Perhaps, all Internet users have experienced situations when they desperately need some important information contained on some website. Unfortunately, the website is down because of a server misconfiguration error. This will stop 9 out of 10 users and halt the progress of any important business processes that these users happen to be working on. They are stopped mainly because they do not know that even though the server has a misconfiguration error, most of the information that they want can still be obtained from the website. Note, I am only talking about the information that is purposely available to the users and is on a webpage with its own URL. This article is intended to help those people who can spare 5 minutes of their time to get the information they need.
Recently a secretary of one of my clients approached me after a meeting in the client's office asking "Please help me to get authorization on a website". My initial response was "Just input your password", and I thought I would be okay to leave. However, when I glanced at her screen I realized that the problem was not as straightforward as I thought. In her browser window, the homepage of The Irish Financial Houses Association (IFHA) was displaying this error message:
Put simply, this error means is that there is no default file in the root web folder, or the default webpage is not properly configured on IFHA's web server and the directory access permission for the web-users is set to zero (which is a reasonable measure for the security purpose). The secretary needed an application form for obtaining a credit history of one of the company's employees. I was sure that the file containing the form was on the webserver as she showed me a letter from a respected Irish financial authority requesting to download the form from the IFHA's website, complete the form, and post it back with a fee of €6. So my task has changed from "getting an authorization" to "getting a form". My response..."phew".
The first step to undertake was to open Firefox, which is the most convenient browser in my opinion. In Firefox the page looks like this:
It is still the same error, but each browser displays it differently.
As IFHA's website seems to be quite popular for Irish financial institutions, it should be indexed by Google. So my next step was this:
Pay attention to the search query. If you want to search within a single website just type site: followed by the website name. And voila:
As you can see, for some reason all web files are contained inside the /index_files subfolder on the server. So that folder probably has the default file and we can finally see the website. Let's check it out:
At least something, though the image links are broken. A quick glance at the properties of one of the images tells me that the way to quickly fix the problem of the entire website is just to copy (not move!) all files from /index_files to the root directory of the webserver. This would take no more than one minute for the webmaster to fix, although I am not convinced that the IFHA employs one. Anyway, we need to get our form. The link "Documents" should supposedly lead us there. Let's click it:
Sadly it wasn't. I was sure the form was there, and the reason for this error is obvious when you look at the webpage address, where /index_files is duplicated. Removing one of them didn't show the page with the forms. I went back to the Google results, number 4 looked promising, it was the result containing the words "...information will be treated with strict confidentiality...", which is a standard phrase often used in forms relating to finance. And now we are close to our goal:
This website was obviously not designed with cross-compatibility in mind, but a quick fix simply involves pressing "Ctrl" + "minus" keys combination:
Now "Ctrl" + "P" and there it is, along with many heartfelt thanks from the secretary.
P.S.: At the moment of creation of this article the IFHA's website is still in the same state, although more than a week has passed since the described situation. I would advise the IFHA's manager to follow this link or at least this one to take care of their website. |
Finding misplaced or hidden information from websites
