Geeklog Forums

We recently upgraded to 1.6.0sr2 at http://www.iputney.com. Admins are able to post stories, but when users submit a story they get a blank page (after waiting a long time) and the error log shows: "Someone tried to submit an item to the event-plugin, which cannot be found." I'm unaware of an event-plugin. They can preview a story. More detail: General User Story Submission-- 1) User clicks 'Submit a Story' and gets http://iputney.com/submit.php?type=story 2) Fill in details, click 'Preview' button. 3) http://iputney.com/submit.php opens with story preview. 4) Click 'submit' 5) http://iputney.com/submit.php eventually opens as blank page. Story is not submitted. 6) Error log shows: Someone tried to submit an item to the event-plugin, which cannot be found. I notice that the form is different from the admin's Submit Story page: they do not get an option for intro text or adding images. Admin Story Submission-- 1) User clicks 'Submit a Story' and gets http://iputney.com/admin/story.php?mode=edit 2) Submission is successful, taking admin to stories list. The form includes intro text, images, and admin-type options such as permissions. Also, as admin, I get a link to check the security of the site. When I do, the page (http://iputney.com/admin/sectest.php) takes a long time to load, and the error log shows: "fopen(/home/xxxxx/geeklog/logs/spamx.log) [function.fopen]: failed to open stream: Permission denied @ /home/xxxxx/geeklog/plugins/spamx/functions.inc line 342" (The xxxxx's represent the home directory) Thank you for any help you can provide! -Julie

I should add that some submissions have gone through. I tried two from a test account: both html formatted but only one containing html. The one without html went through. Another confound. Some of the items posted successfully in the last week contain images. Yesterday, I changed the name of the menu links in /geeklog/language/english.php While I'm curious if this affected the form that displays for non-admins (such that they no longer see the intro text/body text and images options), the error described above (not being able to post) was occurring before yesterday's change in menu link text.

Which version did you upgrade from? This almost sounds like you still have the old submit.php in place. Try re-uploading that file again.

bye, Dirk

We upgraded from a very old version (I think 1.2).
I tried replacing the public_html/submit.php with a fresh copy from the install files.
I was able to submit a plaintext story, an html formatted story with no html, and some text with html.
I then tried submitting as a user (who has a space in their username, incidentally), a longer story with html, and had the previous fail (blank page, error in log).

Here's the html:
Dear Friends,<br />If you would like to honor your friend or relative's love of Putney with a gift that supports the General Store project, here are a few good options. They can be delivered to homes the Putney area free of charge, though some are available completely online:<br />1) A large portrait of the General Store, professionally printed and framed by Deb Lazar. Images vary--email <a href="info@putneyhistory.org">info@putneyhistory.org</a> for choices. &#36;120.<br />2) A membership dedication to the Putney Historical Society. A beautiful color card has been designed by Amy Hannum, and we can email it to you online for you to print yourself.<br />3) The 2003 edition of <em>Putney: The World's Best-Known Small Town</em>. &#36;25.<br />4) A VHS cassette or DVD of the Putney 250th anniversary parade, largely filmed by the General Store. &#36;15. (Email <a href="info@putneyhistory.org">info@putneyhistory.us</a> for the book or video.)<br />5) Raffle tickets! Chance to win items donated by Putney Craft Tour, valuing well over &#36;2000. Can be purchased at Putney Inn (our display of raffle items is there), Putney and Brattleboro Co-op, Putney Books, Vermont Artisan Design, and Firefly. You can also purchase online from Carlene Raper at <a href="http://www.colorquilts.com/store/RaffleRaper.html">http://www.colorquilts.com/store/RaffleRaper.html</a> Tickets &#36;10 each, or three for &#36;25.<br />6) Make a dedicated contribution to the Putney General Store project in someone's name. Send a check to Box 233, Putney VT 05346, or donate online at <a href="http://www.putneygeneralstore.org/">http://www.putneygeneralstore.org</a><br />There will be a gathering to sing carols on the Tavern Green on Christmas Eve, followed by refreshments at the church. All are welcome. See iPutney for details. Bring food for the Putney Food Shelf.
<br />Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year to all,<br />The Putney Historical Society

(that is, I tried submitting as a different user--both users were non-admins in the post above)

It's the log entry about the "event-plugin" that irritates me. Back when the Calendar was built into Geeklog (instead of being a plugin), it was internally referred to as "event". So it seems you have some old piece of code somewhere on your site that still comes up with that relic somehow. Why that would happen during a story submission is beyond me, though.

You're using the Clean theme. Did you upgrade that theme for the new Geeklog version?

Also, could you try the same experiment as above (where the story submission failed for a certain user account) again, but switch that user to the bundled Professional theme first? Does the story submission go through then or does it fail with the same problem?

bye, Dirk

When I first re-installed, I renamed the old geeklog and public_html dirs.
Then extracted the new geeklog and moved the new public_html files out of the extraction.
I tried putting the old 'clean' theme in the layout directory, but everything broke when I switched to that theme. I had to reinstall again in order to get it working again, however the sometimes-problem of story submission (and persistent problem of form with limited options) has been happening since then.

A few days ago, I installed the 'clean' theme now available on geeklog.net.

I tried the posting described above after switching the user to the professional theme, but it failed, as described above.

Should I be trying a fresh ...ugh... install?

No, I don't think that would help. I'll need to brood over the code a bit more to figure out how that could happen. At least now we know it's not theme related.

bye, Dirk

FYI (this part's fixed).
It looks like search is also throwing an error:
Template Error: set_root: /home/osshjntt/public_html/layout/clean/lists/inline is not a directory.
Halted.
It worked fine when I switched my profile to the 'professional' theme.
I copy/pasted the /layout/professional/lists/ directory to the clean theme (where it did not exist at all) and this solved the search issue. The 'clean' version file I have installed was from: clean-V1-150.zip.

Hi again,

It's me, the new developer for iPutney, and I'm sad to report that they are still having problems with their story submission form. Esp sad since here I am working on a weekend to help them fix it....

Good news though -- I've been able to ascertain that the problem occurs when there is a url in the submitted story AND when the user is not logged in and is not a superuser. Normal site users are unable to post stores that contain urls -- whether they are HTML tagged or not. It seems that the mere presence of an http:// causes the form to fail.

Here's how it fails: Enter a story with a url in it. Then click the Submit button. The page then hangs for a long time, times out, and leaves you looking at a blank page. Nothing goes into the story submission queue.

If you're logged in as superuser, no problemo. But don't be a regular user.

So Dirk, I'm wondering what you think? or other users? Have any ideas as to what the problem might be or where to look in the Geeklog file system to correct it?

Thanks a bunch for any insight you might have, given these additional details,
Lise

Could this have something to do with the spam filtering?

Specifically, SLV.

At least that would be an explanation: The Spam-X plugin will collect all URLs from the story submission and send them to SLV for verification. That times out for some reason and causes the blank page.

If you've checked the "Don't Filter Admin Posts" in the Spam-X plugin's configuration then that would explain why it doesn't happen for Admin users.

Try this to confirm:
1) Disable the "Don't Filter Admin Posts" option and, as an Admin, try to submit something with a URL in it. Does it result in a blank page?
2) As an anonymous user, try submitting something that has your own site's URL in it (which is whitelisted automatically and won't be sent to SLV). Does that work?

Now, a timeout when connecting to SLV should not normally result in a blank page, but that could be something in your server's configuration ...

bye, Dirk

Hi Dirk,

Thanks for getting back to me. I looked at Spam-X and here's what I found.

Spam-X is enabled.

Spam-X Main Settings are as follows:

Enable Logging = True
Don't Filter Admin Posts = False
Timeout = 5
Notification Email = Restore (not set)
Spam-X Actions = Restore (not set here but under Configuration / Users and Submissions, it's set at 128)

When you look at the plugin itself, there is a list of banned terms under Personal Blacklist but no entries in the SLV whitelist.

I thought of spam filtering too but since it looks from the settings as though Admin posts are being filtered as well as user posts, it makes no sense that Admin's would work and users' would fail.

Also, I've tried posting a couple stories with the url of the site itself and they fail too, no different from other urls. Very weird.

But this glitch seems so specific that I feel sure it's solvable. I wish it would kick out some kind of error so I'd know where it was failing.

Any advice, as always, would be appreciated!

cheers,
Lise

Agreed. Try the tips from Blank page and see if that makes it display an error instead of the blank page.

bye, Dirk

Hi Dirk,

Thanks again for your advice. That little problem is now somewhat solved. Forcing error reporting didn't work, alas. But disabling SLV link checking did. I kept thinking about how the form hangs and hangs and then times out — that just seemed to point to a missed connection to an outside service, which is what SLV is.

However, I am a little concerned about Comment and Story spam. I've been running a Geeklog site for a full seven years now, and I've noticed that the evil pranksters of the world seem to love our site. Still not sure why the Submit form fails with SLV but since it does, we can't use it at least until we figure out what's wrong.

I'll look at their permission settings for story submissions and comments and make sure that only registered users can post comments (and that admin has to approve all new users).

Of course, I still have other problems with this site, so Dirk, I'm afraid you'll be hearing from me again on a different thread. Sorry to be a pest! But thanks for your help as you definintely got me moving in the right direction.

cheers,
Lise