VB5 connect - URL changing when logging out

[ChrisRowarth]

Hi!

I currently have a VB5 connect installation that lives on http://domain.com/forum. when clicking log in you're able to log in fine. When you click log out, it changes the URL from http://domain.com/forum to http://www.domain.com/forum

If you then try to log in from http://www.domain.com/forum, it accepts the credentials, but the page doens't change to reflect the logged in user (it essentially stays the same). If you then click log in again, enter your credentials and hit the log in button, you get:




Remove the WWW from the URL and the page will then show that you're logged in. All the URL settings from the adminCP do not include the WWW in the URL, and there's no redirects in the .htaccess file (that I can see..) nor are there any base URL's defined.

I can't work out why logging out changes the URL to include the WWW. It's frustrating!

[Mark.B]

Must be some sort of redirect going in for that to happen.

Check every folder for .htaccess files, if you find any, check they don't contain any rewrite rules.

Replace the root htaccess file with a default one from the download package (it's called htaccess.txt by default, you'll need to rename it).

[ChrisRowarth]

Hi Mark,

I've checked the .htaccess files in these locations:

• includes/
• core/vb5/
• core/vb/
• core/libraries/
• core/includes/

All of those are the same as each other (just prevent directory browsing) and contain no redirects. I've replaced the .htaccess with the one from the installation package for the root folder. Problem still seems to exist.

Some backstory in case it's useful:

The forum used to live on this URL: http://forum.domain.com. The hosting provider maps sub-domains to a folder 1 level above the root WWW folder (so in this case /forum, with the root WWW folder being /www). I decided to change the URL from http://forum.domain.com to http://domain.com/forum, so I did the following:

1. "closed" the forum using the adminCP
2. altered the URLs in the adminCP to reflect the URL change
3. I then moved the folder the forum is installed in from the space that's one level above the root WWW folder to within the root directory (so from /forum/ to /www/forum)
4. opened the forum again from the adminCP

And this is where the problem appeared. Besides those steps, are there any others I should've done?

[Mark.B]

Have you got redirection from www to non-www?
Although from your description this might create a loop.

[ChrisRowarth]

On the registrars side:

www.domain.com is a CNAME record that points to domain.com. Then domain.com is configured as an A record that points to the hosting providers webserver.

On the hosting providers platform:

By default domain.com and www.domain.com are both mapped to the root web folder, /www/ which contains a PHP redirect script inside an index.php to send you to domain.com/forum and the forum is on /www/forum/ which is where domain.com/forum will land you.

I'm quite keen on keeping the URL as domain.com/forum rather than www.domain.com/forum. The only thing I haven't tried yet is setting all the URLs to www.domain.com in the adminCP and seeing if I get this bizarre error

[Mark.B]

This sounds dubious and we'd need to have a look.
The idea of hosts having their own index.php files floating around isn't likely to play well with vBulletin. Although as I said, we will need to have a look. Please raise a support ticket.

[ChrisRowarth]

This sounds dubious and we'd need to have a look.
The idea of hosts having their own index.php files floating around isn't likely to play well with vBulletin. Although as I said, we will need to have a look. Please raise a support ticket.

the index.php is something I created to forward from http://domain.com to http://domain.com/forum, wasn't their doing. Once you're on http://domain.com/forum that redirect shouldn't enter in to things. It also doesn't have in it anything that rewrites the URL, adding the www to the start.

I'll raise a support ticket, once i've tried altering the URLs to include the www. prefix within the adminCP. If that resolves the issue, I'm happy to live with a URL that has the www. prefix.

[Mark.B]

the index.php is something I created to forward from http://domain.com to http://domain.com/forum, wasn't their doing. Once you're on http://domain.com/forum that redirect shouldn't enter in to things. It also doesn't have in it anything that rewrites the URL, adding the www to the start.

vBulletin has its own index.php file. If you've got one of your own, even if it's technically in a different directory to handle redirects, that's not going to work.

A redirect from www to non-www - or vice versa - should be handled in an .htaccess file or its equivalent. Or set in the server control panel (which amounts to the same thing).

[ChrisRowarth]

vBulletin has its own index.php file. If you've got one of your own, even if it's technically in a different directory to handle redirects, that's not going to work.

A redirect from www to non-www - or vice versa - should be handled in an .htaccess file or its equivalent. Or set in the server control panel (which amounts to the same thing).

OK so if my own index.php resides in "/", and the forum lives in "/forum/" with its own index.php, the index.php file in "/" can still interfere with things in folders under it? (in my case "/forum/"). Can you explain why this wouldn't work, because i'm struggling to see why it would affect things recursively.. I wouldn't have expected a PHP script like this simple redirect to act in that way. It's also confusing because it doesn't contain any redirect that might add the www prefix that i'm seeing which is the main issue.

That said, I will remove that PHP script and just configure an .htaccess file to redirect to "/forum/" from "/" if this is the better way of doing it, and see if it has any positive impact on my issue.

What is still a mystery is why when logging out, it alters the URL to add a www. to the start of the URL, given all the above. (i'm not currently trying to redirect from www to non-www or vice versa)

[ChrisRowarth]

Is there anything in the .htaccess that lives in the forums root folder that would rewrite the URL if it's missing the trailing slash? This is what seems to be happening when you log out, it puts you on the forum URL minus the trailing slash (which is what is configured in the adminCP), and at that point it's being rewritten. Can the provider possibly have their own hidden .htaccess that could rewrite the URL if it's missing that slash?

[Mark.B]

Is there anything in the .htaccess that lives in the forums root folder that would rewrite the URL if it's missing the trailing slash? This is what seems to be happening when you log out, it puts you on the forum URL minus the trailing slash (which is what is configured in the adminCP), and at that point it's being rewritten. Can the provider possibly have their own hidden .htaccess that could rewrite the URL if it's missing that slash?

There's nothing that would do this by default, my suspicion lies with the custom redirect. However, anything we say now is pure speculation. We need a support ticket with admin and (s)ftp access, so we can have a look.

[ChrisRowarth]

Thanks - the hosting provider swear blind that it's not anything on their side that would do it. Here's what happens with curl:

curl -i http://domain.com/forum
HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Server: nginx
Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2017 10:48:44 GMT
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Length: 326
Connection: keep-alive
Location: http://www.domain.com/forum/

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
<html><head>
<title>301 Moved Permanently</title>
</head><body>
<h1>Moved Permanently</h1>
<p>The document has moved <a href="http://www.domain.com/forum/">here</a>.</p>
<hr>
<address>Apache/2.4.10 (Ubuntu) Server at www.domain.com Port 80</address>
</body></html>


can you point me in the correct direction to raise a ticket?

[Mark.B]

Thanks - the hosting provider swear blind that it's not anything on their side that would do it. Here's what happens with curl:

curl -i http://domain.com/forum
HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Server: nginx
Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2017 10:48:44 GMT
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Length: 326
Connection: keep-alive
Location: http://www.domain.com/forum/

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
<html><head>
<title>301 Moved Permanently</title>
</head><body>
<h1>Moved Permanently</h1>
<p>The document has moved <a href="http://www.domain.com/forum/">here</a>.</p>
<hr>
<address>Apache/2.4.10 (Ubuntu) Server at www.domain.com Port 80</address>
</body></html>


can you point me in the correct direction to raise a ticket?

Sure...either login here: http://www.vbulletin.com/go/techsupport, or email [email protected] from your licensed account.
First method is preferable since you'll need to send us login info and the support ticket form has a "sensitive data" field for that. Email...well...doesn't!