[Done v1.3.9/2.0.0] Possible bug with zenid? Persistent zenid

After just setting up a new ZC store, I noticed sometimes the zenid would not go away.

I've determined this happens on a site set on the configure.php files as http://www.myzencartstore.com

and this happens when it is accessed directly without using the the 'www', i.e., ** myzencartstore.com**

This causes the zenid to appear persistenly on all urls until the home link is clicked. This in turn causes many issues with sessions. PayPal Express won't work, when you return from PayPal to complete the sale, you get a message saying the session has expired and all items in the shopping cart are gone. With GoogleCheckout, if you go to the GC payment page and you return to ZC to edit the order, all items in the shopping cart will be gone.

I really don't know much about this so I'm not sure if this is a bug or just the way things are supposed to work.

If you want to reproduce this, you can try the zen-cart.com website itself.
You'll need to use a new fresh browser window, by this I mean the browser must have just been opened, no exising windows open, so if you have any windows open you'll have to close them and restart the browser. Or if you have an additional browser installed just use the other browser so you don't have to close the windows you currently have open with the browser you are using.

Type zen-cart.com in the address bar, now click on any of the ZC related links on the page, but not the home link. For example, try clicking on top links (Downloads, showcase, partners, hosting, donate) and see how the zenid never disappears.

Someone please confirm whether this is a bug or normal behavior and a possible solution.

Thanks.

Can someone confirm whether this is the correct code to redirect from mydomain.com to https://www.mydomain.com ?

RewriteEngine On
rewritecond %{http_host} ^mydomain.com
rewriteRule ^(.*) http://www.mydomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

I put this on my .htaccess file and it seems to solve the issue, but I want to make sure the syntax is correct since I'm completely new to this Mod Rewrite thing.

That seems to be the generally accepted approach.
Also discussed here:
http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?p=301843#post301843

Thanks DrByte.

I swear I did many searches for zenid and that thread never came up.

Anyway, is this a bug or this is this just how things should behave in this case?

It seems like everyone who's configured their shop with www should be advised to use the mod rewrite thing.

If the rewrite approach works for you, then use it.

Unfortunately not all webservers are setup equal, and the rewrite option is not always available to everyone.

If you need it because your GC returns are coming back to the wrong address, then perhaps you've got your GC setup wrong.

In my opinion, this is needed for anyone who has their shops configured with 'www' in the configure files as opposed to just 'mydomain.com'.

This is needed because if someone accesses the site without typing/including 'www', there will be many issues.

You can't properly use paypal express checkout. When you come back, a session expired error is received and all items from the cart will be gone.

With GC is not much of an issue, but if you click on edit order, which should return you to the shopping cart contents, it will be empty.

There will also be log in issues. And you don't really want customer to copy and paste links with zenids

I never noticed this issue until I set up a new store recently. The reason I never noticed this before is because I always accessed the other store using a bookmark, which had 'www' in the address.
I noticed this on the new store because I typed the address directly and did not include 'www' (who types that anyway).

I have everything configured correctly. This is not a particular problem occurring with my store. The zenid issue, and the associated problems, occur with any ZC store configured with 'www' in the configure.php files.

I have checked many ZC stores from the showcase section and they all show this. You can even reproduce the persistent zenid issue with the zen-cart.com site itself as mentioned on the first post.