I am looking to start using Gibbon in a highly technology poor college (we have 570 students, 50 staff and only 30 old computers!), within a more technology poor state of India. Initially I’m hoping that the system can help us improve organisation and tracking of pupil records, fee payments, etc.
Yesterday I took the time to install Gibbon using Softaculous on cPanel. The installation appeared to be successful and I am able to see a log in screen, and see the admin login. However there seems to be a number of issues.
On the log in screen there are a number of what looks like broken image links.
Once logged in as admin, I can go to system admin and start changing settings, and school admin to start editing the college calendar. When I press save I get a message saying saved but when I go back it seems that nothing has changed. If I go away for a while it sometimes updates (after significant delay) but sometimes reverts to default.
Is these issues on our side or yours? Has the installation not taken place correctly? I have checked that php and my SQL versions are of required level on the ‘System Check’. I see a complete column of green ticks with the exception of ‘max_input_vars >= 5000’ Here only 1000 is showing. Is this the problem?
I am far from computer illiterate but my coding knowledge is basically zero. Learning html/php is on my list of things to learn! So please answer accordingly!
‘max_input_vars >= 5000’ This is a PHP Setting… Look for a file called php.ini on your server, open and search for 'max_input_vars then edit the corresponding value to 5000. If you wont be able to and you have teamviewer, I can help you remotely.
Hello.
I do have team viewer. How would we go about arranging a (virtual) meeting?
I did a little digging and it seems that simply finding the php.ini file is not a simple thing on cpanel. I did what I thought was logical and searched via the file manager.
I read up some cPanel documentation but seems to refer to some functions that I couldn’t locate… seems it may be open only to hosting providers. I’ll contact them. https://documentation.cpanel.net/display/66Docs/PHP
Response from webhost:
“…this is shared hosting environment so we can’t modify any parameter in server configuration.
You can refer to cloud VPS or dedicated server for the same.”
Any suggestions? Looking to do this on the cheap… as said we are already tech poor so don’t want to be paying for additional hosting services.
Hi Peter, running Gibbon on a shared hosting server is often tough, but some hosts are better than others. I know James, who answered above, offers Gibbon-specific hosting. You could always look at Green Geeks, who I have had great general hosting experiences with, and who do have the cPanel extension that allows you to customise php.ini.
Another alternative is to run Gibbon on a humble PC, running a LAMP stack. Do you have any sysadmin or Linux CLI experience? It’s not too hard to get started if you don’t…I can give you some hints to get started. You’ll get much better performance via your LAN, without burdening your Internet connection.
Looking at your description again, I am not sure this is a php.ini issue. Can you send me your URL? If you don’t mind me logging in to your system you could email a username and password to support@gibbonedu.org so I can login and play around. Thanks! Ross.
Hello.
I do have team viewer. How would we go about arranging a (virtual) meeting?
I did a little digging and it seems that simply finding the php.ini file is not a simple thing on cpanel. I did what I thought was logical and searched via the file manager.
I read up some cPanel documentation but seems to refer to some functions that I couldn’t locate… seems it may be open only to hosting providers. I’ll contact them. https://documentation.cpanel.net/display/66Docs/PHP
Hi apologies for delayed response. I hope Admin has sort you out. If you need high availability hosting just let me know. We fully support gibbon. https://xcobean.com and we will help you setup everything you need for gibbon.
Hi Peter, thanks for giving me access to your site. I notice in Admin > System Admin > System Check that there is, as you mention an issue with max_input_vars, and whilst it is worth bumping this number up (by editing php.ini), it should not be the cause of the issues that you are encountering.
I’ve tested, as an example, Admin > System Admin > System Settings, but cannot see the issue that you have described. For example, I have set the System Name field from “Gibbon” to “Gibbons”, and this has persisted after a save. Perhaps load the page and see if you see this change, and then wait and see if it sticks for the coming few hours. I’ve never seen the kind of issue that you describe before, which makes it a little harder to troubleshoot.
I am curious to know if perhaps this is some kind of weird caching issue in your browser? What browser are you using? Version? What happens if you clear all cache and history, does that help?
Ross,
Many thanks for taking the time to look. With regards changing max_input_vars I think we are stuck, at least until we migrate to a different host. Green Geeks looks great and appeals to my background in renewable energy.
Primarily using Chrome but issues appear to persist on Firefox. I notice that info I enter does stick, but only if I reload pages. If I change, as you did, something on system settings and hit save I see a wee green box confirming success, but then if I click ‘system admin’ again the original data will show. If I then refresh the page the new entries will come up. This doesn’t feel normal…
Also I appear to be unable to log out, I just get redirected back to the landing screen.
Sent you a screen recording by email to make things clear.
Alright, that bit about refreshing gives us a clue. Sounds like it might be some network level caching. Have you tried on another network? And the logout bit sounds like something to do with PHP sessions, but you are using PHP v7, and we’ve tested a lot with that and not seen any issues.
In the end it looks like it’s caching related. Some web hosts will set default values for many of the cache settings, which works well if they’re serving up webpages and want to keep things loading quickly. For a web app these defaults may cause some havoc when the forms and redirect headers get cached too. Often this can fixed by adding some cache settings to .htaccess in your gibbon root folder, which in many servers overwrites the defaults with some more sensible settings for a web app.
If anyone else experiences this issue, try the snippet below by adding it to the bottom of your .htaccess` file.
Hi Peter, running Gibbon on a shared hosting server is often tough, but some hosts are better than others. I know James, who answered above, offers Gibbon-specific hosting. You could always look at Green Geeks, who I have had great general hosting experiences with, and who do have the cPanel extension that allows you to customise php.ini.
Another alternative is to run Gibbon on a humble PC, running a LAMP stack. Do you have any sysadmin or Linux CLI experience? It’s not too hard to get started if you don’t…I can give you some hints to get started. You’ll get much better performance via your LAN, without burdening your Internet connection.
Cheers,
Ross
Got to ask, does that mean you have experience with James’s company’s hosting? I ask because, as I posted about in my own thread, I’m having complete non-functionality with my host and Gibbon 17, and I may need a solution for next year. However I’m hesitant to trust a host I have 0 experience with and have never heard of!
Hi Ernest, I test-drove Jame’s hosting service, but never really put any load on the server. It was a long time ago, and it looked promising, but I can’t offer any guarantees.
