Can't access links on a website

[Nocton]

Our croquet federation has a web site: http://www.eastmidlandscroquet.org.uk/
Some members are saying that they cannot access some of the links on the 'Leagues' page, particularly 'GC League Rules', 'results sheet'. Others including me have no problem. I think it must be something to do with the anti-malware software they are using which has decided some links are dangerous. One person has said that they are using an iPad and "I cannot open GC league results, fixture list, result sheet. However, I can open AC links. I don’t receive any messages, just doesn’t open". I have got them to try with another browser (Firefox) which works fine on my Windows PC, but that has made no difference.

I know nothing about iPads, so can anyone help, please? E.g. how can one turn off the security temporarily to see if that fixes the problem?

[Infrasonic]

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/i ... ome/ipados

There's a privacy and security section if you scroll down the user guide, but I'm not an Apple user either so I can't give you any specific advice.

I think your hunch is right, there's probably something on the iPad blocking certain content, maybe JavaScript.

If the website isn't HTTPS that can sometimes cause issues with access but most browsers will alert to that fact these days (website is not secure or similar), so if there are no alerts it's probably not that.

[Infrasonic]

On my W10 machine.

Firefox - all the links on the league link are live - no issues.

Chrome - A mixture of blocked and allowed.
Brave - Same as chrome, a mix of allowed and blocked.
Edge - same as Chrome, a mix.

On my Chromebook with chrome browser - same mixed results.

So it would appear that the chromium based browsers all have the same issues with the same links.

In Chrome Security and Privacy settings there are Safe Browsing options of enhanced protection/standard/off - so maybe that would be something to look at for non Firefox users with access isues.

[genou]

View the GC league Rules, the fixture list and the GC results sheet – clubs with the use of one lawn (or two, but prefer not to double-bank) may use a 6-round results sheet. We are also running a trial Advantage GC league in 2023

My browser, Chrome 122.0.6261.129 (Official Build) (64-bit), running on Windows 11, does not see the emphasised links as links at all. The later links

view the Advantage Rules, fixture list and download the results sheets for 5 rounds and 6 rounds.

are fine. No idea how you've achieved that.

[mc2fool]

The HTML on that page need seriously rewriting to (a) fix some ridiculous coding and (b) bring it out of the 1990s!

Use Chrome on a Windows PC (10 for me) and go to the Leagues page. Right click anywhere on the page and select Inspect.

In the "DevTools" window that pops up click on the NW pointing arrow at the left end of the menu bar.

If you now roll the mouse over the Leagues page it will highlight the page elements that are on top, and you will see that there are huge rectangles blocking access to a lot of the links. If you look at the "DevTools" window as you do so you will see that there are masses of deeply nested "<big>" tags. Even putting aside the fact that the big tag was deprecated a decade or two ago, the structure of the page is just nonsensical.

Why it works on some browsers and not others is almost certainly due to different handling of the cascade of events down elements, but the bottom line is that the page (and maybe others on the site too, I haven't looked) needs rewriting. Sorry!


https://imgur.com/3opcBDs

[ReformedCharacter]

I posted the site address for W3C validation, there appears to be quite a few errors although I can't say whether they are responsible for the link problems:

https://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.eastmidlandscroquet.org.uk%2Fleagues.html&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0

RC

[Nocton]

Thank you for all your replies. Very useful, particularly the fact that with Chrome, some links work and some don't so I then had a tool to see if the faulty hyperlinks could be fixed.
I am not managing the web site, although I did start it off about 10 years ago. Since then it has become very complex as we can see. As I still have access to the site, the web manager asked me to look into the problem, although I am no longer up-to-date on these matters. I already had identified the excessive formatting - all those bigs, etc. and the fact that one block seemed to overlay the other. So I've passed it back to the web manager with my and your comments. My suggestion is to rewrite the page altogether, simplifying it a bit at the same time.

[staffordian]

For what it's worth, on a Samsung android tablet and using Chrome, I seem to be able to access most pages (i.e. all that I've tried), but in the address bar, I have an exclamation mark in a triangle which when clicked on says the site is not secure.

[Infrasonic]

Making sites HTTPS isn't difficult or expensive these days (you can even get it done for free with some hosts) so if already fixing page layout issues you may as well advise the web manager that upgrading to site to secure status could help as well...