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Don Pogreba
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October 23, 2018 at 1:12 pm
I have used your software for years to run registrations on an event and it is 97% perfect for what I need, with ONE INCREDIBLY ANNOYING FRUSTRATION.
For some reason, some item choices (with no predictable reason) cause registration to hang and stick at a spinning wheel, blocking the user moving on to payment. It’s really hard to debug, because it could be any of a list of items that causes the issue.
https://www.hefmt.org/events/2018-great-conversations/
Today, I deleted a choice from the dropdown (item 29) and recreated it. After that registration worked, but there was no reason it didn’t work in the first place.
And now I am waiting for the next combination of table choices that will cause the issue.
This has been a consistent problem for at least three years in the program and never seems to get resolved. HOW CAN I AVOID THE SPINNING WHEEL OF DEATH on some registrations?
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Josh
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October 23, 2018 at 2:37 pm
Hi Don,
I’m so sorry to hear this, have you reached out before about this? In any case, when there’s a spinning wheel there will also be an error logged to your server’s PHP error log that will help explain what happened. Can you check those logs? Usually they’re available from your hosting account’s control panel.
If those are not available, WordPress has a DEBUG mode that can be used to capture and log errors. You make an amendment to your site’s wp-config.php file where you change this:
define( 'WP_DEBUG', false );
to this:
define( 'WP_DEBUG', true );
if ( WP_DEBUG ) {
@ini_set( 'display_errors', 0 );
define( 'WP_DEBUG_LOG', true );
define( 'WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY', false );
}
Then, the next time there’s an error on the form submission, there will be an error logged to a debug.log file located in your site’s wp-content folder.
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Don Pogreba
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October 24, 2018 at 12:13 pm
I did last year and the year before. And the problem was only solved by deleting and recreating options for tables.
Yesterday, choice #29 for table selection caused the spinning wheel so I deleted it and recreated it. It worked, but now today table choice #29 is causing the same problem.
https://www.hefmt.org/events/2018-great-conversations/
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Josh
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October 24, 2018 at 12:16 pm
Oh, I see you posted here about this one year ago, but never followed up.
Can you make that edit to the wp-config.php file to activate WP_DEBUG?
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Don Pogreba
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October 24, 2018 at 1:25 pm
Sure.
I can’t login to do that now, but can someone get my login credentials to my WP site and see if there is something wrong with some of these options that is causing the issue?
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Josh
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October 24, 2018 at 1:40 pm
Hi,
If the user-interface allowed you to set those option values, then reviewing the options in the Questions editor UI isn’t going to reveal something wrong. The debug output will be the first step in troubleshooting this.
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Don Pogreba
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October 24, 2018 at 2:25 pm
Great.
Has anyone ever considered that many a spinning goddamn wheel that causes registrants to leave the site isn’t the way to deal with an error, especially on a bug that has persisted for years and can’t be fixed by replication?
Maybe including some kind of error code that users can report or automatically notifying the admin of a failure?
okji
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Josh
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October 24, 2018 at 3:00 pm
Most errors will result in an error message being shown as there is all kinds of error handling built-in to the software. As you might imagine, we could take away the spinning wheel, but the un-submitted form would still be a problem.
As this is a strange one, it may not even be a bug within Event Espresso.
May I ask can you try changing the value of the answer option to be:
Glacier Park's Chalet Reconstruction to see if that changes anything? The reason I ask is I suspect there may be a mod security ruleset on the server that’s being triggered.
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Don Pogreba
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October 24, 2018 at 3:08 pm
I can try that, but it literally worked yesterday when I changed it from the original entry. And now I am getting another error on another one of 4 possible tables.
And to change that, I have to delete the existing entry and make a new one, right?
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Don Pogreba
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October 24, 2018 at 3:17 pm
I was just able to trigger the error and have a debug log. Can I send it?
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Josh
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October 24, 2018 at 3:49 pm
Is there a fatal error in the debug log?
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Don Pogreba
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October 24, 2018 at 3:53 pm
Nope.
I renamed table #29 again today, this time to 29.Glacier Park’s Chalet Reconstruction and it seemed to go through, but that’s hardly reassuring because that is exactly what I did yesterday.
Is there some text that can’t be used in entries?
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Josh
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October 24, 2018 at 4:09 pm
The absence of a fatal error and removing “Sperry” from the option value allowing for the form to submit both indicate there are some aggressive mod security rules set on the server.
A possible backstory that could have led to what’s happening here: A spam bot found a comment form on someone’s site and dropped links to cheap knockoffs of bags, shoes, and so on. “Sperry” happens to make some nice shoes and boots, nice enough for there to be knockoffs. Somewhere along the way the spammy links get reported and make their way into ModSecurity rules applied to servers.
In this case, your registration form might be getting tripped up by the ModSec ruleset. Can you check with your host to see if they have ModSecurity turned on for your server, and if so, can they check the ModSecurity logs to see if the rulesets are getting triggered when the registration form is submitted?
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