Not a complete answer, but might help...

Poking around at their code, the error is output when this part is run:

    if(!web3.isConnected()) {
        $('#connectwarning').modal({keyboard:false,backdrop:'static'}) 
        $('#connectwarning').modal('show') 
    }

Which implies there's a failure in the following code:

var eth_node_url = 'http://localhost:8545'; // TODO: remote URL
web3.setProvider(new web3.providers.HttpProvider(eth_node_url));

Not a complete answer, but might help...

Poking around at their code, the error is output when this part is run:

    if(!web3.isConnected()) {
        $('#connectwarning').modal({keyboard:false,backdrop:'static'}) 
        $('#connectwarning').modal('show') 
    }

Which implies there's a failure in the following code:

var eth_node_url = 'http://localhost:8545'; // TODO: remote URL
web3.setProvider(new web3.providers.HttpProvider(eth_node_url));