Terra Extraneus

If you use Sitemeter on your blog or website, it is probably causing problems when people visit using Internet Explorer 7. The problem began on Friday and remains unsolved Saturday afternoon.

I took a day off yesterday and was away from my computers, so I only learned about the problem this morning. When IE7 users click on many Sitemeter-using sites, an error message displays: “Internet Explorer cannot open the Internet site http://___. Operation aborted.” Apparently some IE6 users are having the same problems.

I tried going to the Sitemeter website for an announcement, but I got the same error message there. Apparently Sitemeter changed something in its code on Friday. Many bloggers are blaming IE7 for the problem and are using this as an opportunity to promote its chief competitor, FireFox. However, 54% of all pages are viewed through Internet Explorer, so if you want your site to be accessible to most visitors, it won’t help to curse IE.

To prevent your visitors from having problems (and leaving your site in disgust), temporarily disable Sitemeter on your site. If you know how to access your sidebar or footer or homepage (or wherever else you display your Sitemeter), it is an easy fix. Just add < ! - - before the Site meter code and - - > after the code. That’s the HTML tag designers use to leave comments in the code that are not displayed online. That will prevent your Sitemeter from displaying. Then, when the problem is resolved, go back and remove that little bit of before-and-after code.

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LATER AUG. 2: Sitemeter says the problem is solved. I will restore Sitemeter operations on our site and hope for the best.