Websites publishing errors

Common website error messages, what they mean and how to solve them.

Orabi Nakhla avatar
Written by Orabi Nakhla
Updated over a week ago

No url received.

📔 Explanation:

This happens when StoryChief does not receive a url back from your website after you publish a story.

✅ Solution:

In many cases, this is a setting that you can change in your plugin.

For example, for Wordpress, you could go to the StoryChief plugin and uncheck the test mode checkbox.

If you have a custom Webhook integration, please make sure to return us a response in the following structure.

{ 
"id": "THE_ID_OF_YOUR_POST_IN_YOUR_DB",
"permalink": "THE_URL_OF_YOUR_POST_IN_YOUR_DB",
"mac": "73c48056706a30ee21e6fc1cf065dd46f378236fb0875bbf5f8edc0ae34e5dea" }

ℹ️ In some cases, you might not want to return a url, (ex: if your integration is internal), which is ok, but please notice that you wont be able to publish the story to other channels if your primary destination does not return a url.

There has been a critical error on this website.

📔 Explanation:

This means your website is having some issues.

✅ Solution:

Please check with your web-developer.

Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute.

📔 Explanation:

Some websites go into offline mode when there is a site maintenance or when you add/update a plugin/module.

✅ Solution:

Try later or check with your web-developer.

Invalid response.

📔 Explanation:

The response storyChief received back from your website is not correct. This mostly happens if you are using a custom Webhook integration.

✅ Solution:

Verify with your web-developer, StoryChief expects a response in this format.

{ 
"id": 1,
"permalink": "https://example.org/planet-or-plastic",
"mac": "73c48056706a30ee21e6fc1cf065dd46f378236fb0875bbf5f8edc0ae34e5dea" }

Please checkout our API documentation for more information

Field (FIELD_NAME) is unknown.

📔 Explanation:

The field mentioned in the error was not found on your website.
This mostly happens if you mapped the storyChief field value to a field on your website, but then the field on your website was deleted/removed

✅ Solution:
Map the StoryChief field value to another field on your website.

Request failed with status code 401.

📔 Explanation:

you do not have permissions to publish ( not authorised )

✅ Solution:
Please check with your website admin or web-developer.

Slug / alias / path is already used.

📔 Explanation:

Each post on your website must have a unique slug (path), You can set this value when you are creating a story in StoryChief, but sometimes, if you also create content on your website using another workflow ( not via StoryChief ) its possible that the slug is already used, which results in an error.

✅ Solution:

Change the slug in your story or go to your website and make sure the slug if not used by another page.
If you have a Webflow site, and you are sure the slug is not used, please try to publish your site again as this might be caching for an old deleted slug.

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