Dividenddata.co.uk down?

[staffordian]

I've just tried to get some data from dividenddata.co.uk, both by a favourite link via my browswr and by clicking the View dividends button on the latest Top Up spreadsheet and I'm getting a page which says

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access /dividend-payment-date-search.py on this server.
Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

Just thought it was worth a mention; hopefully it's either just me or it's a short term problem. It was (is?) a very useful site

Staffordian

[Breelander]

...hopefully it's either just me or it's a short term problem....

It's either very short term or it's you - I can see it (just checked).

[kiloran]

I've just tried to get some data from dividenddata.co.uk, both by a favourite link via my browswr and by clicking the View dividends button on the latest Top Up spreadsheet and I'm getting a page which says

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access /dividend-payment-date-search.py on this server.
Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

Just thought it was worth a mention; hopefully it's either just me or it's a short term problem. It was (is?) a very useful site

Staffordian

I think they are very sensitive to lots of automated data scrapes. I got the 403 Forbidden error a few times during development. Typically, they block your IP address (not sure if it is permanently or temporarily). You should be able to overcome this by rebooting your broadband router, which will probably give you a new IP address.

Can you give us a feel for how hard you were pushing the site.... how many shares on your HYP Top-up?

--kiloran

[kiloran]

Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /dividend-payment-date-search.py on this server.
Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

Staffordian

I forgot to ask... which version of the HYP Top-up are you using?

--kiloran

[staffordian]

I've just tried to get some data from dividenddata.co.uk, both by a favourite link via my browswr and by clicking the View dividends button on the latest Top Up spreadsheet and I'm getting a page which says

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access /dividend-payment-date-search.py on this server.
Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

Just thought it was worth a mention; hopefully it's either just me or it's a short term problem. It was (is?) a very useful site

Staffordian

I think they are very sensitive to lots of automated data scrapes. I got the 403 Forbidden error a few times during development. Typically, they block your IP address (not sure if it is permanently or temporarily). You should be able to overcome this by rebooting your broadband router, which will probably give you a new IP address.

Can you give us a feel for how hard you were pushing the site.... how many shares on your HYP Top-up?

--kiloran

I rarely use it.

I have an old version of the spreadsheet for my main portfolio which uses the previous site. I only use the latest version for a B7 of ITs and I hadn't checked anything for over a week.

Tonight I went to my bookmark of the site simply to check the last final for SSE then when this failed I loaded the latest spreadsheet and selected one of my ITs and clicked the View Dividends with the same result.

[staffordian]

Just to update, rebooting the router worked - thanks for the tip.

I guess using an incognito window for checking the site direct from my browser might be a good idea too?

[kiloran]

Tonight I went to my bookmark of the site simply to check the last final for SSE then when this failed I loaded the latest spreadsheet and selected one of my ITs and clicked the View Dividends with the same result.

Sorry, by "which version" I really meant Excel or LibreOffice?
And did you get the 403 error before you used the spreadsheet or after?

--kiloran

[staffordian]

Tonight I went to my bookmark of the site simply to check the last final for SSE then when this failed I loaded the latest spreadsheet and selected one of my ITs and clicked the View Dividends with the same result.

Sorry, by "which version" I really meant Excel or LibreOffice?
And did you get the 403 error before you used the spreadsheet or after?

--kiloran

It was the Excel version and I got the error before I used the spreadsheet

I'd not accessed the dividend data site by any method for probably a week or two prior to yesterday, and I would say that I've quite infrequently used the spreadsheet to access the site, but I had used it quite extensively before then direct from my browser to check quite a lot of dates and amounts.

[kiloran]

It was the Excel version and I got the error before I used the spreadsheet

I'd not accessed the dividend data site by any method for probably a week or two prior to yesterday, and I would say that I've quite infrequently used the spreadsheet to access the site, but I had used it quite extensively before then direct from my browser to check quite a lot of dates and amounts.

That is a concern, Staffordian. I can understand they might want to block excessive data scraping via a macro (we had a similar problem with Dividend Investor), but to apparently block you when manually browsing seems overzealous. At least rebooting your router did the trick, but this might not suit everyone.

I've been working on some refinements to the HYP Top-Up and one of those I've implemented and tested on my LibreOffice version is to detect 403:Forbidden messages and then display a message to the user suggesting a reboot of the browser. Better than having the whole thing hang. Should be easy enough to do in the Excel version also.
The current version has a random delay of 3-10 seconds between stocks to try and fool the server that it is a manual browse rather than macro-driven. I think we might be extending the delay to ensure that we don't upset our source of data.
It's a pity, the source of dividend data is blazingly fast, yet we have to throttle it back to prevent these problems.

--kiloran

[staffordian]

I guess its the lesser of two evils.

It's an incredibly useful resource so if a delay is needed to help ensure its continued use, so be it.

And, in passing, many thanks to both you and Itsallaguess for your continued development and support of these spreadsheets. I've only used the Excel one to date but am about to dip my toe into the LibreOffice version as I'm dabbling with Linux.

Staffordian