Key Stats:
- Publication Date: 06 May 2016
- WordPress Core Version: 4.9.5–en_AU
- JetPack Version: 6.1
My WordPress-based Knowledge Base site has started displaying an unwanted JavaScript dialogue box on post pages saying:
An embedded page at widgets.wp.com says
Request failed. Returned status of 404
It turns out I’m not the only one with this issue (as this WordPress Support page indicates) and the problem looks to be coming from the JetPack plug-in.
After finding a few keywords on that support and testing on my own site, it turns out the problem is being caused by the “Show Likes.” feature on the post:
Untick the “Show Likes.” option and save the post again and the problem goes away.
Now we just need to wait for a fix from JetPack (which seems a bit slow coming).
Note for developers: This type of error should never be logged in the UI via a JavaScript dialogue box. Why? It’s truly bad user experience for non-technical end users (who in the case of WordPress websites are most likely to see it). Log it to the console instead.