How to tell if a company is blocking websites?

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How to tell if a company is blocking websites?

limoshawn

3:03 am on Jul 1, 2008 (gmt 0)

I had a comment from a user on one of my sites the other day that said they could not load the page that I had sent them a link to. I dug into it a bit and found the cause to be a YouTube video embedded in my page. the company he worked for had blocked YouTube from being viewed while employees were connected to the company servers.

MY QUESTION: is there a way to determine if someone's company or isp has blocked certain site and offer the user a notice of what is happening. for example, if this user were to try and view the page I sent him and his company was blocking something on my site (YouTube content) could my site recognize this and display a different page notifying the user that we could not show them the page because of the block?

surrealillusions

8:00 pm on Jul 1, 2008 (gmt 0)

Not that im aware of...maybe a small (but obvious) note somewhere on the page warning users of a potential problem with viewing youtube videos?

limoshawn

3:06 pm on Jul 2, 2008 (gmt 0)

thanks for the suggestion Surreal, in order to do that I would have to have an intermediate page with a warning on it and I was trying to avoid that.
I think what I may have to do is have the videos on a separate page with a link on the main page.

this probably may not be a huge problem, but it is a problem for me, it really makes my site look bad if I send someone a link to a page and the page won't open. sometimes it's hard to explain that the reason is THEIR isp or server and not my site.

StoutFiles

3:33 pm on Jul 2, 2008 (gmt 0)

You could just iframe the video instead.

adcoutkast

2:02 pm on Jul 3, 2008 (gmt 0)

Second the iframe with a comment like, Trouble seeing the video above? Click here for a list of reasons.

limoshawn

3:35 am on Jul 6, 2008 (gmt 0)

thanks, i'm trying the iframe suggestion. should know soon if it worked.

limoshawn

2:30 pm on Jul 10, 2008 (gmt 0)

The iframe helped. now at least the main page displays. i put a notice on the page that gives information as to why the video might not load.

funny, i seem to remember a few years back reading about how the "object" was going to replace the "iframe" and now I have to put my objects in an iframe!