Story Maps not loading

[NancyMontes_de_Soto]

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?

[ErinCourtney]

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

[OwenGeo]

@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

[ErinCourtney]

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.

[BBurkholder]

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

https://arcg.is/OOXe0

[OwenGeo]

@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?

[BBurkholder]

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.

[apgis16]

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.

[OwenGeo]

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.

[apgis16]

We decided to wait for a day to see if the issue resolves itself, and it did.

[DavidNovak]

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.