I use Norton products and keep getting the error "The server could not process your request" when I try to access a class web site

Online Instructor Suite components (Forum, GradeA, DropBox, UTest) detect the class a student is accessing via a referral URL, or referrer.  A referrer is the last page you visited before accessing the protected area of a class web site.  Programs such as Norton Personal Firewall and Norton Internet Security block this information by default, making it impossible for OIS to determine what class web site a user is trying to access.  This results in a error message like "The server could not process your request." when the student clicks on a link to access any of the OIS components.

From the Symantec web site:

"When you click a Web page, your browser notes the current page that you are on and sends that information to the server of the new Web page. This way, the server for the new Web page knows the last Web page that you viewed. For example, if you are on www.symantec.com and click www.microsoft.com, the browser sends www.microsoft.com the information that you are currently viewing www.symantec.com. If you block referrer information, the server of the page you are requesting to see does not know what page you saw last. By default, Norton Internet Security (NIS) and Norton Personal Firewall (NPF) blocks this information."

To fix the problem, follow the steps below (assuming that you have Norton Internet Security 2003 installed; if you have a different version, please click here)

1) Open Norton Internet Security (NIS, as shown below) or Norton Personal Firewall (NPF) and click on "Options".

2) Click on "Web Content."  You will see a list of web sites that can bypass some or all security settings defined by NIS/NPF.  Click on the "Add Site" to add this university's web sites to the list.

3) Write "semo.edu" in the box provided and click OK.  This will add all Southeast web sites to your list.

4) Now, with "semo.edu" selected on the list, uncheck "Use default settings" under "Information about visited sites."  Make sure that the option "Permit" is selected.

5) Click OK.  Your computer should now allow your browser to access class web sites on the CSTL servers.

Other versions of Norton Internet Security and Norton Personal Firewall:

These are instructions (from the vendor) to accomplish the same task described above in other versions of NIS and NPF:

How to pass referrer information to specific Web pages in NIS and NPF 2002 and earlier