1. Help Center
  2. Troubleshooting

Why doesn't my preview link work?

There are a number of reasons why you might be experiencing preview issues.

  1. RTSS (Route Through SiteSpect) Header: Check for the presence of RTSS in the response header. Every page or resource that can be touched by SiteSpect will have RTSS in the response header. You can check if the specific page is routing by going into your browsers developer tools > network tab > reload the page and confirm if an RTSS header and value are present for the page.
  2. SiteSpect-Info Header: In addition to RTSS, you should also see SiteSpect-Info in the response header. This header is only present when in a preview session. If RTSS is present but SiteSpect-Info is not, please either clear you cookies, close and reopen your browser, and try again - or - generate a shared preview link and open a new incognito/private window and try there (note: in your Profile > User Interface Settings, ensure that both "enable pop-up diagnostics during preview for Site Variations when previewing any object" and "enable pop-up diagnostics for shareable preview links" are checked).
  3. SSLB (SiteSpect Load Balancer) Cookie: If your site is configured to route 100% of traffic to SiteSpect, the SSLB cookie should always be set to 1. If you are routing a percentage of traffic, this could be randomly set to 0 to route traffic away from SiteSpect. When generating a preview session, it should always be set to 1 but if the cookie was preexisting from another live session, please either manually set the cookie to 1 or try in a new incognito/private window. Note: most client sites are configured to respond to the SSLB cookie - but this can vary by configuration.
  4. Browser cookies: When a user is previewing multiple campaigns a day it is possible that cookies conflicts can occur that can stop preview working. The best way to determine if this is the cause of your preview issue is to clear your cache and cookies and try once again. Similarly you may find it helpful to preview in private browsing/incognito mode.
  5. Incorrect caching: If the page or site you are trying to preview has caching rules setup incorrectly then this can cause preview to behave unexpectedly. Clearing your browsers cache and cookies and retrying preview can help to confirm if this is an issue. 
  6. Browser extensions: Some browser extensions/plugins can interfere with SiteSpect preview. To confirm if this is an issue you can switch off the extensions or browse in private browsing/incognito mode to determine if previewing improves.
  7. Specific page code/setup: SiteSpect tries to determine if a preview page is html by looking for one of these headers doctype|html|wml|meta in the first 2,000 characters. If if cannot find one of these headers then the preview bar will not display for the page.

If you have completed the investigative steps above and you are still finding that preview does not work then please reach out to helpdesk@sitespect.com for further support.