Thread

Hello,

About a week ago my EE 2.1.1 install hosted on EngineHosting began occasionally displaying a message saying that the captcha text had been typed incorrectly even though it was correct.  In some cases entering the word second time and re-submitting would fix it, other times it would not.  Sometimes everything works correctly the first time the page is submitted.  The code has worked for years without a problem and no changes were made to the site in the past few months.  I am the only admin.  The error message is:
You did not submit the word exactly as it appears in the image

I have done the following in an attempt to fix the problem:
- Searched the forum.  I found several people with the same error but nothing in the threads helped me.
- Upgraded to v2.2.2 - Build: date 20110801.  I am not running any extensions and am not running under MSM.
- I have confirmed that I am not signed in to the control panel when the error occurs.  I have also gotten numerous reports of the error from users, so am sure this isn’t an issue.
- I have created a test page that anyone can use to submit a comment.

- Reviewed the sample code in the documentation.  My code is almost identical to it:

{exp:comment:form channel="articles"}
{if logged_out}

Display Name*: <input type="text" name="name" value="{name}" size="50" /><br >
Your Display Name will be associated with this comment on NewCastleNOW.org.  We encourage commentators to use their real name or initials.

{/if}

<textarea name="comment" cols="70" rows="10">{comment}</textarea></p>

<input type="checkbox" name="notify_me" value="no" {notify_me} /> Send me notification of follow-up comments via email address below.
Email: <input type="text" name="email" value="{email}" size="50" /><br > Email is optional and will NOT be shown.  We will use it to notify you only of follow-up comments.
{if captcha}

    <label for="captcha">Please enter the word you see in the image below:</label>
 
    {captcha}

    <input type="text" name="captcha" value="{captcha_word}" maxlength="20" /></p>
{/if}
We encourage civil, civic discourse. In other words, be pithy and polite. All comments will be reviewed before publication to assure that this standard is met.

<input type="submit" name="submit" value="Submit" />


{/exp:comment:form}

I am attaching a screenshot showing that I am correctly typing in the captcha word. I experienced the error after clicking the submit button.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

Thanks,
Greg.

Hi Greg,

I’m afraid I can’t replicate the error you’re having with the form you linked to above.

I do get the message shown in the attached image so if you can check to see if a couple of test posts I made came into your site and let me know that would be great.

As to what is causing I’m just wondering where you are testing this from? Have you tried from another computer or internet connection. Might that be the issue here perhaps?

Thanks.

Mark

Hey Mark,

Thanks for testing.  I just checked and i did get your test posts.

I’ve personally encountered the error on different machines at different locations.  I’ve also received complaints from multiple people commenting from their homes on a variety of browsers and operating systems.

Thanks,
Greg.

Hi, newcastlenow -

Are your customers using something like AOL to access the internet?

Also, are you, or others with this problem, seeing any rapid IP changes? You can use http://www.whatismyip.com/ to test this, just refresh several times.  I’m also curious if those accessing and running against this are coming through any corporate networks or firewalls.

Those are some of the common culprits, if you can let us know what you find out there, that would help move this forward.

Thank you!

Hi Lisa,

I don’t know of any customers using aol to access the site, although I suspect there may be one or two.  Our site is a local news site, so most of the traffic comes from a small geographical area which is served predominantly by cable (Optimum) and Verizon Fios.  There are a small number of DSL users.

I have personally seen the problem at three different locations, two served by verizon and one by optimum.  All three were private homes, so there are no corporate firewalls at play.  My IP address has not changed since at least Aug 28, and i have experienced the problem since then.  I can also tell you that the setups were I have seen the problem have been pretty plain - computer attached directly to a common wifi router.

Thanks,
Greg.

Hi, Greg,

You are definitely out of the norm, there then.  But we can still figure this out. 

If you clear your browser cache when this happens, does that fix the issue and let you continue?

What about if you clear the EE cache in system/expressionengine/cache?

If you clear your browser cache when this happens, does that fix the issue
and let you continue?

I haven’t tried that.  I can tell you that if i re-enter the captcha word after hitting back in the browser and retyping my comment it generally works.  I turned off the captcha requirement for the channel in order to allow comments to flow again (this is a live site after all) but can recreate a test page using another channel with captcha requirement on.  Once i do that i can report back on browser cache question.

What about if you clear the EE cache in system/expressionengine/cache?

No difference.  I did that as part of my upgrade to 2.2.2 and it didn’t make a difference.

newcastlenow,

yes please on creating a test page. It will help isolate and allow troubleshooting to continue.
Do you have many images inside the images/captcha folder?

I’ve hit this problem if the template has caching switched on.

Thanks Richard, a good item to check.

Where are you with this newcastlenow? Have you had a chance to create a test page?