading indicator, which is not the same issue.

I took a look at your stories and the map used in the first few stories has 20+ feature services in it (!!). This is not a best practice. It should be noted that even layers that are not visible in a map consume browser resources, so overloading maps with so many layers can max out the browser memory/resources and can prevent individual layers or entire maps from loading.

Please review the FAQ that provides guidance about how many layers are recommended to use in maps that you use in a story.

There are several ways this map design could be improved without a significant change in the appearance. For example, separate layers are being used for each region. In a typical web map, you would have a single feature layer with all of the regions and use a unique value renderer if you wanted to display them all in different colors. That pattern is repeated for several other types of features in the map (basin outlines/highlights, assets, labels, etc.).

I would recommend taking a look at the layer design of that map because there is a lot of unnecessary duplication that could be eliminated to make this a much more efficient map. Seems like the map should have two layers in it -- the basin areas (which could use a fill with outline style) and the point locations (which could also include the labels).

Hope this helps!
Owen

Re: Story Maps not loading

ErinCourtney — Thu, 11 May 2023 14:24:44 GMT

Thanks for the suggestion on the maps themselves, we have one map that feeds them all with layers turned off/on depending on which story needs what. I will split them up and feed them individually based on what they need, as well as seeing how we can render symbology better for our needs. I do appreciate these tips for rendering things more quickly.

However, we were experiencing the same issue with a completely blank page. We only received the loading message a handful of times. Other times it was just completely blank. Other times it loads just fine. We also had one of our admins receive an error when trying to access it on the back end, that "something went wrong" but others could still see it. I don't think republishing did have an effect, I was just mentioning that it was something we tried. After republishing we still saw the error. They seem to be loading just fine this morning, but we'll let you know if we start seeing blank screens again.

Re: Story Maps not loading

BBurkholder — Thu, 01 Jun 2023 22:54:06 GMT

I'm seeing what I believe is this intermittent loading issue today on a StoryMap. Am I the only one?

https://arcg.is/OOXe0

Re: Story Maps not loading

OwenGeo — Thu, 01 Jun 2023 23:54:07 GMT

@BBurkholder -- We are not able to reproduce any loading issues across the system right now. The story you linked to loads as expected for me.

Can you try accessing that story from a different browser, computer, or network?

Re: Story Maps not loading

apgis16 — Fri, 02 Jun 2023 12:35:54 GMT

I am experiencing this today as well with 1 StoryMap. Others on the same site load just fine. I tried different browsers and cleared everything in the browser. The StoryMap loads when I go in to edit it, preview it, and even publish it in the same tab. However if I try to open it anywhere else, it doesn't load for me or anyone else.

Re: Story Maps not loading

OwenGeo — Fri, 02 Jun 2023 12:41:24 GMT

Hi @apgis16 -- I'm sorry you're experiencing an issue. We won't be able to look into this unless you provide a link to the story.

If your story is not public, please contact Esri Technical Support and they can help you troubleshoot the issue you are seeing.

Re: Story Maps not loading

BBurkholder — Fri, 02 Jun 2023 13:55:30 GMT

The issue was replicated on two devices and multiple browsers on each. They were on the same broader network. As I mentioned, it was sporadic, only failing to load at two specific times during the day. Otherwise, it loaded fine. As @apgis16 mentioned, I only had issues with the published URL - editing and previewing were not impacted.

Thanks for letting me know there were no systemic issues contributing to my intermittent loading. I will keep an eye on it.

Re: Story Maps not loading

DavidNovak — Fri, 02 Jun 2023 15:55:03 GMT

Dear @OwenGeo ,

our important customer is facing the issue right now. We just opened the case with TS. Please look at this StoryMap.

The issue is better described in the technical support case. This issue is now critical for us, more details in case.

We tested it a lot, behavior is inconsistent. If StoryMap is Duplicated, the issue is reproducible also in duplicate. If StoryMap is set to Privat sharing mode, the issue is no more reproducible in any browser.

Please look at this issue. Thank you
David.