white screen

I think the best way is probably AJAX.

Using curl which takes a timeout argument is also possible.

http://php.net/curl

In Drupal 7, better to use drupal_http_request().

http://api.drupal.org/api/drupal/includes--common.inc/function/drupal_http_request/7

Weirdest. Server. Drupal. Zen. Bug. Ever. Our client's site suddenly stopped working. With a server error.

Safari can’t open the page. Safari can’t open the page “http://www.example.com/landing” because the server unexpectedly dropped the connection. This sometimes occurs when the server is busy. Wait for a few minutes, and then try again.

Opera was just a blank white screen. But other sites on the server were still working.

Importing a CCK content type with fields, that had just been exported from an identical site (did some work offline) failed with the oh-so-helpful white screen o' death (aka whitescreen, blank page).

Found no reports about this in the CCK issue queue or online elsewhere. Through cutting out parts until it worked, Agaric has been able to identify the field calling the error.

Here is the problematic field's definition, as excerpted from the export output we were trying to input into the import: