Forminator – missing submissions (not spam)

Hi @maraleen

I hope you are doing well today.

1. Based on the date you have shared it seems those submissions are empty and they belong to the correct form ID.

After a review of your CSV file it looks like the issue started here:
Nov 7, 2022 @ 9:14 PM and exist until today

Do you have any kind of hosting logs that will tell us if is there any server hiccup, updates, cron jobs logs or any logs where you could compare dates and times with those missing submissions?

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2. Apart from above can you add this code to your wp-config.php file:

define('WP_DEBUG', true);
define('WP_DEBUG_LOG', true);
define('WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY', false);

also, delete (if exist)
define('WP_DEBUG', false);

The line should be placed above the “/* That’s all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */”

This will generate in the /wp-content/ folder a debug.log file. With this file, we could compare errors if any exist and compare with future failed submissions.

===============

3. Apart from mandatory fields, are there any Conditional rules or hidden field?

===============

4. Please export your form and upload it to google drive or dropbox and share a link in your next reply so that we could test it on our lab.

Kind Regards,
Kris

Hi Kris

1. I’ve requested the server error log and will post here.
2. I will add.
3. There are many conditional rules & 1 hidden field.
4. Export of form: https://www.dropbox.com/s/qa8g6iqr6ap0ob7/export%20-%20forminator-bursary-application-2023-form-export.txt?dl=0

Kind Regards
Maraleen

Requested server error log: https://www.dropbox.com/s/phd1uz2upewh3zg/serverlog.txt?dl=0

HI @maraleen

Thanks for sharing the form and log. Form is quite complex and it includes some upload fields. In the log there’s not much but there are some entries that seem to correspond with uploads on the form and the log suggests that the AJAX requests (related to those uploads) are timing out.

If this is the case, indeed, then it would be server-side issue. Is your site powered by Apache webserver and do you have access to Apache configuration? If you don’t, you may need to contact your host for help (same if the site is powered by nginx webserver).

The configuration part to check would be values of these two configuration directives:

TimeOut 
ProxyTimeout 

and most likely they are quite a small values (like 30 or 60). If yes, then increasing them – I’d suggest at least 180 but better yet 300 for the first one and anywhere between 300-600 for the second one – should help here.

Could you check if that’s doable and if so – if it solves the issue?

Kind regards,
Adam

Thank you for your response.
I’ve contacted the host to enquire about the values.
Both settings are set to 300 seconds.

Can I check something with you? At which stage is the confirmation message shown on the screen? At the end of all the functionality – eg, after the inserts into BOTH tables? After the confirmation email has been sent? Therefor a user will ONLY see a confirmation message if his data was successfully captured in both tables?
We’ve had a number of instances where users see an error message on the screen. I’m trying to determine if these half inserts are perhaps part of that scenario.

Kind Regards
Maraleen

Hi @maraleen,

Can I check something with you? At which stage is the confirmation message shown on the screen? At the end of all the functionality – eg, after the inserts into BOTH tables? After the confirmation email has been sent? Therefor a user will ONLY see a confirmation message if his data was successfully captured in both tables?

The form will validate the entries, and only after a successful submission, it’ll send an email and insert it into the tables. However, I’m checking with our developer to confirm the order in which it works and will get back once we get further update.

However, could you please go through your admin email notification and check whether there were indeed any email notifications with the submission ID 3441?

Also, if possible, please provide the Site Info of the website so we can have a better idea.

You can find the information located under “Tools > Site Health > Information” and click on the button “Copy site information to clipboard.”.`

Looking forward to your response.

Kind Regards,
Nithin

Hi Nithin

I’ll check this particular ID to see if an ID was sent.
We do have another example though where a user received a confirmation email, but no submission exists in the backend.

SITE INFO:

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snippet-2: name: Disable admin bar, scope: front-end, modified: 2022-06-22 18:18:59, tags: [sample, admin-bar]
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snippet-4: name: Current year, scope: content, modified: 2022-06-22 18:18:59, tags: [sample, dates]
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snippet-7: name: Disable Image Scaling, scope: global, modified: 2022-07-12 08:36:24
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snippet-12: name: Forminator - Add submission IDs to both form exports, scope: admin, modified: 2022-10-11 10:47:06
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Hi Nithin

I’ve checked and no admin or user notification email was sent for #3441.

Kind Regards
Maraleen

Hi @maraleen

There is a high possibility the server has timed out that’s why the response was not received.

The response is sent after all of it. It processes fields, uploads, and payments (if any), then save fields to the created entry, sends data to addons, sends notifications, then responds.

As you using many single upload fields in this large form, and it will mostly cause a timeout. That’s why we suggest the ajax multi-upload so the files won’t be uploaded on submit.

Please try to increase as well time_limit and max_input_time but there are no guarantees. Also if the end-user has slow internet or large files in those uploads there is also possibility of time out.

Kind Regards,
Kris

Hi

Thanks for the breakdown.
Yes, I can see the possibility of it timing out during uploads, but according to your workflow the uploads are done BEFORE any inserts into the db.
If it therefor did NOT time out during the upload, and then did the first insert into the wp_frmt_form_entry table, why would it then not do the next insert into wp_frmt_form_entry_meta table?

I chose the single upload, as users should only upload one file per field, but I see there is a way to limit it to 1 even if you chose multi. I will implement the ajax multi-upload for future upload fields.

Kind Regards
Maraleen

Hi @maraleen,

Yes, I can see the possibility of it timing out during uploads, but according to your workflow the uploads are done BEFORE any inserts into the db.
If it therefor did NOT time out during the upload, and then did the first insert into the wp_frmt_form_entry table, why would it then not do the next insert into wp_frmt_form_entry_meta table?

I’m afraid, I’ll have to check with our developer to confirm what all instances this might occur.

Will keep you posted once we get further update.

Kind Regards,
Nithin

Hi @maraleen,

So the workflow would be like this, the form would save the entry first using $entry->save that saves the entry into the form_entry table.

Then the uploads are processed, then payments, then transfer the uploads if there are payment fields etc and then comes the save_entry_fields which saves the fields into the form_entry_meta table.

The upload process would be in between these, for example:

$entry->save
. . .
uploads processing
. . .
self::save_entry_fields( $entry )

So timeouts would be one of the reasons as explained before. Please do let us know if you have any further queries.

Kind Regards,
Nithin

Hi @maraleen,

Since we haven’t heard from you for a while. I’ll mark this thread as resolved for now. Please feel free to re-open the thread if you need further assistance.

Best Regards
Nithin