Log-in Loop – people can’t sign up, keeps telling them to log in

  • Resolved the_webscaper

    (@the_webscaper)


    5 years, 5 months ago

    Hi Stephen,

    Bear with me, I have spent hours troubleshooting this on my client’s website, and I am certain that there is indeed a bug *somewhere* just not sure where and am DESPERATE to fix this major issue urgently. I am having major surgery tomorrow and am not sure when I will be back online!

    SHORT VERSION: parents that are using the SUS links to Log In to Sign Up, and correctly log in, and then are returned back to the SUS pages are still seeing the Log IN to Sign Up link rather than the Sign Up link, causing an infinite loop of logging in – meanwhile they ARE logged in the first time, but never get the chance to actually sign up. The SUS portion of the page is NOT refreshing, so they’re still seeing the Log In to Sign Up.

    FULL Details:
    If you simply go to the page referenced above (https://www.neweaglepto.org/sign-ups/) and create an account, and try to sign up it may work the first time, but please believe me there IS a problem which can be replicated by following the steps below. It’s only CERTAIN FLOWS that are causing an infinite loop of asking the user to log in – they log in, go to the sign up sheet, and are told again to log in to sign up after they successfully did.

    On our main sign ups page, at the top, BEFORE the Sign Up Sheets portion of the page is embedded via shortcode, we have a link to Register for New Account or Log Into Existing Account. If someone logs in with THAT link, everything works fine; they log in, and are returned to the Sign Ups page (which *refreshes* the page, which is key here). They can go into any sheet, into any task, and click Sign Up.

    HOWEVER, if they go to the Sign Ups page (or directly to a sign up SHEET), and BYPASS that login at the top of the page, Click into a Sign Up Sheet (again, NOT yet logged in), then click on the Log In to Sign Up link next to any task and complete the login, it returns them to the full list of sign up sheets – not into the sign up sheet they were just looking at. They will see the yellow highlighted “You have successfully logged in” message at the top of the page (again, this appears ABOVE where the SUS portion is embedded, it’s not part of SUS), confirming that they DID INDEED log in. Since they are now again on the list of sign up sheets, they must once again ENTER their sign up sheet to log in.

    THE PROBLEM is – when they click the name of the sign up sheet (or the Click here to Sign Up link), they go back INTO the same sheet they were in before they logged in, but that page is not REFRESHING, and they are seeing the Log In to Sign Up link next to each of the tasks, NOT the Sign Up link that they should be. So they click Log In to Sign Up (even though they already ARE logged in) and go through an infinite loop of logins.

    IF, when they are on that page, and see the Log In to Sign Up link instead of the Sign Up link as they should, and REFRESH that page, the Log In link changes to the Sign Up link and they can proceed. So the problem that is happening is the SUS shortcode embedded data is NOT refreshing after someone logs in. This client has numerous sign up sheets they just put out and are getting FLOODED with parents calling and emailing because they can’t sign up. The kindergarten sign up chairs already got pissed and set up their own Sign Up Geniuses (which I DETEST!!!) for this so I’m ripping my hair out here.

    Please let me know how we can resolve this – I have this exact same set up on 4 different schools, I’m going to test them to see if it’s happening on all of the sites, or just this one. Happy to continue to discuss via email if you need screenshots or a login or whatever, but I’m truly hoping you can help me quickly.

    Thank you!

    Kym

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • Plugin Author DBAR Productions

    (@dbar-productions)

    Even though this is outside of the scope of my plugin, I created an account on your site and recreated the issue. (NOTE… please delete my user account so I won’t get any newsletters or anything else I don’t want in the future).

    It’s fairly obvious that the site is using some pretty heavy duty caching, and possibly even some ajax loading of some content areas? Everything loads SUPER quick and it’s hard to tell if the whole page is getting refreshed or just certain portions of it via some kind of Ajax loading plugin or script.

    I followed your steps and indeed saw the “login to signup” link again after I had logged in, but if I stay on that page and hold down shift and hit reload to force reload the whole page, then I get the signup link.

    That indicates to me that you site is set to use some pretty aggressive caching of content since I have to hold down shift to force it to actually reload the content on that page instead of using a cached version.

    Nothing I can do about that in the code of my plugin, that is entirely in your web site or maybe some advanced caching on your server. If you are using a caching plugin, or some type of ajax loader, on your site, you’ll need to set it to NOT cache any of the content on the sign ups page. Or, just for testing, completely disable ALL caching (turn off the plugin, and maybe disable Varnish or anything like that on your server). If the problem goes away, that just confirms what the issue is.

    Thread Starter the_webscaper

    (@the_webscaper)

    Hi Stephen,?
    That was actually my initial thought, so I already tried that —turned off caching for all pages under Sign-Up Sheets. I’m using SiteGround as a host, and using their caching. Here’s a screenshot to show that the pages underneath /sign-ups/ are being cached (with one of the sheets as the example TEST as “not cached.”):?https://prnt.sc/pbfncr?
    I even purged the full cache after as good measure, but the issue is still occurring.? The only other type of caching offered by SiteGround is Memcached, but that is OFF, I only have dynamic caching on.?

    After that didn’t work, I turned off ALL caching at SiteGround -not just excluding the sign-ups section, but ALL of it. Still having the same issue.?

    I’ve gone through all my plugins and am not seeing anything else that could possibly be doing caching. I know SiteGround changed their entire back end very recently – though again, can’t see how if I’m turning off their caching, why this would still be happening (unless there’s some browser caching in addition – but there are a LOT of people who aren’t able to sign up).

    I do believe you’re right though – it’s the whole page that’s not refreshing, not just the SUS portion — which makes it nothing to do with your plugin, and therefore, also not your problem to fix. If you happen to think of any other ideas/suggestions, though, feel free to send my way. I appreciate your quick response!

    Plugin Author DBAR Productions

    (@dbar-productions)

    Sorry, not really my specialty. I know that when I have checked various page speed check sites, one of the things they usually recommend is to leverage browser caching, which usually involves adding some caching instructions for browsers to your .htaccess file. Usually that’s just for js and css and image files, though, as far as I know… but, it’s possible the browser could be caching that html??

    Not much else I can think of. There are over 2000 active installs of this plugin, and, so far, you’re the only one who has ever reported an issue like this. My plugin has nothing to do with logging in, other than providing a link to your login page and checking if the user is logged in (via one of the common WordPress functions, not any special code I created).

    Thread Starter the_webscaper

    (@the_webscaper)

    Hey Steve,
    Just wanted to follow up for closure purposes. It was caching as we both suspected. Even though I was turning off caching (first through the SiteGround plugin, then by going to the SiteGround control panel itself), it turns out caching was still occurring through code inserted by SiteGround in my .htaccess file. I’m not sure why that code was not overridden when I was making changes at SiteGround and/or how the caching code from SG ended up there (was that an old method maybe and their new tool doesn’t do it that way? No clue). Regardless, when I deleted the code out of the .htaccess file – poof, problem went away.

    Appreciate your quick responses and willingness to help even though it wasn’t your plugin causing the issue.

    Kym

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • The topic ‘Log-in Loop – people can’t sign up, keeps telling them to log in’ is closed to new replies.