Items don't stay in the cart

[Guest]

On my site, I have been using OScommerce, however, I get a lot of calls, and complaints from people who go to put things into their shopping cart, and move on to check something else out, and when they go to put a second item in their cart, the first one is gone. Or when they go to the checkout process, the items are gone.

 

Does anyone know why this would be happening?

 

I've asked them to make sure that their cookies are enabled, and they say that they are.

 

Any help would be appreciated,

 

Julie.

www.attitudesboutique.com

[wheeloftime]

On my site, I have been using OScommerce, however, I get a lot of calls, and complaints from people who go to put things into their shopping cart, and move on to check something else out, and when they go to put a second item in their cart, the first one is gone. Or when they go to the checkout process, the items are gone.

 

Does anyone know why this would be happening?

 

I've asked them to make sure that their cookies are enabled, and they say that they are.

 

Any help would be appreciated,

 

Julie.

www.attitudesboutique.com

I can't see any problems. Your visitors are probably 'occupied' with other things :D

 

Another note: you might want to look for some kind of thumbnail contribution as your site loads really slow with all those large initial pictures

Second note: are those shipping prices for real (150 USD to Germany for two pieces of clothing) ?!

[Guest]

Occupied with other things?

 

I actually don't ship to Germany, and that's something else I'd like to learn how to fix.. how do I remove all those countries, and just leave shipping within the United States. UPS charges exhoribitant rates to ship overseas, however, when I shipped usps, I couldn't track the packages, and got tons of chargebacks...

 

Julie.

 

www.attitudesboutique.com

www.msjulie.com

 

I can't see any problems. Your visitors are probably 'occupied' with other things :D

 

Another note: you might want to look for some kind of thumbnail contribution as your site loads really slow with all those large initial pictures

Second note: are those shipping prices for real (150 USD to Germany for two pieces of clothing) ?!

[Terra]

osCommerce works with sessions and these will time-out after a set number of minutes, so if your customers toddle off for X minutes, it will start a new session (and their old basket is gone). The exact number of minutes I think is set in php.ini but don't quote me on that.

 

One way to avoid losing your basket is to log in first - once a visitor is logged in, their basket content will be stored.

 

The session expiry is a security feature and as such should be set to a reasonable time - I'm curently using 20 minutes, which seems okay. The session measures time of inactivity, so it's from the last click the clock starts ticking. You can check this out for yourself by visiting your site & then checking the "who's online" in your admin part - after X minutes, your session will disappear.

 

I tend to think that customers are used to session time-out - many sites use it, including of course all banking sites where security is key. Might be worth checking how many minutes your site is currently set to.

[Guest]

Terra,

Thank you I'll go check on that -- or rather have the person who installed it, check on it.

 

Will let you know if it works,

 

Julie.

 

osCommerce works with sessions and these will time-out after a set number of minutes, so if your customers toddle off for X minutes, it will start a new session (and their old basket is gone). The exact number of minutes I think is set in php.ini but don't quote me on that.

 

One way to avoid losing your basket is to log in first - once a visitor is logged in, their basket content will be stored.

 

The session expiry is a security feature and as such should be set to a reasonable time - I'm curently using 20 minutes, which seems okay. The session measures time of inactivity, so it's from the last click the clock starts ticking. You can check this out for yourself by visiting your site & then checking the "who's online" in your admin part - after X minutes, your session will disappear.

 

I tend to think that customers are used to session time-out - many sites use it, including of course all banking sites where security is key. Might be worth checking how many minutes your site is currently set to.

[Guest]

Your cookie configuration settings are not correct. The cookie domain should be .attitudesboutique.com and NOT .www.attitudesboutique.com. Also, since you use a redirect from the root to the shop directory you should change your cookie path to '/' and NOT '/shop/'.

 

Once you correct these settings your issues will be resolved.

[Terra]

Devx - I'm not sure - on the sites I set up I always use the following settings in /includes/configure.php for shops installed in a folder

 

define('HTTP_SERVER', 'http://www.mysite.com'); // use www to match with cookie domain

 

define('HTTP_COOKIE_DOMAIN', 'www.mysite.com');

define('HTTPS_COOKIE_DOMAIN', ''); // leave empty if site has no SSL

define('HTTP_COOKIE_PATH', '/foldername/'); // enter your foldername e.g. "shop"

define('HTTPS_COOKIE_PATH', ''); // leave empty if site has no SSL

 

However - I usually never use redirect, so not sure how that affects things

[Guest]

Devx - I'm not sure - on the sites I set up I always use the following settings in /includes/configure.php for shops installed in a folder

  define('HTTP_SERVER', 'http://www.mysite.com'); // use www to match with cookie domain

 define('HTTP_COOKIE_DOMAIN', 'www.mysite.com');
 define('HTTPS_COOKIE_DOMAIN', ''); // leave empty if site has no SSL
 define('HTTP_COOKIE_PATH', '/foldername/'); // enter your foldername e.g. "shop"
 define('HTTPS_COOKIE_PATH', ''); // leave empty if site has no SSL

However - I usually never use redirect, so not sure how that affects things

It is common practice for one to enter a domain without the www in which case the cookie will not be valid given the HTTP_COOKIE_DOMAIN above. However, if you use .mysite.com it will make the cookie valid no matter if it is www.mysite.com, mysite.com, forum.mysite.com, or basically anything else.

 

The cookie path should ALWAYS be as restrictive as possible for security however what if there were other areas of the site that they site owner wanted to access that cookie information. For example, what if they wanted to have a members only area and need that session ID to check that the customer was logged in. This would require a least restrictive path and the logical choice is '/'. However, I stress that the most restrictive settings be used as appropriate but sometimes necessity trumps all.

[evalguy]

Go to your admin panel and then Tools --> Server Info. Look for a parameter called session.gc_maxlifetime. That's the number of seconds before the session ID expires. For me, it's 1440 seconds (24 minutes). Ask your customers to log in, and if the problem disappears, then this really was the problem.

 

Cheers,

-Neil.

[♥Vger]

1440 seconds is the default setting for session time-out (24 minutes), provided you store sessions in the database - in which case MySQL does a 'garbage' clear up after that period of time. This does not apply if you store sessions in files in a 'tmp' folder. - they just accumulate. Another reason for storing sessions in the database and not in files.

 

It is always best to match your http_cookie_domain to your http_server address, and then you have no problems e.g.

http://www.yourdomain.com for http_server

www.yourdomain.com for http_cookie_domain

 

The use of .yourdomain.com for http_cookie_domain is server specific and on many servers this setting will not work in the way intended e.g.

http://www.yourdomain.com for http_server, with

.yourdomain.com for http_cookie_domain will lose the session on many servers and result in the basket contents being lost.

 

Vger

[Guest]

The use of .yourdomain.com for http_cookie_domain is server specific and on many servers this setting will not work in the way intended e.g.

http://www.yourdomain.com for http_server, with

.yourdomain.com for http_cookie_domain will lose the session on many servers and result in the basket contents being lost.

 

Vger

Actually, this is incorrect. A setting of .domain.com sets the cookie scope site wide and makes it accessable no matter where the customer is located. For example, if the catalog is in the /store/ directory it allows the osCsid session data to be available on the root pages (useful if they want to integrate store components on root files). Another example is if they have forum.domain.com and want to know if the board member is also a registered / logged in customer.

 

REFERENCE: Set Cookie Reference

 

Here is the quote of interest:

Setting: domain

[Description: The domain that the cookie is available.

Example: To make the cookie available on all subdomains of example.com then you'd set it to '.example.com'. The . is not required but makes it compatible with more browsers. Setting it to www.example.com will make the cookie only available in the www subdomain. Refer to tail matching in the spec for details.

 

Most people don't realize that for the domain www.domain.com the www is a subdomain. This has it's roots back when servers were not as powerful as today and server clustering was essential.

 

Thus, .domain.com allows the cookie scope to be valid for the entire host domain and will not adversely affect the cookie access but instead be as compatible as possible.

[selectronics4u]

Your cookie configuration settings are not correct. The cookie domain should be .attitudesboutique.com and NOT .www.attitudesboutique.com. Also, since you use a redirect from the root to the shop directory you should change your cookie path to '/' and NOT '/shop/'.

 

Once you correct these settings your issues will be resolved.

 

 

does this work with shared ssl also? thanks Don