Strange session id problem

I found a strange problem related to the session ID. A customer complained that they could not log into their account. I found that when the session ID exists in the URL, such as when they hit the home page first and then click on Log In, they cannot log into their account. They are just returned to the home page and the nav bar does not display the My Account link.

Once they get past that point and the session ID is gone from the URL, they can log in.

If I cannot disable the session ID in the .htacces file, is there any workaround for this?

Any ideas?

I cannot repeat this problem ...

What version Zen Cart?

Clean install or an Upgrade?

Have you an URL where we can see this actually happen?

... and are you using an SEO URL mod?

I'm using 1.3.8a and it was a clean install.

Yes, I am using SEO URL.

It is a strange problem because I don't see how the session ID in the URL would do this.

http://www.gadgethq.com/

Perhaps it is related to the cookie, but the session cookie should exist by the time someone hits the login page.

It does this with both IE and FireFox.

It you click on a few links before you try to log in, the login works as expected.

We have had reports of similar problems using one of the SEO mods - If you turn it off is there still a problem?

I cannot turn it off right now. It is a live site that is getting tons of Christmas traffic because I've got some hot items and a lot of top positions for product pages in Google.

Perhaps I can try that at 1 AM or after Christmas.

Thus far there has been only one customer complaint and I am getting repeat orders. Most repeat customers would probably never notice it because they hit several pages and add items to the cart before checkout.

It certainly could be related to SEO URL.

For the moment just turn off Recreate Sessions in Admin. Go to Admin > Configuration > Sessions and set Recreate Session to False.

Regards,
Christian.

CJPinder:

For the moment just turn off Recreate Sessions in Admin. Go to Admin > Configuration > Sessions and set Recreate Session to False.
If you do that, you'll want to pray that neither you nor your customers shares any URLs with a zenid in them ...

DrByte:

If you do that, you'll want to pray that neither you nor your customers shares any URLs with a zenid in them ...
Very true. I wouldn't suggest it as a long term fix. Just a short term fix until he can try turning off the SEO URL mod and do some trouble shooting.

Regards,
Christian.

Thanks for the ideas.

I'll have to play with this further when I'm up some time in the middle of the night. I've got so much traffic right now that I don't want to risk anything until things quiet down.

The Christmas rush is the wrong time to experiment. :ohmy:

I have discovered that this is exactly what is happening to my site as well, I originally thought that no one could login at all (this only happened to me in IE7 and not Firefox but I had another customer with the same problem in Firefox) and so I turned on Force Cookie Usage....more attempting to troubleshoot led me to find that after a few clicks and losing the zenid login was successful....then led me here through searching LOL

I have the Simple SEO URL's mod installed, is that the same SEO mod you have?

Setting Recreate Sessions to False fixes the problem, but I know despite warnings not to, many ppl paste the links with the zenid so I don't want to set it to False for too long LOL

I will be happy to help try to troubleshoot....if I can LOL :)

Turn off the module, see if that helps.
If it does, then it's the module's fault. If I remember correctly you are using a pretty old version of it. If it turns out to be the seo module problem then please upgrade.

Yeah, I tried a while back to upgrade to one of the latest ones, it had the ajax extras and I got a lot of errors which I can't remember now [oh oh just remembered LOL the module manager page was blank LOL] so I put it all back and put off re-trying the upgrade....now that things have settled down a bit though might be time to try again LOL

But yeah....I turned off SSU and logged in right off the bat....off to upgrade so cross your fingers for me LOL

Happy to report that upgrading Simple SEO Url's to the latest release fixed this problem for me...thank you not only for a great mod but your fast help on a thread that's not the support thread LOL!

Now I gotta go set aliases for my designers (manufacturers) LOL

I don't think an upgrade will fix the problem for me. I am running Ultimate SEO URLs 2.106. According to the description, version 2.107 doesn't contain any new features or bug fixes. It just adds Spanish.

Maybe I need to think about switching to Simple SEO URLs.

Just my humble opinion, but I definitely recommend switching, the simple seo is a fantastic mod :)