Unable to log in or add to cart

Hello All

I am having a random issue whereby sometimes customers cannot add products to the cart or log in.

The software is zen 1.5.1 on domain dev(dot)colourshield(dot)com

The problem goes away once the browser is refreshed and the customer can carry on as normal.

Needless to say it’s causing quite some frustration at my end and at the customer end, not to mention the loss of sales, as I said it’s a random issue and a professional developer has not been able to find the problem, due to it’s random nature.

Could this be a setting on the server?

Any Help would be really appreciated.
Best Regards
Renz

My Admin>configuration>sessions; are as follows just in case the issue could be there.

Cookie Domain True

Force Cookie Use False

Check SSL Session ID False

Check User Agent False

Check IP Address False

Prevent Spider Sessions False

Recreate Session False

IP to Host Conversion Status true

Use root path for cookie path False

Add period prefix to cookie domain True

Why are those sessions settings different than the defaults?

Defaults are:
Session Directory ... this should point to your cache folder, same as defined in your configure.php for DIR_FS_SQL_CACHE
Cookie Domain True
Force Cookie Use False
Check SSL Session ID False
Check User Agent False
Check IP Address False
Prevent Spider Sessions True
Recreate Session True
IP to Host Conversion Status true
Use root path for cookie path False
Add period prefix to cookie domain True

Thanks I am not sure about that but I will get it back to default. Do you think that the cause of my problems?

[QUOTE=DrByte;1247627]Why are those sessions settings different than the defaults?

I asked why that was and apparently it was an attempt at fixing the problem. "I am having a random issue whereby sometimes customers cannot add products to the cart or log in."

The defaults have now been restored and the random issue is still present...any other ideas of where to look for this issue, is there a process of elimination ?

Many Thanks
renz

Renz:

I am having a random issue whereby sometimes customers cannot add products to the cart or log in.

Random problems are the worst type of problem to have, and the most difficult to resolve.

So, point#1. A computer/program will never do anything that is totally random. Never lose sight of this fact.

The 'trick' to resolving this type of issue is trying to figure out the differences between the normal course of events and the apparent random events.

This could be something as broad as the browser being used by the customers, to something as narrow as a solitary customer with a faulty router.

Another thing to consider is how often does the issue occur?
Once a day? Once a week? Once a month? Every second customer? Every 10th customer?

Are all the customers using the same ISP? (eg, Bigpond, Telstra, Optus, etc, etc)

These are all rhetorical questions, and the point is there will be a pattern to the behaviour, which is something you need to identify. The problem may not even be yours to fix.

FWIW, cache/session/cookies generally are the cause of the type of issue that you are having and if the default settings don't work then finding what needs to be changed can be a bit of a challenge because a session in progress won't be affected by any changes made, which often leads to the suspicion that 'nothing happened' so another changed is made which can then compound the problem.. ie, the 1st change may have actually fixed the problem, the second change causing it again, and the person doing the changes is unaware that by the time they see the results, both changes come into play.

You should always logout and log back in again to see or test the results of any change. Only change one thing at a time, and change it back again if it doesn't give the expected or required results. Then make the next change. Repeat as needed.

Hope this is of some small help.

Cheers
RodG

Related articles:
http://www.zen-cart.com/content.php?126-i-cant-login-to-the-admin-after-installing-zen-cart
http://www.zen-cart.com/content.php?258-i-cant-stay-logged-in-to-my-admin-area-or-php-session-handling-isnt-working-for-me

Hi All....

it has just happened and this is the information I could see in the back end......
I could not log in, add to cart until some time passed, clicking between windows and products eventually I could add to cart, in this case I did not manually refresh the browser...

seems like my browsing time is expiring, does this help shed any light on the issue..?
Thank you..

Renz

00:01:27 0
¥Guest 118.208.6.40 09:57:22 09:57:22
Time Since Clicked:
00:01:27 ago Session ID: 2g74795pmfe8j12atpkqcggggu31kjmv
Host: ppp118-208-6-40.lns20.bne1.internode.on.net
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:29.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/29.0 AlexaToolbar/alxf-2.19
/index.php?main_page=time_out&zenid=7et15lkvsqnc78uvimh48uvp6t1r4al9
00:01:20 0
¥Guest 118.208.6.40 09:57:29 09:58:46
Time Since Clicked:
00:00:03 ago Session ID: 7et15lkvsqnc78uvimh48uvp6t1r4al9
Host: ppp118-208-6-40.lns20.bne1.internode.on.net
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:29.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/29.0 AlexaToolbar/alxf-2.19
/index.php?main_page=time_out

And Again......

this time I was not able to log in period.....

00:17:22 0
¥Guest 118.208.6.40 10:27:33 10:33:27
Time Since Clicked:
00:11:28 ago Session ID: c11kd3beki4a4q8rrcpbeigog2ffsoea
Host: ppp118-208-6-40.lns20.bne1.internode.on.net
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:29.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/29.0 AlexaToolbar/alxf-2.19
/index.php?main_page=login&action=process
00:11:28 0
¥Guest 118.208.6.40 10:33:27 10:42:26
Time Since Clicked:
00:02:29 ago Session ID: akad9sk88rd4fgbu51gm61jktj2va5nd
Host: ppp118-208-6-40.lns20.bne1.internode.on.net
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:29.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/29.0 AlexaToolbar/alxf-2.19
/index.php?main_page=login&action=process
00:02:29 0
¥Guest 118.208.6.40 10:42:26 10:43:17
Time Since Clicked:
00:01:38 ago Session ID: fmde9kcbt5bskc527f26msbahcqb08qb
Host: ppp118-208-6-40.lns20.bne1.internode.on.net
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:29.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/29.0 AlexaToolbar/alxf-2.19
/index.php?main_page=login&action=process
00:01:37 0
¥Guest 118.208.6.40 10:43:18 10:44:23
Time Since Clicked:
00:00:32 ago Session ID: pntrq0c0oec451qkqdlosao3b1adtvaq
Host: ppp118-208-6-40.lns20.bne1.internode.on.net
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:29.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/29.0 AlexaToolbar/alxf-2.19
/index.php?main_page=login&action=process
00:00:32 0
¥Guest 118.208.6.40 10:44:23 10:44:45
Time Since Clicked:
00:00:10 ago Session ID: h03a6tgoldk1gkabainpnoiq2bi68dji
Host: ppp118-208-6-40.lns20.bne1.internode.on.net
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:29.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/29.0 AlexaToolbar/alxf-2.19
/index.php?main_page=login&action=process
00:00:10 0
¥Guest 118.208.6.40 10:44:45 10:44:45
Time Since Clicked:
00:00:10 ago Session ID: 7et15lkvsqnc78uvimh48uvp6t1r4al9
Host: ppp118-208-6-40.lns20.bne1.internode.on.net
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:29.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/29.0 AlexaToolbar/alxf-2.19
/index.php?main_page=shopping_cart

DrByte:

Why are those sessions settings different than the defaults?

Defaults are:
Session Directory ... this should point to your cache folder, same as defined in your configure.php for DIR_FS_SQL_CACHE
Cookie Domain True
Force Cookie Use False
Check SSL Session ID False
Check User Agent False
Check IP Address False
Prevent Spider Sessions True
Recreate Session True
IP to Host Conversion Status true
Use root path for cookie path False
Add period prefix to cookie domain True

To anser your question, I was asked by my SEO team to remove " We do have some code that detects Google bot and shows modified header for it (may be treated as cloaking):While it seems not crucial, it also has no sense as Googlebot knows how to handle cookies. So, we think it would be better to remove it." Kindly see attachment.

I spoke to my developer about this and he simply made Prevent Spider Sessions from 'True to False' which fixed the issue and I thought nothing else of it. (other than the annoying spiders visible in who is online) All the other settings are now back to default.

Other than this I recently spoke to my server guy, (having spent some time looking around on the forum at posts of similar issues) ...and asked if the server could be changed from:

*The server session cookie settings are:

Cookie-lifetime - 0(until browser restarted)*
*
Session lifetime set to 20 minutes* raised 90 minutes which was done....

Session cache expires after 180 minutes

As I see this problem so little I wondered, if it was people adding stuff and then leaving coming back sometime later, for this I m also considering Plugin Keep Cart.

Any thoughts/comments are greatly welcome to this post.
Regards
R