How do proxies work?

sarahr

I'm using 2.0b7.1 on a Mac with Firefox 3.5.3. Every time I hit one of two university library sites I like to use, I am prompted to go through a proxy. I don't think I understand what Zotero is asking of me; this is happening when I hit the library's main site (e.g. http://library.institution.edu) and not trying to access any journal articles or e-resources of any sort.

What is Zotero trying to do, and why, when I hit "ignore" or "add proxy," do I continue to be prompted with the same message?

Thanks to anyone who is able to explain this behavior.

adamsmith

The proxy allows you - as you seem to understand correctly - to access material through your library even though you are off campus.
Zotero has a built in feature that automatically recognizes these proxies and then will automatically take you through the proxies when you go to a paysite: E.g. when I search on google scholar and open a JSTOR link, Zotero automatically takes me through the proxy (where I have to put in my university ID and password) so that I have full access to the article.

Zotero automatically recognizes these proxies and allows you to add them (or ignore).
Apparently something is going wrong here. I'm not sure what exactly - Try to be as precise as possible: what do you do?
So Zotero asks you if you want to add the proxy and you click yes? You go to the same site next day - same procedure?

If you go to preferences --> proxies
you can double-click on the entry/entries in the list and see all the sites for which zotero will automatically add a proxy address. One thing could be that Zotero thinks - for whatever reason - that this is a new site every day (maybe a date in the URL?)
If you don't find this a useful feature ever, you can also just turn it off there. Or you can just stop Zotero from automatically associating proxies.
See here for more documentation:
http://www.zotero.org/support/proxies