[Resolved] SSI/website rendering errors

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w2tq

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Although my website was functioning properly on Monday, 12/11/17, it exhibited several errors the following day (12/12/17). No changes were made to any of the files after 12/6 (the last being an SSI text file on 12/6). Several of the base html files are nearly nine years old (I modify the SSI include files as needed, and rarely touch the others).

The site is coded in XHTML 1.0 Strict and until 12/12 the code has been fully compliant (per W3C HTML and CSS validators). I suspect it may have something to do with SSI, which is used extensively on the site, but I have seen only one possibly-related post concerning a recent Apache release (Critical Changes In Apache 2.4 - attempts to include a hyperlink to the page on documentation.cpanel.net failed).

The webserver is LiteSpeed (Apache Version 2.4.29). The hosting company stated that no patches were applied to the system after the 11th, but I note that LiteSpeed released LSWS v. 5.2.3 on 12/11/17, the last day on which the website was working correctly.

All suggestions are welcome.
 
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w2tq

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Tishu -

Thank you for your response. I am not with the hosting company (the entity running the server) - I am a user (on shared servers).

Would the latest LSWS build address my issue? If so, I will ask them if and when they can install the update.

For completeness, although I did not think the specifics mattered as I had made no changes to the code before the errors occurred, here is an excerpt from the W3C validator - coding errors in declarations and CSS links
Code: 
W3C Markup Validation Service

Errors found while checking this document as XHTML 1.0 Strict!
Result:     7 Errors, 2 warning(s)
. . .
Server:    LiteSpeed
Size:    (undefined)
Content-Type:    text/html
Encoding:     utf-8
Doctype:     XHTML 1.0 Strict
Root Element:     html
Root Namespace:     http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml

    Warning No Character Encoding Found! Falling back to UTF-8.

    None of the standards sources gave any information on the character encoding labeling for this document. . . .

. . .

    Info No Character encoding declared at document level

    No character encoding information was found within the document, either in an HTML meta element or an XML declaration. . . .

Validation Output: 7 Errors

    Error Line 25, Column 69: document type does not allow element "meta" here

    <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />

    ✉

    Error Line 26, Column 54: document type does not allow element "meta" here

    <meta http-equiv="content-language" content="en-us" />

    ✉

     Error Line 28, Column 74: document type does not allow element "link" here

    <link href="/style.css" media="screen" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />

    ✉

    Error Line 29, Column 79: document type does not allow element "link" here

    <link href="/style-print.css" media="print" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />

    ✉

    Error Line 30, Column 85: document type does not allow element "link" here

    …href="/style-handheld.css" media="handheld" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />

    ✉

    Error Line 33, Column 75: document type does not allow element "link" here

    <link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://url.com/img/favicon.ico"/>

    ✉

    Error Line 34, Column 63: document type does not allow element "link" here

    …l="icon" href="http://url.com/img/icon.png"/><!-- header-ssi.html -->
None of these errors existed before - I have gone approximately eight (8) years without persistent errors (my site is largely static text).

Edit: the elements implicated in the validator report are introduced via one file SSI in the <head> section of each page immediately following <title>, but are now landing in the body section. This has worked for several years until now but failed on Dec. 12th for reasons I am unable to determine.
 
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w2tq

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#4
#4
I now have additional information to post.

1) the hosting entity applied LSWS version 5.2.3 on Dec. 11th at approximately 6:00 pm US Eastern Time (2200 UCT). This is after I had last accessed the site; the errors appeared the next morning (as discussed in the original post).

2) as a test of the code without SSI, I assembled an index page, inserting the content of the SSI includes in the locations in the HTML where SSI should place them, and ran it on the same server: NO errors and fully compliant with XHTML 1.0 Strict per the W3C validator.

Having not made any changes to the code immediately prior to the LiteSpeed update, I an unable to identify any cause other than the webserver update. As noted in the previous post (immediately above), the encoding declaration, the CSS links, and other items are landing in the body, as opposed to the head. It also appears that other SSI parsing errors prevented orderly processing of the include statements, causing the page to render incorrectly; the SSI directives are not processed at the point requested in the HTML, if at all. (The earlier reference to the cpanel.net page does not appear applicable, as that refers to a change concerning conditional expressions.)

Do the developers at LiteSpeed monitor this forum and, if not, how can they be notified? I note that there is a "bug report" forum but I don't want to double post. Nonetheless, perhaps a short note there referring to this thread might be in order.
 
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