I experienced the same issue, but with tiny.url. The user tried to register immediately after checkout so it shouldn’t be a matter of length of time he waited…
Thanks in advanve!
Martin
Yes they seem to swap between multiple short url sites.
Why don’t they just come up with their own system or just use one thye know works e.g bit.ly and their simple API to get a short URL.
I guess they have their reasons but it is a bit annoying when it’s all been going smoothly until recently.
Maybe their last update was the cause?
Hi
I have just had another one of these issues.
In between I had about 4/5 people all signing up for monthly/weekly subscriptions okay. However today I had another complaint.
The only thing I can see the same is that although they did pay and register on PayPal at 2pm today (emailed me at 4pm) is that the sort URL link is once again goog.gl – is this significant.
Also what happens with Cloudflare when your site is behind it as its a reverse proxy so most IPS will be the same. Will that means LOTS of people getting the same IP and then reaching the “block by IP number” feature?
I have installed the Cloudflare.m module so in the access_logs all the IP addresses should be their original IPs and NOT Cloudflares.
Are there know issues with Cloudflare, Caching plugins OR anything else apart from the goog.le short URL that is the common denominator?
Some response on this would be appreciated as I want this site to run automatically without spending my Saturdays giving out technical support to users.
Thanks
Rob
I am just a user, and I haven’t experienced this problem. But, in response to one of your points, there is a MAJOR problem in trying to use this (or any other membership plugin) with caching plugins if the latter aren’t (or can’t be) set up correctly.
Hi
Sorry but what do you mean by major Caching Plugins and how do you identify that they are not working properly?
What plugins are you talking about WP Static File Disk / Memory Cace like WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache or do you mean reverse proxies like Cloudflare?
Out of the hundreds of members I have regularly paying through s2 I have only had these 2 people complain about trying to confirm their membership.
More info and data would be required please – and have you talked to s2 about this – and is there even a way to talk to s2 admin by email?]
Thanka
Ro
Sorry, but I didn’t say “major caching plugins”: I said there is a major problem using a caching plugin (i.e. any caching plugin) unless it is configured properly.
In other words, I was talking about plugins like Super Cache and W3 Total Cache. If you have them set up perfectly, you will be fine. But if not, you will have a problem.
I would always recommend using Quick Cache because it’s developed by the s2member team and therefore works with s2member without a problem. Ideally, I’d recommend Quick Cache Pro because, when used with the Pro version of s2member, you can actually cache content for logged-in users (which no other membership plugin that I know of can do).
On the other hand, all that might be required here is that you enter an appropriate URI Exclusion in your caching plugin (e.g. /login/). Obviously, I can’t say because I don’t have your setup, but that has usually solved login problems for me.
Similarly, though, CDNs can cause problems too if not configured correctly (which can be very hard to do: every expert I know suggests disabling Varnish, for example).
If you have the Pro version, you can contact s2 on their website: Help/Docs -> Contact a Human.
I have heard S2 recommend Quick Cache but I am loathe to change things about after they had worked for 2+ years so far so well.
I am using WP Super Cache and have been since i started over 2+ years ago. I did have Apache caching turned on but turned that off as too much memory was being used.
I also have WP Widget Cache on which works or seems to for all time.
I don’t know these two users have only just stopped working with short URLs but other users have joined OK.
I don’t like playing around with caching plugins especially when I have had them working for so long which makes me suggest its a modern S2 or other Jetpack like plugin update as Jetpack updates have caused me many issues before.
Also the fact that not all my subscribers are getting this problem only a couple who have had goog.le shortened URLs makes mW think it’s not just S2 either.
Is there a way of getting the full unshortened URL out of the DB and editing that message so I could say “If these URLs don’t work please try this URL instead”?
I have WP Super Cache, WP Widget Cache as WP plugins installed and then Cloudflare & WPs BWP Minify and Cloudflares module to return original IPs to the Apache error log.
All this was working until a few weeks ago. Why when and what has happened I have no idea!
Ideas, things to try, things to ask my Rackspace hoster please let me know!
Thanks in advance for any help or ideaa given much appreciated.
Rob
I can certainly understand why you are loathe to change things that have worked well for so long.
My suggestion would be to try the simple things first. Do you have full logs of what happens on your site (e.g. of which user agent was used to register or login at any particular time)?
I ask because whenever I’ve experienced odd, intermittent login/registration problems, they have always been tied to the use of a specific browser. Firefox is known to cache more aggressively than other browsers so, if this really is a caching issue, then I suspect that the users with the problem were all using Firefox.
Unfortunately, identifying the problem and solving it are two different things! But I’d certainly suggest logging everything as the first step in identifying the problem.
I just re-read your last post. I saw the word “Jetpack” and shuddered!
If I ever see that on a site having problems, I always look there first! I would never have it on a site of mine.
Yes Jetpack has caused (and had me resolve) so many issues with it than I have lost count.
Omnisearcch screws things up
Cannot get stats just get wp-o-matic dashboard
Social Media has caused issues
And so on – only good thing is the [youtube=blah] square bracket links.
Plus more and more of WP is being moved over to WP developed systems like Jetpack, WP Super Cache and Akismet etc.
The thing is I have two site both have exactly the same plugins installed.
However only the site with s2 is having the problems. And only within the last 2 weeks.
It’s late Sun night now and I’m half cut do debugging is a bit of a job right now but any PHP script or code I csn put in anywhere to help would be much appreciated.
Ta
Rob
Hi
I have just had someone else register to my site and NOT have any problems at all – I emailed and asked them.
Using this IP online checker which uses various other online checkers the IP they used came from Huddersfield – although I have seen on MAPS before where an accurate city IP cannot be found the “center” of the country is used instead which would map roughly to “Huddersfield”
E.G
Country Region City ISP
94.X.33.XX United Kingdom England Huddersfield Sky Broadband
Continent Latitude Longitude Time Zone
Europe 53.65 -1.78 GMT
The important thing is that the IP in the log file is NOT a clouflare IP address. So It’s not Cloudflare setting S2 Members IP max use setting off. E.g if you login from over 10 different IP addresses within a month you get banned. Which I thought it might have been if everyone was sharing an IP.
Also their user-agent looks like IE7 e.g “Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; yie10; rv:11.0) like Gecko”
I am using WP Super Cache and as far as I know you cannot add pages NOT to be cached in any instance. I know you can say “don’t cache if the page has a query string on it” which I do often.
However I think it is an issue with the shorterner tool they are using for some reason.
Any tips let me know.
Thanks
Rob
I think that’s actually IE11 on Windows 7.
If it’s a caching issue, I would expect this to go through without a problem, as it has done. You just need to keep logging and see what you can find out.
Another thought that occurs is whether you are using any other plugin that impacts your login or registration process, like Theme My Login.
I am a bit surprised that WP Super Cache doesn’t have somewhere you can add information about pages not to be cached. I know both W3 Total Cache (though otherwise I really don’t like it) and Quick Cache both have that option.
Hi
LOL I haven’t used an IE browser since FF and Chrome came out so I wouldn’t know an IE user-agent if it slapped me in the face!
By the way I did find an option in WP Super Cache to force pages not to be cached.
However as the content is totally different person to person it shouldn’t get cached. In my eyes any normal caching plugin shouldn’t cache a page if the name, URLS, links etc are different from page to page e.g dynamic – well I believe so anyway.
I could put these URLS into this box but I have a sneaky suspicion that the error is something to to do with the type of URL used in relation to payment type.
I have only ever (recently) had a few people complain when it’s been a monthly subscription being bought or a daily subscription with a goog.le short URL.
Obviously it’s only a suspicion and if I knew where the code was in the plugins code (as long as it’s not all RPC) I could add some debug to a log file for future people and tests.
I have built some of my own payment systems before in PHP/.NET, to sell my own products on my own site, handle the behind the scenes IPN notifications from PayPal, Hashes to verfiy the Request and so on. Therefore if I could find this code I could edit it and throw some of of my own in.
I don’t suppose you OR anyone else knows where the code is that handles the shortening of the confirmation URL (in the plugin clse I could get stuck in and throw some debug in. Check the URLS and maybe even use my own OR force it to use one that always works.
Thanks for your help!
Rob
