Error messages or other failed attempts to enter a contest online can be attributable to a number of issues, but in general all potential problems can be lumped into three possibilities – a sponsor’s web site problem, internet communication error between your PC and the sponsor’s web site or a software related issue on your personal computer . The following explanations will try to show you what you can do to help yourself out of these problems. Please read all three sections even if you don’t think one does not pertain to you.
Sponsor Site Problems
It is not that unusual that a sponsor’s site may have a web page or server side computer problem which they may or may not be aware of. This is especially true if you are one of the earlier entrants to a contest. Even if your entry fails, always try again. If the server site was merely busy during your first attempt to send an entry or request information, a second try might do the trick. If a sponsor’s site gets overloaded with data requests it will not always tell you that the problem was that it was just too busy at the time to accept your information.
Check to see if other contestants are having the same problem as you. If everyone is having the same issue, the chances are it is a problem at the sponsor’s site and not your computer. If this is the case, a pleasant e-mail to the contest site contact usually brings it to their attention, but don’t expect a response during holiday’s or over a weekend.
Experience has also shown that entry submission can be affected by the time and day of the week you enter, although we can’t necessarily tell you when it’s best to enter. Sometimes (without telling visitors), web sites are “locked down for write data requests” after hours, during a holiday period or over a weekend to prevent hack attacks or a server may have some unresolved contestant database related issue. In both cases, because support staff are unavailable to resolve the problem, you are merely notified of failed entry form submission without a real clue as to why. For this type of situation, it is not unusual that sometime late morning on the next business day things are back to normal and form submissions occurs quickly and efficiently. In other words, the web staff returned to work and corrected the underlying problem.
Once you begin filling out the entry form — complete and submit your entry as soon as possible. If you wait too long, you will have exceeded the maximum connection time allowed by the sponsor’s server and you will have been disconnected from the Web site without your knowledge even though the sponsor’s web page is still visible in your browser. Once this disconnect occurs, your entry cannot be submitted or processed, if it exceeds this time limit and you will have to resubmit your recipe. (Note that each web site has its own time limit before an idle disconnect occurs and therefore CCC cannot tell you how long you have before you should submit an entry. That being said, it is our opinion that most sites would likely permit 15 to 60 minutes minimum for an entry to be completed.)
Internet Communication Error
Failure to submit an online entry form could be associated with communication errors between your PC and the sponsor’s web site. Failures of this sort are usually attributable to only a momentary breakdown in communication between the two devices, i.e., a garbled or incomplete message being sent or received. Usually, an attempt to resend the form, refresh the page or in other words – try again – will be simple enough to complete what you were originally attempting to do. Of course, this naturally assumes that you haven’t totally lost internet communication with the sponsor site. While there is no definitive timeframe to retry, we suggest you wait a few minutes before trying again.
User PC Problems
Contest entry submission where you think the problem lies in your computer are much harder to resolve, but here are a few tips:
Be absolutely certain that you haven’t blocked cookies. Most sponsor sites expect cookies to be used and accepted on your computer.
In order to prevent personal data loss, some security software may interfere with the transmission of personal form data, unless the blocking feature is disabled for this particular site or form submission. Review your computer for any child filtering or internet security software which might block form submission.
It is not unusual that after clicking the submit button on a form that the response from the sponsor’s site will be a new web page including a pop-up confirmation window to show your acceptance of the form submission. If your pop-up blocking software is enabled, this will prevent this confirmation window which must be shown, otherwise, your entry submission will not be complete. Before you click submit, temporarily disable pop-ups in your browser for the site in question. This will insure that, if used, any confirmation pop-up window will not be blocked which in turn will not complete the entry process. If you don’t know how to disable pop-ups, press the Control <ctl> and the Shift <shift> key simultaneously and while holding them down click the submit button on the form. This can be used to temporarily permit pop-up windows on certain sites.
Once you begin filling out the entry form — complete and submit your entry as soon as possible. If you wait too long, you will have exceeded the maximum connection time allowed by the sponsor’s server and you will have been disconnected from the Web site without your knowledge even though the sponsor’s web page is still visible in your browser. Once this disconnect occurs, your entry cannot be submitted or processed, if it exceeds this time limit and you will have to resubmit your recipe. (Note that each web site has its own time limit before an idle disconnect occurs and therefore CCC cannot tell you how long you have before you should submit an entry. That being said, it is our opinion that most sites would likely permit 15 to 60 minutes minimum for an entry to be completed.)
Try another computer. This is a fairly quick way to determine if it is your computer. More than 90% of people who know the sponsor site is working and try another computer find that they are able to complete the submission using another computer. We suggest if you’re trying to do this at home then use a work computer or visa versa.
Prepare For A Problem
When it comes to online recipe entry submission it is best to expect the worst and hope for the best. So that you don’t submit a form, lose the data and grow frazzled as a result here are some helpful tips:
Prepare your recipe in another program like Microsoft Word, Notepad or Wordpad and save this information to a file. In the event your form submission fails it will be easy to recopy and paste the recipe data into the form and try again.
While your form is visible in the browser, press the Control <ctl> and N <n> key simultaneously which will open up another duplicate window of the form you are about to submit. Thus, if the submission fails you’ll have a duplicate copy to immediately try again.
Before you click submit, temporarily disable pop-ups in your browser for the site in question. This will insure that, if used, any confirmation pop-up window required to complete your submission will not be blocked. If you don’t know how to disable pop-ups, press the Control <ctl> and the Shift <shift> key simultaneously and while holding them down click the submit button on the form. This can be used to temporarily permit pop-up windows on certain sites.