Title: Content Encoding Error Last modified: August 19, 2016 --- # Content Encoding Error * Resolved [Ian](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ianaleksander/) * (@ianaleksander) * [16 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/content-encoding-error-1/) * Sometimes while trying to load pages (outside of the admin panel, on my actual site) I get this error: * > Content Encoding Error > The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because it uses an invalid > or unsupported form of compression. > * Please contact the website owners to inform them of this problem. * If I hit reload, sometimes it seems to load fine. But sometimes it happens again. Not sure what the difference between loads is. * Here’s a page it happens to me on fairly often: * [http://www.tradereadingorder.com/list/dc-comics-universe/recommended-reading-order/](http://www.tradereadingorder.com/list/dc-comics-universe/recommended-reading-order/) Viewing 14 replies - 1 through 14 (of 14 total) * Moderator [Jan Dembowski](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jdembowski/) * (@jdembowski) * Forum Moderator and Brute Squad * [16 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/content-encoding-error-1/#post-1473640) * …*blink* *blink*… That page is 27,524 lines long in HTML and came down as 1,115k… * When you get that error in your browser, look in your web server’s error.log file around that time. It might be PHP is timing out and tossing a badly formed page. * Thread Starter [Ian](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ianaleksander/) * (@ianaleksander) * [16 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/content-encoding-error-1/#post-1473703) * yeah that makes a lot of sense. * I want to implement an infinite scroll type thing but I haven’t been able to get it working. maybe if I got that going it would fix the problem? * Moderator [Jan Dembowski](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jdembowski/) * (@jdembowski) * Forum Moderator and Brute Squad * [16 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/content-encoding-error-1/#post-1473760) * That might do it. If your big pages takes a long time and db queries to generate, then breaking it up into manageable chunks may take care of your problem. * Thread Starter [Ian](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ianaleksander/) * (@ianaleksander) * [16 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/content-encoding-error-1/#post-1473826) * Is there any other way you could think of besides that? I’d love if I could still ctrl-f to find the title of any entry on the timeline. * Thread Starter [Ian](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ianaleksander/) * (@ianaleksander) * [16 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/content-encoding-error-1/#post-1473903) * hmm.. I tried lowering the post counts to really reasonable levels per page ( like 100 or even 10) and I still got the error from time to time. I’ve been doing a little more research and found a comment that said this: * > This problem occurs if use a Text Editor which supports another Character Encoding > which has not been defined in your website’s either language/languagename.php > or other page wherever you have defined Character Encoding type. To overcome > this problem you just need to write your code that support the character encoding > type. eg earlier I was using Dreamweaver, later I used Microsoft Expression > Web the problem start occuring. I just replaced the file written in Dreamweaver, > the problem was solved.. * Do you think this might have something to do with it? I imported a lot of my content from excel files, plus had some pasted from other documents where I had written it previously. I know that some of the date “-” dashes don’t display correctly and show up as diamond ? type thing or not at all… might that have something to do with it? * Is there some way to clean my code before it is displayed? some kind of filter? * [PJ Brunet](https://wordpress.org/support/users/knowingart_com/) * (@knowingart_com) * [16 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/content-encoding-error-1/#post-1473906) * If it’s only a periodic problem, then I don’t think it’s a problem with your text editor. * I’d ask your web host to turn off compression, sounds like a web server configuration problem. I don’t know who is serving your site, but don’t be surprised if they laugh at you. If it was me, I’d try another web host and see what happens. * I see the error too: “The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because it uses an invalid or unsupported form of compression.” * I think most web hosts these days use some form of compression to shrink pages before they’re served to the browser, so less data to transfer (saves bandwidth) but takes longer to prepare the files and this burns up the CPU a little. Compression takes time too so you’re not necessarily gaining that much speed by shrinking the files, there is a tradeoff. It’s almost like you’re burning up your tires in first gear, it won’t necessarily win you the race. * Thread Starter [Ian](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ianaleksander/) * (@ianaleksander) * [16 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/content-encoding-error-1/#post-1473907) * hmm.. I’ve been with Dreamhost a while and they’ve generally been pretty good with not laughing at me – I’ll contact them and see what they say. * Thread Starter [Ian](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ianaleksander/) * (@ianaleksander) * [16 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/content-encoding-error-1/#post-1473908) * I took all my widgits out of my sidebars to see if that helped for about 20 minutes I could hit every category and not get the error and then it started happening again. I don’t get it! * Pullin my hair out over this one – wish there was some way I could easily narrow down where the problem might be. * Thread Starter [Ian](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ianaleksander/) * (@ianaleksander) * [16 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/content-encoding-error-1/#post-1473909) * ok it’s gotta be something to do with lots of posts – which is frustrating cause that’s kind of the point (displaying them as a long list without the content). * I changed it to 20 posts per page and went through the whole thing (about 55 pages) a couple times and didn’t hit the error once (though to be honest, the way this has been going, that doesn’t mean it won’t pop up again). * jdembowski recommended a while ago to check the error.log file, but I’m not sure where to find that one. * Thread Starter [Ian](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ianaleksander/) * (@ianaleksander) * [16 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/content-encoding-error-1/#post-1473910) * Bumped it up to 100 posts a page and the error is back in a flash on the “recommended reading order” – often hitting “try again” loads the page correctly. Seems to indicate some kind of loading speedbump type thing. * What I don’t get is that I’ve got 275 posts on the [Batman](http://www.tradereadingorder.com/character/batman/) page and I _never_ get the error there. * Thread Starter [Ian](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ianaleksander/) * (@ianaleksander) * [16 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/content-encoding-error-1/#post-1473911) * hmm.. hasn’t showed up in a while at 100 posts per page. Very strange. * Thread Starter [Ian](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ianaleksander/) * (@ianaleksander) * [16 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/content-encoding-error-1/#post-1473913) * Showed up a couple times while I was working the rest of the night, but on totally random pages (sometimes with more frequency if I had more than one page open). * I’m definitely starting to think it has something to do with the server timing out or getting the info too slowly or something. * Thread Starter [Ian](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ianaleksander/) * (@ianaleksander) * [16 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/content-encoding-error-1/#post-1473924) * hmm, it seems like it might be fixed. This is what my host told me: * > So I’ve had a look at things and I may have a solution. You didn’t > happen > to have gzip compression turned on in WP-Super-Cache did you? That’s normally > why that error spits back. Since we already gzip compress most of the things > that go thru Apache, asking Super Cache to do that for you ends up giving out > these weird encoding errors. > I’ve gone in and have successfully disabled our gzip compression. If > you’re > going to continue to use All In One SEO, I suggest you re-activate Super Cache > and see how it treats you now. * Thread Starter [Ian](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ianaleksander/) * (@ianaleksander) * [16 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/content-encoding-error-1/#post-1473926) * yup, this seemed to be the problem! thanks everyone for your help! Viewing 14 replies - 1 through 14 (of 14 total) The topic ‘Content Encoding Error’ is closed to new replies. * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/) * 14 replies * 3 participants * Last reply from: [Ian](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ianaleksander/) * Last activity: [16 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/content-encoding-error-1/#post-1473926) * Status: resolved ## Topics ### Topics with no replies ### Non-support topics ### Resolved topics ### Unresolved topics ### All topics