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Visitors booted back to login page


gpraceman

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I have a few visitors that can login, add something to their shopping cart, but at some point get booted back to the login page. Some don't even get that far. They login and then try to hit another page and get booted back to the login page. There is no error message. For me and most other visitors, there is absolutely no problem logging in and checking out.

 

The vistors having the problem are using a varitey of browers, some on their work computers, and others on their home computers. There seems to be no commonality. One guy had problems while using his VPN connection, but once logged out, he was able to checkout no problem.

 

I had moved this site and my others to VPS hosting about 3 months ago (during my dead season) but now when it is getting busy I'm getting these reports. When the site was on shared hosting, using a shared SSL cert, I didn't have these complaints.

 

I don't know if this is a problem with the server setup or with some firewall or security settings on the visitor side of the house. I've tried maxing out my browser security settings, turning cookies off, turning javascript off, but have not been able to reproduce the problem.

 

Any ideas? I'm losing sales because of this problem!

 

The site is running osCommerce V2.1 (too heavily modded to try upgrading it while I'm busy).

Awana Grand Prix and Pinewood Derby racing - Where a child, an adult and a small block of wood combine for a lot of fun and memories.

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Someone on another forum may have found the issue. When the site was on the old server, the "Check IP Address" session setting was set to False. On the new server it was set to True. I really didn't think I had changed any of the settings during the move. The setting is now set to False and one of my customers confirms that they no longer have the issue with getting kicked back to the login page.

 

The problem and solution was posted on this site http://watch.oscommerce.co.nz/

 

There are plenty of ways to create problems with an osCommerce store by not understanding implications of a particular setting. Some problems will only appear in an intermittent way, making it harder to diagnose and fix. Hopefully this helps someone avoid tweaking settings that can cause problems, and will help others solve problems with their store.

 

In the Configuration section of the osCommerce admin area are a group of settings related to "Sessions". An easy way to break certain user's access to your site is to set "Check IP Address" to "True".

 

Certain ISPs (including one major US ISP), may change the IP address of their customer over the course of a session. In particular their IP address may change when they visit a page on your site requiring SSL to view. Enabling the check on IP will effectively log them out.

 

This setting can create problems with users being logged out in a seemingly random way, or having problems with their shopping cart contents disappearing, or being unable to log in to the store. These are all potential symptoms of lost sessions.

 

Some of the other settings here can cause predictable problems if enabled. Make sure you or your developer understand what they are for before enabling. Setting everything to "true" does not necessarily create a more secure store.

Awana Grand Prix and Pinewood Derby racing - Where a child, an adult and a small block of wood combine for a lot of fun and memories.

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