Bug Threads/Posts - Attached Images stuck 'Loading'. Doesnt affect inline attached image

[Nimrod]

Found a weird bug with our DBSEO install. Basically if any posts/threads have attachments which are images (with thumbnails), they get stuck in a constant attempt to 'load'. An example being this one:

http://digiex.net/guides-reviews/guides-tutorials/application-guides/2901-how-do-i-compress-unreal-tournament-2004-map.html

However, if images are attached but also put inline in the post, the problem doesn't exist:

http://digiex.net/guides-reviews/guides-tutorials/media-guides/13101-step-step-guide-installing-plex-nowtv-box.html

Our settings for attachment rewriting (imported from vbseo) are:

[forum_path]/[attachment_id]-[thread_title]-[original_filename]


I've done some inspecting of the HTML on the one's stuck loading, and it does indeed seem to be the thumbnails causing it (as inline images don't have thumbnails but instead show the full image).

Example URL provided at top of the post:
Full Attachment (From clicking on thumbnail) - Works:
http://digiex.net/attachments/guides-reviews/guides-tutorials/application-guides/3187d1258673422-how-do-i-compress-unreal-tournament-2004-map-ut2004map.jpg

Thumbnail (Which is shown on the post, which causes the page to get stuck loading) - Not working:
http://digiex.net/attachments/guides-reviews/guides-tutorials/application-guides/3187d1282131881t-how-do-i-compress-unreal-tournament-2004-map-ut2004map.jpg

Anyone experienced this and know of a solution? Much appreciated

 

[Fillip H.]

Could you please create and PM me with a temporary FTP and AdminCP account?

For security reasons, we recommend you create a new FTP account only for DBTech support, then disable or delete it after we have both confirmed the issue has been solved and there are no further issues.

The same applies to AdminCP accounts; they should ideally be temporary accounts created for us only. If we have created an account on your site already, you can optionally boost that account to Administrator and then de-admin this account once the issue has been solved.

If you use a .htaccess password protection for your AdminCP directory, it is recommended that you create a new authorised user for DBTech and remove this user once the issue has been solved.

Please test any temporary accounts you create to ensure that the FTP account has access to the forum files, and that the AdminCP account can access the administrative controls for the product we are assisting you with.

Ensuring this is all in order before submitting the information will significantly speed up the process of assisting you. We will alert you via PM if there's any issues with the login information you have provided.

When sending the PM, for your security you should also un-tick the "Save a copy in my Sent Items folder" checkbox. When the access details have been received, we will delete the PM from our inbox. Ensuring you have not kept a copy of the PM reduces the risk of security breaches.

Thank you for helping us debug our products and allowing us to assist you, we appreciate it

 

[Nimrod]

Hello Fillip H.,

We've done some more investigation. We updated our forum to 4.2.2 (which was overdue) and as far as we could see the attachment thumbnail issue was resolved. Or so we thought.

After we completed our update checks and tested everything, we re-opened Port 80 on our Server and let the traffic back in and the issue was noticed again. However the key difference between when we were testing it and the site being public was that public users are routed through Cloudflare where's when we were testing on our own PC's we have the server's direct IP in the host's file and have our IP's on the allowed list on Port 80 on our server skipping Cloudflare.

Therefore after further testing we can confirm there is a compatibility issue with Cloudflare and DBSEO in regards to the attachment thumbnails.

We then for a test disabled dbseo, switched our Rewrite rules back to vbseo (which we had only disabled not uninstalled at this point) and re-opened the site and the thumbnails worked as expected. Therefore we can confirm the behaviour is different in DBSEO than VBSEO in how it handles attachment image thumbnails.

A further test was also completed with neither VBSEO and DBSEO enabled and again the attachment thumbnails worked as expected.

I hope you can consider making dbseo compatible with cloudflare, it's the first plugin we've ever really had an issue with, with regards to cloudflare and like many big boards out there cloudflare is an essential requirement both for security, and also to manage incoming server load which can be high during the peak time.

Hope this helps, if there is any further debugging required just let me know!

Cheers.

 

[Fillip H.]

I will still require the previously requested information, as well as a way to temporarily disable CloudFlare if it does not accept debug changes to the code.

There is no functional difference between vBSEO and DBSEO when it comes to thumbnail generation of attachments. For that reason, if we're unable to resolve this, I would recommend disabling attachment rewrites instead.

 

[Nimrod]

Hello Fillip H.,

I've sent all the details to you in a PM. Hoping with all the debug I've posted here and live server access we can figure out what the issue is! A lot of big sites use Cloudflare so it be good to understand what's causing the issue and likely help resolve this for any future customers to who also use Cloudflare

Much appreciated.

 

[Fillip H.]

You should now flush CloudFlare on your test server as it's stuck serving debug data in lieu of real images.

The issue was a case of data loss upon reverting from the rewritten URL to the "normal" vB URL. This caused the images to redirect as DBSEO dutifully wanted to correct the data.

This causes no issues with browsers or caching scripts that has the ability to follow 301 redirects. CloudFlare is not a product with such a capability.

 

[Nimrod]

You should now flush CloudFlare on your test server as it's stuck serving debug data in lieu of real images.

The issue was a case of data loss upon reverting from the rewritten URL to the "normal" vB URL. This caused the images to redirect as DBSEO dutifully wanted to correct the data.

This causes no issues with browsers or caching scripts that has the ability to follow 301 redirects. CloudFlare is not a product with such a capability.

Thanks, it looks like the issue is resolved! Could you let me know the fix in more detail as we need to replicate it onto a production server?

Much appreciated.

 

[Nimrod]

In regards to images i have also noticed that DBSEO is re-writing the URL's ever so slightly differently to how VBSEO did. This could likely be the issue, yet I did import the VBSEO settings.

The problem been people have attached images to posts, then linked to the VBSEO URL which is now broken and appears to just cause the page to constantly load (Surely the behaviour should be to re-write and not get stuck loading?) This still seems to be happening on the test server you applied some fixes on

In the DBSEO URL /downloads/ is a category, download-center-2-0/ is a sub category, then /applications/ is the actual category the where the post is.

VBSEO: http://digiex.net/attachments/applications/183d1217627399-windows-xp-sp3-ux-theme-patch-home-pro-media-center-tablet-vlk-xp-sp3-uxtheme.png

DBSEO: http://digiex.net/attachments[B][COLOR="#FF0000"]/downloads/download-center-2-0/[/COLOR][/B]applications/183d1217627399-windows-xp-sp3-ux-theme-patch-home-pro-media-center-tablet-vlk-xp-sp3-uxtheme.png

Thank you for all the help

 

[Fillip H.]

This will happen if you use [forum_path] in your attachment URL. If you switch to [forum_title] you should find the URLs identical.

 

[Fillip H.]

Thanks, it looks like the issue is resolved! Could you let me know the fix in more detail as we need to replicate it onto a production server?

Much appreciated.

Tomorrow I'll be releasing v1.0.3 which contains the fix, so once you install that on the production server the fix will carry over

 

[Nimrod]

Bad news, this issue is back on the latest version

Example image:
http://digiex.net/attachments/general-discussions/gaming-hangout/13596d1393486298t-ubisoft-idiotic-retarded-publisher-censor-s-south-park-stick-truth-southparkcensored.jpg

Post in question:
http://digiex.net/general-discussions/gaming-hangout/13407-ubisoft-idiotic-retarded-publisher-censor-s-south-park-stick-truth-post70635.html#post70635

 

[Fillip H.]

Please re-send the access details so I can look into this further.

 

[Nimrod]

Please re-send the access details so I can look into this further.

False alarm, my fault.
I was on 1.0.4 and 1.0.5 was released! Updating to 1.0.5 fixed this issue.