Confused by Error Log

[asprott]

I have been doing some well overdue housekeeping of the site and have come across something I find very confusing.

As part of this chore, I checked the error log and found that I had several

The site configuration has been updated by the shop operator while you are checking out. Please navigate back to the product pages by pressing the Browser Back button and try again or contact the site owner.

messages.

I appreciate if I'm updating the site this could cause problems for the user. However, I can guarantee that the majority of date/times these error messages appear nobody was doing anything to the site e.g. New Year's Day.

Does anyone have any thoughts, it is a problem if users' browsing experience is negatively affected.

As always, any help much appreciated.

Andrew

[rmladden]

This message occurs occasionally in my error log when I am sure that no updates were being made too. It often happens in pairs, telling me the customer did try again without success. I cannot force the error. There have been previous discussions here without an answer.

What is Actinic checking to give this message?

[rmladden]

I have attached those entries in my error log. It happens just enough to be a concern. I can guarantee that no updates were taking place at these times.

[asprott]

Hopefully, someone at Actinic may be able to shed light on this. It is concerning, as it could be putting off potential customers.

I've attached a extract from my error log.

Andrew

[asprott]

Oops

[cdicken]

I see you are getting this error roughly once every 2 or 3 days. How often do you update the store?

I also see quite a few of them come in sets of two or three very close to each other - i.e. one customer trying multiple times.

In early v6 there was an issue with this error message benig received almost every time on split SSL servers. They fact you are getting it so intermittently makes me thing it is either a server load issue (i.e. your web host has a busy time and so has issues transferring customers to the secure checkout) or there is a problem with the domain name of the secure server - sometimes your server, for whatever reason, has trouble finding it.

[asprott]

Hi Chris,

We update our store one day a week on average, but as mentioned before, the majority of these dates do not tally with dates when we update the store.

Andrew

[Darren B]

i found one cause of this problem,

people who hold old copies in there browser also caused this message to be generated.

I changed the text in this message to ask customers to refresh there pages when they get it, and to date no one has emailed me to say they still have this problem.

hope this helps a little bit

cheers
Darren

[asprott]

Originally posted by Darren B
i found one cause of this problem,

people who hold old copies in there browser also caused this message to be generated.

I changed the text in this message to ask customers to refresh there pages when they get it, and to date no one has emailed me to say they still have this problem.

hope this helps a little bit

cheers
Darren

Thanks Darren, we don't have people complaining about it. But if the problem is the one you had I don't see a satisfactory way to deal with it.

Chris, were the problems with early V6 addressed? Going back to a question Bob asked, what does Actinic check to give this message.

[cdicken]

Chris, were the problems with early V6 addressed?

Yep - in 6.1.3.

Going back to a question Bob asked, what does Actinic check to give this message.

It checks the *.cat files which contain the product prices. What was happening is that in the transition from http to https, Actinic lost track of there these *.cat files were so assumed they were being replaced as part of a site update. This problem is now fixed.

However, if your http site becomes unavailable for whatever reason(e.g. busy network traffic) this error will be produced. I think that is what is happening with your store.

[rmladden]

My http and https are the same server (and directories), so I don't understand why I would see any of these errors.

[cdicken]

Neither do I I'm afraid. Maybe the http URL was just not responding for whatever reason.