Checkout dumping cart contents, order not placed...

Hello,
I am running zen 1.2.7 (yeah, I know) and have not made any changes recently. I had a successful order placed on 10/21/06. On 10/22/06 I had 3 new accounts created with no orders placed. I have not been able to get any feedback from these potential customers as to whether or not they attempted to place orders as of yet. I have checked my Paypal account and verified that they did not place orders via Paypal (ie stuck orders.)
I attempted a test order. I got to the confirmation step, clicked confirm. Rather than getting the order confirmation page I ended up at the your shopping cart page with an empty basket. I then recreated the exact same order (payment method was a valid cc) and followed the progress of the order using tools->whos online. Of course, this time the order went through successfully.

I'm not sure how to begin troubleshooting this. Any ideas?

Thanks :smile:
Audra

Has your host made any recent upgrades?

My host is Siteground. They said there have been no changes to my servers in the last few days.

I have since placed another test order with no problem, had a customer place a successful order, but yet this morning there is another new account with no order related to it.

Still unsuccessful in getting customer feedback.

Siteground is poking around my cPanel for clues.

Thanks,
Audra

No new information, just an update that Siteground came up with nothing further.

They said there have been no changes to my servers in the last few days

If you were talking to someone reading from a crib sheet on a screen they wouldn't know anything worth knowing.

Siteground is poking around my cPanel for clues

Well, let's just hope that they are using a secure version of cPanel.

Vger

The customer support was from Sitegrounds' online ticketing system. I rarely need to use it, but have no complaints thus far.

They did not end up looking around the cPanel. I misunderstood. They were offering to poke around my admin, but after hearing more details about the problem (basically the apparent randomness of the problem) concluded that wouldn't be useful afterall.

So, back to my original question: does anybody have any thoughts where to begin troubleshooting this (that is after step one of checking w/ my host to see if they have made any changes?)

Thanks!
Audra

Are you sure the new accounts actually wanted to place orders? Lots of folks create accounts and never place orders.

No, I am not sure, but I am sure that when I placed that first test order clicking confirm brought me to an empty shopping cart instead of the checkout confirmation page.

In your Zen Cart admin panel, under Configuration --> Sessions, if Recreate Session is set to true set it to false, retest.

Vger

Thanks Vger,
Although I don't have a clue as to what this setting does, recreate session is already set to false.

Audra

Given your original post I'm not even sure there's a genuine problem here. Please try running half a dozen or so orders through to completion, and if the cart contents do get dumped along the way then please report back here with a full description of what's happening and on which page.

Vger