We recently made the jump from GA to Piwik Pro and we are experiencing an issue when launching the debug mode to test our newly created tags and triggers.
When clicking on the “debug” button" on the top right-hand corner of the tag manager section, our website does open in a new tab. However, the debug pop up does not appear. This makes it difficult for us to test tags and triggers.
We’re fairly new to Piwik Pro so the chances are we’re just missing something.
Any chance you have an idea as to what that might be?
I first tried via GTM then I tried to hard-code it on the website. Unfortunately, neither made that debug mode pop-up window appear. Here is the URL of the website: Data Protection Institute
My first idea - I can see that you’re using some lazy loading plugin. Maybe that is causing the issue. Can you add the code directly to your theme just after the tag?
We really have a hard time understanding what the issue is.
In fact, we tried fixing the problem by installing the product both via GTM and hard-coded following your recommendation. Neither one of these installations solved the issue.
This makes me think that the product installation is not the issue.
Nonetheless, I am willing to try fixing the installation snippet and see if this solved the issue. How do you suggest we fix this installation snippet?
This situation has been ongoing for months and we would like to solve this issue once and for all. So, it would be much more convinient if we could hop on a video call where we could share our screens. How can we proceed to do so?
Your installation code differs from the one that can be found inside product. There are changes and random line breaks. Please remove the current code and use the one I’ll share on priv.
Keep in mind that after fixing the code, you have to disable the Piwik PRO Analytics template in your GTM setup, because product won’t work with snippet installed twice.
No, we do not use any adblocker. To be sure I have tried using the debug mode on other search engines and the debug pop up window still does not appear.
Please, let me know how we can solve this long-standing issue.
I think I know what is happening here. Clicking the debug button navigates to the URL that is set in Sites & apps.
However, your CMS redirects the user to the default URL, having path /nl, omitting the debug parameter.
If you add ?_stg_debug to the resulting URL you would see the TM debug window on the site.
The problem lies within the redirecting of the CMS omitting the added URL Query parameters.
Thank you for your help in resolving this issue! Adding the ?_stg_debug lead to the desired result: the debug window popped up.
I have still 2 questions related to this:
(1) When opening a new page on the website, this results in the dissapearance of the debug parameters in the URL. (After the initial action of adding debug parameters on the first visited page). The debug mode seems to remain enabled, since i see the correct events on the new page. Would you agree that adding the debug parameters one time in the url is enough to reassure the functioning of the debug mode in further debugging (on other pages by example).
(2) Wehn visiting a new webpage, the events overview seems to be resetted and does not include the events of the earlier pages. Is this normal? In my experience I always have one big overview when using other external debug modes.
that should not happen, adding ?_stg_debug to the url enables the debug, and adds a cookie (stg_debug) to the domain. Perhaps this cookie doesn’t stick on your browser?
In this case it is correct behaviour. When navigating to a new webpage the dataLayer refreshes (in case on non SPA sites that is…) Our TM debugger reads the dataLayer, among other things and visualises the status of this page. The events log in our debugger shows all dataLayer events and the variables values at that time
Thank you for your answers. Your answer on my second question is clear.
Regarding my first question, I wanted ro rephrase this:
After opening debug mode & manually adding the stg_debug parameters in the URL, the debug mode shows up. When I visit a new page on the website, the parameters in the url dissapear, but the debug mode remains visible, as well as the stg cookie on the webpage.
Everything seems to be working, but wanted to verify whether the dissapearance of the stg_debug parameters in the url itself is normal.
Yes, it’s normal. The parameter is there to let the debugger know that it should pop up. Once it’s done, a cookie is created and later on the param is not needed. It makes sense, since this param could also be recorded as a valid URL in Analytics.