A few weeks ago, I finally finished my first XOOPS site, after a lot of headaches getting everything customized the way the clients wanted it. I didn't hear from them for a while and thought everything was OK, but then the complaints started, and now we are having a meeting tomorrow to discuss their issues with the site. I am expected to either be able to fix all these issues 100%, or rebuild the site from scratch in something other than Xoops, which they think is the source of all their problems.

Problem is, I am not experiencing *any* of the same problems! Every time I go there, the site looks fine. In any browser I've tried. Every time I log in, I have no problems. Every time I go to post or edit an article, everything goes fine. I am completely unable to reproduce a single one of the errors they say they are experiencing, and I have no clue how to fix an error I can't reproduce.


Specifically, they say that:

1. Every time they log into the admin, they have to log in twice. Apparently, this is a recent development. Nothing has been changed on the site to the best of my knowledge that would account for it. Has anyone else ever encountered this?

2. They say that some people can't load the site. I have not been able to get any more specific description of this, and possibly they haven't either from the people who've complained to them. They just say that, for some people, the site won't load. At all. Does anyone know what might be causing this? Are there some browsers XOOPS doesn't work in?

3. Apparently the top article on the home page disappeared at one point and they think it expired, despite the fact that none of the articles have an expiry date set. They say they had to repost the article for it to show up again. But when I went into AMS to look at the articles, that article showed the original publication date and number of revisions - it did not appear to have been freshly posted. I have no idea what the hell happened there. Any guesses would be welcome.

4. They hate both of the text editors available for AMS (standard and Koivi), with a passion. They refuse to use the standard editor because they don't want to have to deal with any code - it's got to be WYSIWYG. But they say Koivi is too slow and too buggy. They claim it takes over an hour just to copy and paste an article in from Word. I have no idea how or why it is taking them that long. I've had no problems with Koivi once I learned never to click the Preview button under any circumstances. The only other editor I've been able to find out about is Inbetween, and from the comments on the module page it sounds really buggy. Plus it sounds like it would take major surgery on the site to be able to get it to work. Are there any other alternatives? Note that they have to be able to copy in articles from Word and have the Word formatting (which is apparently in HTML) stay intact. They're very adamant on this.

5. They say that frequently, the changes they try to make to articles in AMS don't take and they have to make them over and over again. I asked if they're remembering to click one of the revision options before submitting, since that's the only cause I've ever run into of changes not taking, and they insist they have. Again, I can't reproduce this error. Has anyone else encountered it?


Now, I'm aware that it's possible that some of these problems exist, as we used to say in tech support, between chair and keyboard. The two people who are predominantly working on articles are *not* very computer-literate. They need something that is basically idiot-proof, and maybe XOOPS isn't it (though it certainly seems easy to use to me!). I may not be able to convince them tomorrow to stick with Xoops. But if I can come up with any possible fix for any of these problems, it will increase my chances. Does anyone have any ideas?


Technical specs on the site:

URL:http://www.juicystuff.ca
Xoops version: XOOPS 2.0.13.2
Theme: modified version of default theme
PHP Version: 4.3.10
MySQL Version: 4.1.14-Debian_3-log
Server software: Apache/1.3.33 (Unix) DAV/1.0.3 mod_fastcgi/2.4.2 mod_gzip/1.3.26.1a PHP/4.3.10 mod_ssl/2.8.22 OpenSSL/0.9.7e
Module used for most content: AMS 2.4.1 (with Koivi editor)

Hi,

I can't say I know the answer to your questions but I definately love the website. It's really good.

It would be a shame for the client to dump the site.....

1. check that the url in mainfile.php has www in it and nothttp://mydomain.com (it should behttp://www.mydomain.com) plenty about this on the forum if you search.

2. that could be a whole number of things.. route problems between their computers and the server where the site is hosted.. busy connections, could even be their computer software itself.. can't blame XOOPS for that.. if it works for many, it isn't broken.. maybe their firewalls were blockin it. maybe they had slow connections, i dunno.. can't really say anythin without gettin specific info from the people concerned. (it's no good phonin a shop up and saying my TV doesn't work, then hang up without tellin em what tv is, what is wrong, etc etc)

3. probly their fault by the sounds of it.. especially if the revisions are incremented..

4. over an hour? tell them to go read a book on how to type or use a computer.. it takes minutes not hours..
wysiwyg blah.. personally i find wysiwyg to be more hassle and more problematic than anything else.. tell em to stop being idle and do it properly.. it takes em that long probly because of all the non compliant and total crap that word formatting puts into it that has to be removed.... lol

word formatting is definitely not html compliant.. tell them to learn html and then they will see what crap microsoft word puts into it's documents that causes havoc for web developers (need i mention frontpage here too? another miserable microsoft package that professes to be an excellent tool..)

5. not sure, probly user error, or maybe session timed out.. try increasing the session time and use custom sessions.. maybe they have firewal issues (check headers aren't blocked in their firewalls etc)

6. they probably just don't like xoops.. but to be honest, good luck to them if they want to try & find anything easier to use that is as secure as xoops..

Hi,

You want my opinion?
There is nothing wrong they just want you to make a new one for free or give them their money back.
The logging in twice : they probably log in using a different page every time.
Not loading the site : maybe heavy serverduty or they just have bad lines?
The reposting thing : when you say same date etc. they haven't changed #OOPS#.
The code : most people do hate code (me too and I have even been a programmer in my younger years :) )

Why not use the newer version 2.2.3, PHP 5

Filip

ps still noob with XOOPS so don't believe everything I said :)

www.timebrokers.be

1. I have worked on my XOOPS installs and yes I have come across this having to log in twice and I have never managed to get to the bottom of it. I find it strange that I go from one XOOPS site to another using the exact same computer and same XOOPS version with the same browser, yet one makes me have to log in twice and the other doesn't not. I can only assume this could be a server issue, not user 100% yet.

I would also suggest that you remove any caching that you may have on the site, remove it all and I mean all and see if that fixes the issue.

It could be a cookie error due to some of your clients having their firewall blocking them, and I am sorry most clients are friggin noobs and don't have a clue and think they know it better than you.

2. It could be that they have tried to log into the site while your host was rebooting the server or doing some maintenance work, it happens to me all the time. You have to stress to your clients this is just part of working on the Internet and it happens now and again.

3. Again it could have been a little quirk and just one of those things, but if it keeps happening I would suggest you use a block rather than an AMS article and see if that makes any difference.

4. Yes Kovio is a resource hog, but it’s a #OOPS# good editor. Its not the only one you can code into any article management, try the spaw module (tricky to set-up, but it doesn't take ages to load). Do a search on these forums for different editors and I am sure that DJ has written a new class for adding editors into Xoops.

In most cases with tables is that it’s not the editor but it is in fact XOOPS that is screwing them up. I spent many hours trying to get Tables to work correctly with WF-Sections. Most cases it was CSS styles and the line break that caused most issues there.

5. This is another issue I have come across so many times. And its not their imagination either. I first thought this was a browser issue with IE, but it has happened to me with Firefox as well. They sometimes post their article and it doesn't update or the post and their whole article text disappears never to be seen again, yet all the other options stay intact.

I would suggest against your clients copying and pasting straight from word documents, I have found this sometimes causes problems. kovio has the ability to clean this before you save your text. I would also suggest changing the database entry for text to mediumtext or longtext. This could solve that problem.

Sorry I can't help you with all your problems, but I wish you lucked in the future.

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We had this on our work site for a while. Never could figure out what was wrong, but it went away when when we did a clean install of the system module (during an upgrade).

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XOOPS works with every browser. Ask them to document this complaint. Who can't load it, what browser and version are they using. There is an issue with many *themes* and some of the older IE 5.X versions - they load fine but there were problems with displaying width of columns correctly. Maybe some of the people have a local network problem or a really bad bandwidth problem - but at 35K your home page is pretty small.

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Just a guess - but I find that if I *edit* a news article that is already posted it disappears. This is because the 'set date/time publish' check box seems to get automatically checked when I edit a story. It reappears a few hours later (maybe my server clock is set wrong or something, not sure). I am using the news module, but AMS is based on a previous version of that, so maybe is the same thing. Solution is to ensure that the box is unchecked, or (if its too late) to reset the publishing time a few hours previous to present.

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If they don't want to deal with code, then frankly they had better stick to the standard editor and plain text files - if they can't learn bb code then they aren't trying. Frankly it sounds to me like a case of Technophobia. I can only suggest that some 'official training sessions' are in order - spend a few hours with them over several weeks until they get the hang of things (and get the boss to watch a bit of a session if you can, so they can see that it *isn't* a problem with the system). XOOPS does have its idiosyncracies but so does everything else. Rebuilding it isn't a solution.
Their 'administrators' do need to have a bit of patience.

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I am sure you are right about this one. The revision options had me confused for a while as well, easy mistake to make. Maybe a 'help card' would help them get through it.

Lastly, insist that they document and demonstrate the issues to you (prefereably during a training session!). If they can't or won't, consider FIRING THE CLIENT!!!

I like your site, its good.

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I agree very good advice, I have also known browser to 'choke' on error or problem.

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Thanks for reminding me Madfish, yes AMS is a fork of the news module and I had to recode the news module for a client to stop this from happening, its a bug and I don't think it was ever fixed either.

ATB

John

It's definately worth checking some of the very handy plugins for firefox to handle the bb codes...

(PS: very clean looking site)

As far as the logging in twice thing is concerned, i have notice that same problem. It only seems to happen if i have logged into something else and did not close my browser before logging into xoops. Seems to only happen with Internet Explorer.

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They are lying or mistaken about having clicked the "revison options" before submitting.

We've changed the default setting to "minor revision" so that if the user forgets to click it, their changes are not lost.

Solves that problem easily.