Logged in users are still being redirected

Hi @tubescreamer ,

Thanks for reaching out, and sorry to know about the issue you’re experiencing.

First, let’s make sure the loop is not caused by a restriction setting.

Could you share screenshots or a screen recording of the restriction settings?

We’ll wait for your response.

Sure, here are the settings: https://imgur.com/a/kSNRtxL

Hi @tubescreamer ,

Thanks for the response.

We tried to reproduce the behaviour on our test site, but the restriction settings worked as expected.

See: https://share.zight.com/kpueAKAd

[Check for restriction conflict]
Do you have other restrictions active? If yes, kindly:

1. Disable all Restrictions except the Restrict Woo Pages to Logged In Users restriction, and
2. Test for the restriction behaviour again.

[Check for theme and plugin conflict]
If the issue persists:

1. a. Temporarily switch to a default WordPress theme (e.g., Twenty Twenty-Four), and
   b. Test for the restriction behaviour again.
2. a. Temporarily deactivate all plugins except Content Control and WooCommerce, and
   b. Test for the restriction behaviour again.

Please, let us know how it goes.

Hi @israelmartins, I’ve tried the troubleshooting steps and still no luck. Right now my site is only running Content Control and WooCommerce and I am facing the same issue. I deactivated and deleted all the other plugins (on a staging site). I spoke to my host as well, they mentioned that I should ask if there needs to be any cache exclusions set up. My host is WPEngine.

I also tried setting up a restriction for a non WooCommerce page, just a regular test page I created and set it to redirect to the about us page on my website if it’s visited while logged out and I am still facing the same issue. So WooCommerce isn’t the issue either. I didn’t think it was, but I still tried anyways.

• This reply was modified 8 months, 4 weeks ago by Steven Stern (sterndata).
• This reply was modified 8 months, 4 weeks ago by Selah.

Update: I tried on my other webhost (SiteGround) and the plugin seems to be working fine there. So I am thinking the issue is WP Engine, because the set up is all the same.. WordPress 6.4.3, PHP 8.2, same plugin settings, same plugins.

This is what WP Engine support told me:
“Do we need to exclude any kind of cookies or args? If its a plugin functionality not working properly were fairly limited in what we can do because we didn’t directly develop that plugin, but it sounds like you do need to reach out to the plugin developers to go over the behavior of that plugin and if we can do anything on our end such as cache excluding a cookie, arg or url.

Another potential solution is maybe that plugin needs something added to nginx such as a proxy pass to pass through a particular process but as we didn’t develop that plugin we wouldn’t know what that nginx rule would be and that is something that can be provided by the devs.”

Any ideas?

Hi @tubescreamer,

Thanks for the detailed updates! Is there a cache setting/mechanism in your WPEngine site?

If yes, could you try clearing/purging your cache after creating new restrictions?

We also already forwarded your case to our developers so they can take a look, but just in case, please try the above.

Let us know how it goes. ??

Hi @kimmyx, yep I have been clearing the cache in WPEngine after every change, as well as clearing my browser cache (even though i’m using Incognito to test)

@tubescreamer – You will probably find its actually browser based caching of both redirects and session status.

That is done at the host/server level by passing flags for browsers to cache more long term, but has major side effects.

Others include going to home page, logging in, then hitting back and seeing the home page shows you still not logged in, even a simple refresh won’t show. Only when you do a few and tell the browser to bypass cache do you see it change.

I actually managed to figure out that it was one of WP Engine’s several layers of caching that was causing the issue. I reached out to them and they disabled a specific layer and it ended up working again. The reason I knew it was on WP Engine’s end is because I tested the same exact set up on my SiteGround server and it worked perfectly there.

Thanks for the replies and help anyways!