Something is not right -- possibly database issue but not sure.

[Naldinho]

I am having various issues and have for a while -- hoping people more knowledgeable than me could help me brainstorm possible explanations / solutions.

1) First thing I remember way back when I first created my store was that I couldn't change the store e-mail -- no matter how many time I changed it and saved it would just remain the original e-mail I had used. I changed this dozens of times and it would not change. I eventually solved this by just editing the e-mail directly in the database.

 

2) I have a module that requires a specific product attribute to exist. That attribute will randomly just disappear. I'll regenerate it -- everything will be fine for a few days and the it is just gone again.

 

3) A order's status will be changed from "payment received" to "shipped" in the order itself. 95% of the time this works fine but about 5% of the time the status on the page that has a list of orders won't update. So inside order that status = "shipped" but from the page where the orders are all listed it says "Payment Received" -- when I eventually change status to "Delivered" it updates.

 

4) When updating prices the opposite happened. I changed the retail price of the product -- saved. The price in the list of products reflects the change but if I look at the product itself and go to the price tab the original retail price is still there. From the front of the store going to the product displays the original price but if you add the product and go to checkout the updated price is used. Repeated attempts at saving the new price eventually leads to the price updating correctly -- this only happens occasionally most of the time updating a price just works.

 

5) When I have new customers, new orders, etc notifications I clear them off. Then when I return they are all back as new notifications. Again this doesn't happen all the time -- just some of the time. When it does happen after clearing the notifications a few times they go away for good.

I am currently using PrestaShop version 1.6.1.2 but this issue has followed me though several version upgrades. The issue with the store e-mail was from when I first started which was 1.6.0.x The site is on shared hosting for now using the default theme.

Does anyone have any theories / possible solutions?


My current theory is that it has something to do with the availability of the database -- basically changes get sent but a spike in resource consumption by someone else leads to Prestashop timing out before completely updating the database. I have no idea if that makes sense but it is the only thing I can think of that would explain the intermittent nature of data getting stuck in a Groundhog Day loop but otherwise working fine the vast majority of the time. 

 

[Dh42]

Where are you hosted and do you know the set up on the hosting? Are you using litespeed or nginx? 

[Naldinho]

I'm on Site5 -- I moved from GoDaddy because I was having serious issues with the site being too slow. They had a migration service so they handled the move.

I've always thought it was Apache and logging into their modified c-panel thing I see Apache Handlers as a menu option.
 

[Naldinho]

Thank you. I'll ask -- their support is quite good so I'll ask and see what happens.

I'm going to be moving the site from shared hosting to a VPS in the near future -- if moving would fix the problem I could move up the date for that.

[Dh42]

I would put in a ticket with them and ask them. They might be using something like that. It sounds like your issue is caused by a caching layer caching results to me. 

[Dh42]

No problem. As for moving it might, but I think the problem needs to be located first. If it is a caching issue then they might could just disable it. 

[Naldinho]

I asked Site 5 and they said there is no cache layer.

 

The problem is really frustrating. My store is basically constantly broken as this leads to all the products using a specific module to having a price of $0.

 

The module automatically creates an attribute (the one that sometimes just disappears) and the developer told me to just go to the config page to regenerate it when that happens -- except it won't regenerate today no matter how many times I try it.

 

I tried to disabling the module so that I could re-enable it and see if that would work but it won't let me do that either -- the backoffice just ignores my attempts to disable the module.

 

I even tried to update the module and that comes back as successful but then when I go to the config page the version number is the old version. It is possible I am installing the older version but I don't think so. I requested a upgrade and was sent one that I kept separate so can't see how I'd have confused it with the previous version.

 

I tried to reset the module and that failed with a message of module is already installed.

 

In addition the same module creates some temporary combinations -- those are supposed to be temporary but remnants of them seem to be stuck and I can't delete them. I spent the morning trying to get any of them to delete from the backoffice and they won't so going to try to figure out how to delete them directly from the database