Environment
- Template: Gazette 2.0.5 (
shaper_gazette) with Helix Ultimate framework plugin 2.2.10 - SP Page Builder 6.10.0 (Pro), Joomla 5.4.10, PHP 8.3
- The homepage is an SP Page Builder page that uses the Gazette Articles Slider addon (which loads Owl Carousel).
The problem
The Articles Slider addon (templates/shaper_gazette/sppagebuilder/addons/articles_slider/site.php, stylesheets()) loads templates/shaper_gazette/css/owl.carousel.min.css. This is Owl Carousel v2.3.4, and its video play-icon rule uses a relative image:
.owl-carousel .owl-video-play-icon{ ... background:url(owl.video.play.png) no-repeat; ... }
The browser resolves that to templates/shaper_gazette/css/owl.video.play.png. That file is not in the Gazette 2.0.5 package. We checked the original installation zip: template/css/ contains owl.carousel.min.css and owl.theme.default.min.css, but no owl.video.play.png, and the image doesn't exist anywhere else in the package.
Measured on our site: 490 requests for templates/shaper_gazette/css/owl.video.play.png returned 404 in 7 days, all from homepage views. Each one is a wasted request that reaches the web server, and the play icon can't show when the carousel renders a video item.
Suggested fix
Add the image that belongs to this CSS to the template package:
- File:
template/css/owl.video.play.png, next toowl.carousel.min.css - Source: the official Owl Carousel 2 distribution,
dist/assets/owl.video.play.pngin the OwlCarousel2 GitHub repository (MIT licence). It's the same file assrc/img/owl.video.play.pngthere. - Details: an 80 × 80 PNG, 4,976 bytes. Its SHA-256 starts with
0436045686fddf10.
No code change is needed: the existing relative url(owl.video.play.png) then resolves correctly.
We added this exact file to our installation and the requests now return 200.
Impact
- Affects every Gazette site that uses the Articles Slider (or anything else that loads the bundled
owl.carousel.min.css): a 404 on every page view that renders the carousel CSS rule. - The fix is one 5 KB file in the package, with no code change and no risk.
- Sites that add the file themselves lose it again with each template update, so the fix belongs in the package.