Cloudflare's Rocket Loader disabled editing in my MT blog
Cloudflare is an online service that protects websites from various online attacks, blocks unwanted traffic with a user configurable firewall, caches website content to serve it faster than one's own hosting company and provides SSL security certificates, among other things.
I am a long time Cloudflare subscriber and late last year I changed web hosts. I exported and transferred my blog's database to my new host and got my Movable Type blog up and running. However, I was unable to either edit existing posts or create new ones. No matter what I tried, the only way to edit it was by disabling Cloudflare on my website and then enabling it when my editing was done. The cause and solution remained a mystery until July 19, 2020.
I was experimenting with various settings on Cloudflare and one caught my eye. It is a special function called "Rocket Loader." It was enabled and had been since I switched hosting companies. The moment I switched off Rocket Loader my blog posts became editable! Evidently, this function to speed up scripts compresses the white space and messed up some of the scripts used in my version of Movable Type.
If you, or somebody you know is using Cloudflare and is having trouble editing their Movable Type blog, or some other brand of CMS, or creating new posts, the Rocket Loader may be at fault. You can find it by logging into your Cloudflare account, select your website if you have more than one there, then click on the Speed tab, then on Optimization and scroll down to Rocket Loader and click on the switch button to turn it off. The change is instantaneous, or close to it. Turning it back on also happens quickly.
Fortunately for me I have been busy with other pursuits. I guess I developed writers' block for the last half year and didn't have much to say on my computer troubleshooting blog. Now that I have disabled the Rocket Loader I can get back to writing blog articles about online security issues that concern us all.
