Classifieds - some images not appearing

[samoht]

When I go to the classifieds to look at all listings for a certain model, eg https://www.pistonheads.com/classifieds?Category=u... , for some ads no images appear - both the main and three smaller images are the grey 'No image uploaded' image.

On loading the page, in the JS console I get a number of HTTP 404 errors for these images, such as https://img.pistonheads.com/Thumbnail/ferrari/458/ferrari-458-S4450933-1.jpg .

When I click through to the cars with broken images, I also cannot see the images (there is apparently no way to view the images for these cars).

This is in Firefox and Chrome. It's repeatable on reloading the page, and even with 'Empty Cache and Hard Reload' in Chrome. It's also the case in private / incognito mode of those two browsers.

Strangely, in Chrome this listing https://www.pistonheads.com/buy/listing/11727763 has the images appear but not in FF. Even more strangely, in Chrome when I right click - open image in new tab, the new tab gets a 404 and

{"status":404,"code":"NoSuchKey","message":"The specified key does not exist."

}

I don't have any browser ad-blockers or extensions. I have a HOSTS file but I swapped it out and cleared the DNS cache and it makes no difference, same behaviour.

I had a look at the image URLs to see if I could see any obvious errors, my only conclusion is that the image URLs are weirdly inconsistent between different ads but no obvious pattern between working and not working images.

[Ben Lowden]

Thanks for the info samoht – in this case the reason for the 404s on some advert images are due to changes between the storage layer used for these images, and the CDN cache that serves them up to the browser.

An incorrect configuration change caused some advert images to be removed from the storage layer, and the reason you see different behaviour across devices/browsers/pages is due to how the CDN caches resources against the request (headers etc). For some requests the cached file is available, for others it is not and results in a 404 error.

The team have addressed the majority of cases impacted by this, any remaining affected ad images will gradually update as sellers update their listings. In the meantime, if you contact a seller via the lead form they will be happy to provide additional photos.

[samoht]

Thanks for the explanation, that makes sense. Reminds me of this saying https://martinfowler.com/bliki/TwoHardThings.html

When my lottery win hits the bank account, I'll be straight on to the relevant 458 sellers for the images ;-)

[Ben Lowden]

No problem and thanks again for flagging.