Content Encoding Error (content_encoding_error)

[jwlamb]

Good afternoon,

I had a customer contact me with a problem. He was having trouble opening the item's page and I what I found online was saying to turn off the gzip compression, so I did. He then was able to get the item's page, but unable to add to cart. When he tried to add to cart he was getting:

Content Encoding Error (content_encoding_error)

Server response could not be decoded using encoding type returned by server.
This is typically caused by a Web Site presenting a content encoding header of one type, and then encoding the data differently.

After speaking with him on the phone, I asked for him to delete IE history/cookies/etc and refresh the page. It then was taking him to the customer login page, but he doesn't have an account yet so he clicked on sign up, but it just took him back to the login page. He then clicked on the "Home" link and tried again with the same results. I emailed him a link directly to the item and same thing all over again.

Any suggestions?

[lhungil]

... He was having trouble opening the item's page and I what I found online was saying to turn off the gzip compression, so I did. ...

Did you disable the gzip / deflate (and any other) output filters for PHP as well as disabling gzip in Zen Cart?

[jwlamb]

Did you disable the gzip / deflate (and any other) output filters for PHP as well as disabling gzip in Zen Cart?

I disabled the gzip, not sure what you mean by deflate.

[lhungil]

First, is everything working for YOU when you LOG in with a TEST account? If it is, could just be the "customer" is using an obscure browser, did not fully clear their cache, or may have protection software installed which is filtering the requests (cookies and website pages)... I've seen problems like this sometimes caused by badly behaving "web filters" in certain anti-virus / anti-spyware programs.

Otherwise, read on for some more places where "compression" can be automatically applied to the web server response... Doubling up on any of them can cause problems...

I disabled the gzip, not sure what you mean by deflate.

Apache 2.2: mod_deflate Make sure this is not set for already compressed file types (or for PHP files). Some hosting providers have a section in cpanel called "Optimize Website" where you can adjust this setting.

PHP 5: To disable "automatic" compression in edit php.ini. output_handler and zlib.output_handler should be blank and zlib.output_compression should be set to Off. You can check in Zen Cart's admin interface by clicking on "version" to see the current settings for this on your host.

Zen Cart: To disable "automatic" GZip Compression log into Zen Cart's admin interface and go to "configuration" -> "GZip Compression".

[jwlamb]

First, is everything working for YOU when you LOG in with a TEST account? If it is, could just be the "customer" is using an obscure browser, did not fully clear their cache, or may have protection software installed which is filtering the requests (cookies and website pages)... I've seen problems like this sometimes caused by badly behaving "web filters" in certain anti-virus / anti-spyware programs.

Thank you, yes it is working for me when logged in under my test account and as a guest. I'm going to lean more towards a not fully cleared cache and possibly anti-whateverware as he was on a government computer (that sucks, 99% of my customers are military)

Thank you, and hopefully this was an isolated incident.

[jwlamb]

Should have added that I am using V1.5.1
Thank you!