One of the UAE's most popular websites has been unavailable to many local users in the past week because of a mix-up involving the national internet filtering system. Dubizzle, the classified advertising website which attracts more than one million visitors each month, has displayed an "under maintenance" sign for some users for most of the week. Its owners said an internal error, combined with a quirk in the national system that blocks access to prohibited websites, was to blame.
The company took the site down for an upgrade last Wednesday, replacing the home page with one advising customers that maintenance was under way. The site was available within hours, but some users in the UAE have continued to see the maintenance message. Users presented with the maintenance page should hold down the "shift" key on their computers and click the "refresh" button on their web browsers, said JC Butler, a co-founder of Dubizzle. This forces the browser to request a fresh version of the site. The problem should be completely fixed in the coming days, Mr Butler added.
tgara@thenational.ae