Login page not working consistently

[thecolumbian]

I am noticing a commonly occurring behavior in my email notifications for user activity with my site powered with the community events plugin: I get a notification that a new user has registered, then a couple minutes later I get a second notification saying they have reset their password.

We have received a phone call from a user who regularly submits events to our site who could not login to the site using the custom login page from the community events plugin (as opposed to WordPress’ default login page). He reset his password repeatedly and it would not log him in. I sent him a link to the default WordPress login page and he has logged in fine since then. I am concerned about how many anonymous other users are not submitting events because they’re experiencing the same issue.

I have also experienced sometimes that when I use that community events login page if I don’t enter the correct password that it just returns to that same page and does not show any error message about the failed login. This behavior inconsistently occurs. For example, this has happened many times to me, but I tried this a second ago and the failed login redirected me to the default WordPress login system with an incorrect password message. I consider it a possibility that in some recent update this particular issue could have been resolved (and hopefully).

I have a staging site available that I can send credentials for in a private message if you’d like.

[Jaime Marchwinski]

Hi Brandon,

Thanks so much for reaching out!

It seems that your Community Submission page is located at: http://www.columbian.com/events/events/community/add

Note the additional “events”.  I’m wondering if there is a issue here with a redirect of some kind.  Can you try changing this in Events Settings < Community and see if that makes a difference.

After doing so, can you try flushing your permalinks by going to Settings < Permalinks and Save Changes.  You will want to clear your browser and site cache as well after doing this.

Let me know if that helps!

 

Thanks,

Jaime

[thecolumbian]

This site is a separate WordPress installation than columbian.com. The base URL of this site is columbian.com/events and the calendar’s default base is also at /events, hence the calendar’s URL structure being http://www.columbian.com/events/events/. Kind of a weird setup I know, but the plugin doesn’t give the ability to make the front page the calendar’s base URL to be able to avoid that issue.

[Jaime Marchwinski]

Hi Brandon,

You can actually set the Main Calendar page to be your homepage, using the following tutorial as your guide:

https://theeventscalendar.com/knowledgebase/how-to-make-your-calendar-your-sites-home-page/

Let me know if that helps!

 

Thanks,

Jaime

[thecolumbian]

Sorry Jaime, I should have been more specific. I do currently have the site set to display the calendar on the front page, but all the calendar links are based on events/, and when the site itself is based in a URL structure of mysite.com/events/, the events subpages then become based in an mysite.com/events/events/ structure.

For example, the community events plugin uses these URL’s:

• http://www.mysite.com/events/events/community/list
• http://www.mysite.com/events/events/community/add
• http://www.columbian.com/events/events/community/edit/event/105439/

Any idea what might be causing my issues with my community events plugin login system? Is there a way I can use the WordPress default login page as an alternative?

[Jaime Marchwinski]

Hi Brandon,

Without some further testing, I’m not quite sure why the login page isn’t working for you.

As a first step, let’s try to rule out if there is some type of conflict at play.
This is usually because of:

• A conflict with another plugin
• A conflict with your WordPress theme
• A template customization for the Events Calendar that requires updating

When it comes to that type of issue, it is preferable to troubleshoot in a staging environment if you have one.

A first quick test is to simply temporarily revert back to a default WordPress theme such as twenty-sixteen to see if the issue persists.

The next step would be to go through our testing for conflicts procedure and let us know what you find out.

Basically the goal here is to revert back to a bare WordPress installation to see if the problem persists. It also allows us to pinpoint what the cause of the issue is.

But, before you do that, there are 2 things I would advise:

• Make a backup of your database
• Consider activating a “Maintenance Page” plugin if you are doing this on your live site (to minimize impact on your visitors)

Let me know how that goes!

 

Thanks,

Jaime

[thecolumbian]

Here’s the thing, Jaime. I can’t seem to be able to reproduce the problem on my end. I deactivated all possible unnecessary plugins in the site weeks ago and the same complaint is still coming in from site visitors. I regularly get a series of two email notifications – the first a new user registration and the second a password reset (minutes later). And I can’t seem to reproduce the problem on my end but I’m getting solid evidence via these email notifications from the plugin (and people’s email complaints) that people are constantly having issues logging in.

[Jaime Marchwinski]

Hi Brandon,

That is a strange issue.  If it’s okay with you, can I try to test it on your site?

Just so I understand exactly, here is the issue: A new user registers for your site, and when they try to log in, the password doesn’t work, so they need to reset it.  Let me know if that is correct.

Do you know if this issue occurs on certain browsers (ie Safari, Firefox, Google Chrome)?

In the meantime, can you please enable WP_DEBUG and WP_DEBUG_LOG and share any debug messages you see?

Let me know if you have any other questions along the way!

 

Thanks,

Jaime

[thecolumbian]

It is intermittent. When I try to log into the site, I can do so successfully. But a lot of other users seem to be having issues. One specific user emailed me saying that no matter how many times he reset his password, it would not let him log in; it only returned him to the community events plugin login page without even throwing an error message. I had to share a link to the default WordPress login page with him and using that link he reported he could log in just fine (using Chrome on Windows).

I have set WP_DEBUG and WP_DEBUG_LOG as true in the wp-config.php file.

[thecolumbian]

Sorry, I actually had to turn off WP_DEBUG and WP_DEBUG_LOG as they were throwing a couple errors in the top of my page. I have enabled them in my staging site though – you can take a look there at http://dev.columbian.com/events/.

[Jaime Marchwinski]

Hi Brandon,

Thanks for providing me with that information.

Do you have a plugin called Advanced Cache, or some other caching system in place, possibly through your host?

Can you try temporarily deactivating that and see if it helps to resolve your issue?

Let me know how that goes!

 

Thanks,

Jaime

[thecolumbian]

I spoke with the web host who has caching setup and from what they told me it sounds like that was not the culprit.

I got another email today from a site visitor having trouble. Here’s what this person told me:

“I logged into the events calendar just now the initial way I used to. I was granted access, posted a flyer, and then was kicked off. My attempt to log back in failed, as did my attempt to log in using the link you sent me. Even after I changed the password. Very frustrating.”

The “link I sent” him that he’s referring to was a direct link to the wp-login wordpress default login system, which he told me worked for him before.

[Jaime Marchwinski]

Hi Brandon,

I’m sorry to hear that you are still experiencing this issue?

Would it be okay if I tried to create a log-in and a test event to see if I can replicate the behavior?

Also, were there any debug errors that appeared when you had it turned on?  You can add the following to your wp-config.php file so that errors will not show up on your actual site:

define('WP_DEBUG', true);

// Don't display errors on the front end, instead...
define('WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY', false);

// Enable Debug logging to the /wp-content/debug.log file
define('WP_DEBUG_LOG', true);

Let me know how that goes and if you have any other questions in the meantime!

Thanks,
Jaime

[thecolumbian]

I’ll send you some temporary login creds in a separate reply. I did just try to login via the community events plugin’s login page and it would not let me in and also didn’t even throw an error message. Again, like I said, this is happening really intermittently.

I have turned on the WP_DEBUG and WP_DEBUG_LOG constants as you requested.

[thecolumbian]

This reply is private.

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