System Setup Required...4 years after setup

Ok this webstore I'm inquiring about has been up for several years, and recently upon visiting our store ourselves and customers have gotten a message saying the usual:

Hello. Thank you for loading Zen Cart®.
You are seeing this page for one or more reasons:

Telling us that we need to install zencart or fix broken paths. Only problem is there don't appear to be any paths missing. Now here is the weird part, someone who sees that error message could go back to the page 20 minutes later and it loads fine. I could be on my work computer on our network and it won't load but using my 4G phone the page will load. Also odd is https://www.advancingalternatives.com will load even when http://www... won't but someone from across the country could load the page http and it will load fine. Now sometimes its down temporarily for everyone and then come right back.

We host with Aplus, they say it's a zencart problem, I don't believe them. Recently because it works sometimes and not other times I'm starting to think its a server or even possibly a router cache issue.

Please someone direct me to get to the bottom of this.

Our domain is www.advancingalternatives.com

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Originally Posted by advancing

We host with Aplus, they say it's a zencart problem, I don't believe them. Recently because it works sometimes and not other times I'm starting to think its a server or even possibly a router cache issue.

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Have you checked that there are no setup files - /zc_install folder on the remote server?

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Originally Posted by twitchtoo

Have you checked that there are no setup files - /zc_install folder on the remote server?

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I'm a newer employee, the server has a lot of relics and artifacts trashed onto it from people before me just blindly adding garbage. However I haven't found anything yet, but that doesn't mean it isn't there under an obscure directory, named something else.

Seeing that page almost always means that the paths in the configure.php file are wrong, but you'll also see it if Zencart can't find the configure.php file. I'm sure what you're describing is a server issue, but I don't know how to demonstrate that to your host. The fact that it only happens occasionally makes it difficult to diagnose.

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Originally Posted by advancing

Ok this webstore I'm inquiring about has been up for several years,

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What version of ZenCart is this using?

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Originally Posted by advancing

and recently upon visiting our store ourselves and customers have gotten a message saying the usual:
Hello. Thank you for loading Zen Cart®.
You are seeing this page for one or more reasons:

Telling us that we need to install zencart or fix broken paths. Only problem is there don't appear to be any paths missing.

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'Broken Paths' is just one of the possible reasons for this message to be displayed. It the same page will be displayed if there is *any* problem reading/loading the configure.php file.

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Originally Posted by advancing

Now here is the weird part, someone who sees that error message could go back to the page 20 minutes later and it loads fine. I could be on my work computer on our network and it won't load but using my 4G phone the page will load. Also odd is https://www.advancingalternatives.com will load even when http://www... won't but someone from across the country could load the page http and it will load fine. Now sometimes its down temporarily for everyone and then come right back.

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Weird, yes. Unheard of. No.

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Originally Posted by advancing

We host with Aplus, they say it's a zencart problem,

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Of course they do. Very few hosts like to admit that their is a problem with their servers. Sometimes they might be right, but more often than not they aren't.

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Originally Posted by advancing

I don't believe them. Recently because it works sometimes and not other times I'm starting to think its a server or even possibly a router cache issue.

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I don't believe them either, for the *exact* same reasons that you have stated.

Alas, because of this I don't have any answers for you, but at least I'm able to verify that your logic and reasoning is quite sound.

Cheers
RodG

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What version of ZenCart is this using?

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1.5.1

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I don't believe them either, for the *exact* same reasons that you have stated.

Alas, because of this I don't have any answers for you, but at least I'm able to verify that your logic and reasoning is quite sound.

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Well at least I'm not a crazy person, thanks.

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Originally Posted by advancing

1.5.1

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No worrys. I had it in the back of my mind that you may have been using an older version that was vulnerable to certain exploits (even though the symptoms didn't *look* like an exploit).

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Originally Posted by advancing

Well at least I'm not a crazy person

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I never said that. Fact is, we both came to the same conclusions, so we're probably both crazy. :-)

Cheers
RodG