FASTHOSTS and index.php rewrite problem

General Installation & Upgrade
1

I have recently moved to Fasthosts for my hosting.

After 5 days the CS CART 2.1.4 is not working at all after install as Fasthosts have now mentioned in their very long-winded support that 'There is something in the index.php page on the site that is causing it to redirect in a loop. I’m afraid this is something that you will need to diagnose as we are unable to examine and debug customer scripts.



So, as they are completely useless, can anyone explain in simple terms what I may need to do please as I’m losing the will to live!



Thanks in advance!



Paddy

2

I doubt this has anything to do with index.php but you could try replacing it with a fresh copy from the CS-Cart package for that version to rule that out…



If that doesn’t work, post here or PM to me the contents of your main .htaccess file and also these variables from config.local.php



// Host and directory where software is installed on no-secure server

$config[‘http_host’] = ‘%HTTP_HOST%’;

$config[‘http_path’] = ‘%HOST_DIR%’;



// Host and directory where software is installed on secure server

$config[‘https_host’] = ‘%HTTPS_HOST%’;

$config[‘https_path’] = ‘%HOST_DIR%’;



You do have some looping going on and it may reside within this information

3

Thanks for the reply



htaccess



Options -Indexes



order allow,deny

deny from all









config local



// Host and directory where software is installed on no-secure server

$config[‘http_host’] = ‘www.thetoyfarm.co.uk/’;

$config[‘http_path’] = ‘’;



// Host and directory where software is installed on secure server

$config[‘https_host’] = ‘www.thetoyfarm.co.uk/’;

$config[‘https_path’] = ‘’;



Any help greatly appreciated! Thankyou so much!

4

Try the following



Replace the content in your .htaccess file with this


DirectoryIndex index.html index.php


RewriteEngine on

RewriteBase /



RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !\.(png|gif|ico|swf|jpe?g|js|css)$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . index.php?sef_rewrite=1 [L,QSA]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} .*\/catalog\/.*
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}/index.html !-f
RewriteRule . index.php?sef_rewrite=1 [L,QSA]





Also change the config.local.php variables to this

```php

// Host and directory where software is installed on no-secure server

$config[‘http_host’] = ‘www.thetoyfarm.co.uk’;

$config[‘http_path’] = ‘’;



// Host and directory where software is installed on secure server

$config[‘https_host’] = ‘www.thetoyfarm.co.uk’;

$config[‘https_path’] = ‘’; ```

5

That seems to have worked as in it now makes it to the site thetoyfarm.co.uk, but… I don’t seem to have any images/graphics etc its all just text? Is that something that is part of that or do I need to reinstall?

I did notice that on installing cs cart the screen shots of the skins weren’t there? Is that normal?

6

You have some permissions set incorrectly and your css cannot load because it’s causing 500 internal server errors.

[url]http://www.thetoyfarm.co.uk/skins/sport/customer/styles.css[/url]



Your server may be running suPHP and if so, will not allow permissions of 666 or 777



If you have set any to these then you will need to revert them to 644(all files) and 755(all directories).

7

If that does resolve the problem then you will also need to edit some coding in config.local.php to remove where CS-Cart tries to force these permissions



Look for this near the bottom of the file



define(‘DEFAULT_FILE_PERMISSIONS’, 0666);

define(‘DEFAULT_DIR_PERMISSIONS’, 0777);



Change it to this then clear the store cache



define(‘DEFAULT_FILE_PERMISSIONS’, 0644);

define(‘DEFAULT_DIR_PERMISSIONS’, 0755);

8

Sorry to sound daft, but is that the files/folders that I’m instructed to change at the start of installation by CS Cart? Sorry, coding etc really isn’t my bag!?



Also, on the new version of CS Cart there is no Catalog folder? Is that the norm?

9

Yes Paddy



If you did chmod the files and directories to 666/777 as described in the CS-Cart instructions like below

[QUOTE] chmod 666 config.local.php

chmod -R 777 images

chmod -R 777 skins

chmod -R 777 var[/QUOTE]



Then your server is running suPHP and it won’t allow insecure permissions to be set.



Changing those to below should fix the problem

[QUOTE] chmod 644 config.local.php

chmod -R 755 images

chmod -R 755 skins

chmod -R 755 var[/QUOTE]

10

Thanks for that, I’ve now changed all of those to what you have suggested but alas no good, still a text based site?

11

Permissions are still incorrect

[url]http://www.thetoyfarm.co.uk/skins/sport/customer/images/customer_area_logo.gif[/url]

500 Error still



Did you clear your caches??



Remove all files in /var/cache

and also everything under the following directories

/var/compiled/admin

/var/compiled/customer

/var/compiled/mail

12

Do you use smartoptimizer? If not maybe you could paste the content of your .htaccess file in here because maybe there is something wrong with it

13

The content of the htaccess file is a few sections up in this thread…

14

I can probably resolve this for you Paddy but need to see the setup instead of doing all this guessing. If you can PM me with a temporary FTP details, I’ll try to sort it out for you…

15

Just PM’d you, thankyou!!

16

This turned into a nightmare because of this servers configuration… You will not be able to run CS-Cart on it…



It is running php as a cgi so the permissions should not be set to 666/777 but, they are using a non standard umask which is assigning permissions that should not work at all in this environment. Files uploaded to this server are assigned a permission of 604 and directories are 707… Somehow, most of the files in your store were given a permission of 706 and I haven’t figured out how that happened.



Anyway, after setting your skins and images directories and files to 644/755 it still would not load properly so I kept digging… I then found that this server will not allow the .htaccess files in the cart sub-directories. After disabling those in /images and /skins the store was able to load images and css but there are still errors related to java script. It’s not really worth spending more time on this server because, it is not going to support CS-Cart unless you remove all directory security. As I mentioned in the PM, it also has very limited PHP functions so you will be better off nearly anywhere else. I would even recommend GoDaddy before this host



Sorry I couldn’t help you more with this Paddy.

17

Wow Paddy,

You just got a bunch of diag and advise for free! You should at least send S-Combs a six-pack or bottle of wine!

18

or both wine and a sixpack! Or rather, please don’t start about alcohol because I just woke up and my head feels like a balloon after yesterdays LONG dinner :-x



Anyway, Paddy… I see you’re located in the UK so if you’re clients are also there, you might wanna get a UK based host. Usually closer = faster.



There are a LOT of threads about hosting… but if you’re quite new to all this, It might help to get a host who knows CS-cart, like Martfox, Wiredtree, or EZ Merchants hosted solution.



Good luck!

19

Thanks tbirnseth, I will consider sending a six pack over, thanks for the advice!



Flow, will certainly sort out the UK Based hosting and am about to cancel FASTHOSTS right now!

20

I too have given up trying to install CSCart on Fasthosts after a full day and getting no help from Fasthosts support.



It is client's hosting account so I am now looking to replace CSCart with a Wordpress cart. At least I know that will install.