Go this on my screen when I tried to open a link:

Warning: parse_url(/forum/topic/clearout-fs-bars-stems-posts-salsa-qr-300-and-an-e13-bashhttp://www.singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/clearout-fs-bars-stems-posts-salsa-qr-300-and-an-e13-bash) [function.parse-url]: Unable to parse URL in /home/s/i/singletrackworld/web/public_html/forum/bb-includes/functions.bb-core.php on line 596

Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /home/s/i/singletrackworld/web/public_html/forum/bb-includes/functions.bb-core.php:596) in /home/s/i/singletrackworld/web/public_html/forum/my-templates/stw-forum/404.php on line 3
What on Earth does it mean?

Virus

Looks like you’re unable to parse your URL mate. I’d go and see a doctor.

it’s a bug in the code or a bad link (or a bug in the code so that it doesn’t like bad links, I suppose).

No viruses in linux usually.
What does parse URL mean? Is it short for pass urine?

cannot parse URL

isn’t it just a fancy way of saying cannot understand the URL?

Or, it could be a urinary tract infection of some kind.

It’s a PHP error.

When you visit many sites, STW included, the server on which the site runs actually executes a program to generate the page. In the case of a forum, it gets all the posts and topics etc from a dabatase, checks if you are logged in and so on.

PHP is a means of writing these programs used by the people who make STW. You are getting PHP errors so that means there’s a bug in the STW pages.

Which link are you clicking on to get that?

Looks like broken code serverside to me. Maybe try emptying your Internet cache and reloading the page, just in case the page hasn’t loaded properly.

To ‘parse’ means to process, line by line.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsing

Used quite often in computing, when one piece of code analyses some text, and does something as a result.

OMG. That’s awful. It just means it’s a broken link, but it really should crash nicer than that!

broken link

I really don’t think wordpress and bbpress are up to the job of hosting this website…

but it really should crash nicer than that!

That’s why they’re recruiting 😉

http://www.singletrackworld.com/2011/03/work-for-singletrack/

Well, it -is- actually a broken link. The URL’s duplicated.

“http://www.singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/clearout-fs-bars-stems-posts-salsa-qr-300-and-an-e13-bashhttp://www.singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/clearout-fs-bars-stems-posts-salsa-qr-300-and-an-e13-bash”

Specifically, it seems to be the colon-slash pair that’s throwing the messy PHP error. You can get similar results with a much shorter URL, eg http://www.singletrackworld.com/forum/:/w

I found a possible fix too, if the devs are interested. (Obviously, I can’t really confirm this as I can’t see the live code).

To silence the errors, open the file wp-includes/functions.php and locate the following code (around line #1067):

$parsed = parse_url(‘http://’ . $value[‘url’]);

In that line, place an “@” symbol before the “parse_url” like so:

$parsed = @parse_url(‘http://’ . $value[‘url’]);

And that should do it. The “@” symbol works to suppress any errors generated by the parse_url() function.

(In later versions of WP, it seems to be located in: /wp-includes/script-loader.php > rule #534)

Now, about that webdev position… (-:

And if you are load balancing your site get it to detect non 2XX responses and mask the content from the user……

Have you tried switching your computer off and on again?

I somehow don’t think STW is load balanced…

load balanced != fault tolerant.

But, yes, I’d concur. (-:

load balanced != fault tolerant.

Depends on how the load balancer is configured.

I use a fairly simple hack – pings every 2 seconds – and if I get a failed reply, the ‘load balancer’ sends all traffic to the working server. We use squid FYI.

Another double drop – sorry!