Posted on: December 17, 2009
by: James Weir, Xpirt Design
Fixing the “Please Wait” problem in Magento’s Category Management
On behalf of Xpirt Web Design and SEO, I would like to provide the Magento open source developer community with a simple and straightforward solution in fixing the notorious problems with Magento’s category administration panel. If you get the dreaded “Please Wait” image that gets stuck or frozen when trying to add or modify categories on a fresh install, then this article is for you.
On a side note, this solution applies to Magento fresh installs on the latest stable version of 1.3.2.4, and also applies only to the problem of adding or modifying categories, as well as attempting to create, upload, or save a new product. This solution also applies to some users who are having trouble with the “Security” problem when trying to upload an image to a product. And lastly, this is a solution to the problem of saving configurations within the admin panel, such as editing and saving your company information, ect. This is “A” solution to these problems, not “THE” solution to these problems and I sincerely hope this solution works for you.
Problem:
Just recently, we were trying to install a fresh version of the latest stable version of Magento (as of today, 12/17/09) for a new web design client that required the robust and feature-packed e-commerce solution, Magento. After a flawless install at the hosting company “Blue Host”, we logged into the admin panel of Magento and proceeded to start adding categories and products. Of course, like so many of you, we ran into the “Please Wait” problem when trying to add new product categories. We also ran into the common problem of getting the “Please Wait” notification when trying to save or add a new product, as well as the common problem of the “Security Risk” when trying to upload a picture for a new product. We followed all the directions that both the Magento Community and Blue Host documentations provided. As you can imagine, we were stumped.
After several hours of searching through the Magento Community Forums, we were left with no other options than to plead with our hosting company to help out. The hosting company (Blue Host) refused to assist in this matter and basically told us to go back to Magento with the problem. I expected a response like that and wasn’t surprised.
Solution:
Just before we were going to give up, I thought to myself “why aren’t the updating information functions working either?” After thinking for a while, I decided to check out the .htaccess file in the public_html root to see if there are any 301 domain canonical redirects (in English, that’s the non-www. to www.). There was a 301 canonical redirect in the .htaccess file in the root, and another thing I noticed; If you use the “www redirect” in the C-Panel of your web host at the same time, it confuses the server and applications, such as Magento, will throw errors and won’t work correctly. So what I did was turn off the “www redirect” in the hosting C-Panel, then deleted the 301 canonical redirects (again, for those of you who still do not know what this is, this 301 redirect either adds or removes the “www” from your domain name, since search engines see the www. And non-www. As two separate websites and will penalize your SERPS or Rankings for duplicate content). Sure enough, the next time I logged into the Magento admin panel, the categories worked perfectly, the adding products functions worked perfectly, and uploading product images worked perfectly. No more “Please Wait” or “Security Risk” issues at all, whatsoever.
Lesson Learned:
Magento is extremely finicky. On a fresh install, check your .htaccess files for errors and temporarily turn off the www redirects in the C-Panel of your hosting account. Then take one step at a time in setting up your canonical 301 redirects, preferably, use the .htaccess file instead of the C-Panel www redirect function.
Conclusion:
I really hope this article will help some of you fix this problem. I can’t tell you how much of a headache this was, and how many hours of being frustrated, pissed off, and just plain irritated I was because of this problem. I mean, Magento is the Rolls Royce of e-commerce and it’s exciting to finally get to use the product, and then the nightmare begins when the darn thing wont just work. In any case, the problem is solved, and I would like to know if this solution helped some of you out there with the same problems. Please feel free to post comments about your experiences. These are DOFOLLOW comments for you SEO guys out there, but I do keep a close moderation on them so careful with the spam.
Also, for those of you who need any web design services, or need to design a template or theme for Magento, or any other E-commerce software, please visit our orange county web design section and find out how Xpirt Design can help you.
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26 Comments
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I got this link from magentocommerce forum. Thank You very much. This was a headache for me as well.
December 17th, 2009 at 9:20 pmThanks, I made sure that there were no www redirects in cPanel and added the redirect into the .htaccess. (However, my redirect is to add the www if missing, not strip it out.) Magento is also put in the /shop/ directory instead off the root, so I have the RewriteBase /shop/ added.
This solved my issue with the Please Wait on category management, but I seem to be having similar issues with the “Design” and “Catalog” sections of System Configuration. After hitting ‘Save’ it goes to a blank page and just says:
ReadResponse() failed: The server did not return a response for this request.
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated…
December 20th, 2009 at 11:45 amHave you tried without any redirects at all? If not, try it without any redirects in the .htaccess file as well. Magento might be setup to run with the www. or without the www. Let me know the results, thanks for the response!
December 20th, 2009 at 11:37 pmYou save my Day! Thanks you soo much………
December 28th, 2009 at 7:52 pmI wish I could make use of this fix, but unfortunately I cannot get it to work with my .htaccess file.
What changes are required if you use magento outside of the root directory ie:
http://www.daurwid.com/magento
First test was to comment out all the rewrite options in the .htaccess file. This caused the page to not be found at all.
Second test was uncomment the rewrite optionsand to add lines similar to yours but using the domain daurwid.com. Same results as first test.
Here is the rewrite code from the .htaccess file:
############################################
## enable rewrites
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
#REWRITECOND %{HTTP_HOST} ^WWW\.DAURWID\.COM$ [NC]
#REWRITERULE ^(.*)$ HTTP://DAURWID.COM/$1 [L,R=3-1]
############################################
## you can put here your magento root folder
## path relative to web root
RewriteBase /magento/
############################################
## workaround for HTTP authorization
## in CGI environment
RewriteRule .* – [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization}]
############################################
## always send 404 on missing files in these folders
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/(media|skin|js)/
############################################
## never rewrite for existing files, directories and links
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-l
############################################
## rewrite everything else to index.php
RewriteRule .* index.php [L]
Any help would be appreciated.
January 6th, 2010 at 11:36 amIt looks like you are using the supplied .htaccess file that comes with the installation of Magento.
If so, I would suggest that you try removing the URL rewrite and creating a new .htaccess file in your root of the website itself, not the magento root. Set up the URL rewrite there and see if that works.
One thing is for sure. Magento has compatibility problems with different methods of URL rewrites which is causing this problems on some people rather than all people.
January 6th, 2010 at 12:26 pmWhen you say “try removing the URL rewrite” what do you mean? I interpret it as to mean to delete the existing .htaccess file under /magento/ and put a new one under the root web directory.
What do I put into this new .htaccess file? Just copy the existing one?
January 6th, 2010 at 12:31 pmJust remove the rewrite code affecting your www. – non-www. url. Not the whole .htaccess file.
Then create a new htaccess file in the root of your website, instead of the magento root. Leave the old htaccess file in the magento root, just without the url rewrite
January 6th, 2010 at 12:41 pmOk maybe I just realized something. I use the website WITH www in the front. I prefer it this way. Is this a problem?
I did as you said and am now left with a 500 Internal Server Error.
I used the default magento .htaccess file for the /magento/ folder.
For the root folder, I copied the .htaccess file and commented out everything but the three lines you list on this document. I’ve copied it below, let me know what I should change.
############################################
## uncomment these lines for CGI mode
## make sure to specify the correct cgi php binary file name
## it might be /cgi-bin/php-cgi
# Action php5-cgi /cgi-bin/php5-cgi
# AddHandler php5-cgi .php
############################################
## GoDaddy specific options
# Options -MultiViews
## you might also need to add this line to php.ini
## cgi.fix_pathinfo = 1
## if it still doesn’t work, rename php.ini to php5.ini
############################################
## this line is specific for 1and1 hosting
#AddType x-mapp-php5 .php
#AddHandler x-mapp-php5 .php
############################################
## default index file
#DirectoryIndex index.php
############################################
## adjust memory limit
# php_value memory_limit 64M
# php_value memory_limit 128M
# php_value max_execution_time 18000
############################################
## disable magic quotes for php request vars
# php_flag magic_quotes_gpc off
############################################
## disable automatic session start
## before autoload was initialized
# php_flag session.auto_start off
############################################
## enable resulting html compression
#php_flag zlib.output_compression on
###########################################
# disable user agent verification to not break multiple image upload
# php_flag suhosin.session.cryptua off
###########################################
# turn off compatibility with PHP4 when dealing with objects
# php_flag zend.ze1_compatibility_mode Off
###########################################
# disable POST processing to not break multiple image upload
# SecFilterEngine Off
# SecFilterScanPOST Off
############################################
## enable apache served files compression
## http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html#gzip
# Insert filter on all content
###SetOutputFilter DEFLATE
# Insert filter on selected content types only
#AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/xml text/css text/javascript
# Netscape 4.x has some problems…
#BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html
# Netscape 4.06-4.08 have some more problems
#BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip
# MSIE masquerades as Netscape, but it is fine
#BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html
# Don’t compress images
#SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \.(?:gif|jpe?g|png)$ no-gzip dont-vary
# Make sure proxies don’t deliver the wrong content
#Header append Vary User-Agent env=!dont-vary
############################################
## make HTTPS env vars available for CGI mode
# SSLOptions StdEnvVars
############################################
## enable rewrites
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
REWRITECOND %{HTTP_HOST} ^WWW\.DAURWID\.COM$ [NC]
REWRITERULE ^(.*)$ HTTP://DAURWID.COM/$1 [L,R=3-1]
############################################
## you can put here your magento root folder
## path relative to web root
#RewriteBase /magento/
############################################
## workaround for HTTP authorization
## in CGI environment
# RewriteRule .* – [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization}]
############################################
## always send 404 on missing files in these folders
# RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/(media|skin|js)/
############################################
## never rewrite for existing files, directories and links
# RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
#RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
#RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-l
############################################
## rewrite everything else to index.php
#RewriteRule .* index.php [L]
############################################
## Prevent character encoding issues from server overrides
## If you still have problems, use the second line instead
# AddDefaultCharset Off
#AddDefaultCharset UTF-8
############################################
## Add default Expires header
## http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html#expires
# ExpiresDefault “access plus 1 year”
############################################
## By default allow all access
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
############################################
## If running in cluster environment, uncomment this
## http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html#etags
#FileETag none
January 6th, 2010 at 12:57 pmJust to add, doing the above killed my entire website and I had to rename .htaccess in the root folder to get it to come back up.
January 6th, 2010 at 12:59 pmTo be honest with you, I would just reinstall Magento.
But before you reinstall..
Fix your URL redirect and make sure it works properly. (on the root of the website).
Then reinstall Magento and see what happens.
January 6th, 2010 at 1:02 pmSo maybe I am misunderstanding something here… But I could have sworn fixing the URL redirect is what we have been trying to do based on the above article?
This in turn fixes the Magento problems (magically from my point of view).
The Magento install is fresh, soooooooo… not quite sure what will be gained from reinstalling it.
What should my root .htaccess file look like if I am only fixing the url redirect? Just the three lines in it like you have on the above article? Or does it need all the extra junk from the magento version?
I have not worked with .htaccess files a lot so this is very unfamiliar territory. But the basic concept is to have http://www.daurwid.com point people back to daurwid.com right? If this is true, I really don’t understand how changing this will repair an magento install that is outside a root directory of a website.
January 6th, 2010 at 1:14 pmSorry I wasn’t clear enough.
The reason I wanted you to reinstall is because, when you first install Magento, it gets installed and “programmed” to use whatever URL redirect you are using at the time (whether it be www. or non-www.). So basically, I’ve found that if you installed Magento when you had a www. redirect (instead of the non-www.) then when you try to use the software using the non-www. it wouldn’t work.
Because I don’t know the URL redirect method you used when you first installed Magento, I requested that you reinstall it after fixing the 301 URL Redirect.
————
Now, back to figuring this problem out…
To answer your question about which lines you need in your access file, you only need the lines which redirect your URL, which are the 3 lines I showed in you in the post above. Use only those 3 lines in your website root. See if that works and get back to me!
January 6th, 2010 at 1:27 pmSince you got me thinking about redirects, I realized there was a CNAME listing in the DNS table for my domain that pointed http://WWW.daurwid.com to the web root directly so both http://www.daurwid.com and daurwid.com would show the same stuff. I removed this and went back to my magento section and it did not show correctly. I see what you are talking about with the redirect causing magento hangs. I am just not going to use www anymore.
Headed off to reinstall Magento now and see if ditching www solved the problem.
I removed the CNAME before your request to test the .htaccess again, but I’ll post back here and see if this was a fixer for me.
January 6th, 2010 at 1:42 pmSigh.
Reinstalled. Used http://daurwid.com as base url.
No problem loading up and logging in.
Attempted to add a new attribute, hit save and 5 minutes still “Please Wait…”
Oh well guess this wasn’t my fix.
January 6th, 2010 at 2:46 pmoops used:
http://daurwid.com/magento/
As base url or whatever. No WWW basically.
January 6th, 2010 at 2:47 pmOK, now that you have reinstalled, try removing those 3 lines from the website root and see what happens. If that doesn’t work, see if your web hosting control panel has a www redirect option. If so, disable it and see if that works. The problem is definitely with your redirects.
January 6th, 2010 at 2:56 pmAt the time of reinstall, there was no .htaccess file in the root directory. also there is no way to reach http://www.daurwid.com/ anymore since it’s not pointed at anything.
I do have a www redirect option for my host/domain however it is not enabled and has no redirects listed.
Any other ideas?
January 6th, 2010 at 3:07 pmI have one more idea. Check the HTACCESS file in the Magento root. If you have a URL redirect in that file, remove it. Try again. If this doesn’t work, you might need to check your file permissions and talk to your hosting provider. If you have GoDaddy, I’m pretty sure their servers don’t support Magento at all. Blue Host supports it and its only $6 or $7 per month.
January 6th, 2010 at 3:17 pmIt’s the default .htaccess file in the /magento/ directory.
############################################
## enable rewrites
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
############################################
## you can put here your magento root folder
## path relative to web root
#RewriteBase /magento/
############################################
## workaround for HTTP authorization
## in CGI environment
RewriteRule .* – [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization}]
############################################
## always send 404 on missing files in these folders
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/(media|skin|js)/
############################################
## never rewrite for existing files, directories and links
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-l
############################################
## rewrite everything else to index.php
RewriteRule .* index.php [L]
I don’t see a URL redirect, do you?
January 6th, 2010 at 3:47 pmNo I dont see one. There must be some other issue going on here. You can try reinstalling magento to your website root instead of a folder.
January 6th, 2010 at 3:52 pmI think you were right in that it’s the host. I haven’t seen documentation to say that Godaddy doesn’t support it, but if that is the case I will be looking for another hosting provider.
I would reinstall magento to the root folder but I am running Joomla on it. I’d like to not mess up my Joomla! lol
January 6th, 2010 at 4:32 pmTrust me, Magento doesn’t work on GoDaddy.
—————————————————
Problem solved. Blue host is great. I am running a magento install on Blue Host as we speak and I haven’t run into any problems (besides this one) at all. It wasn’t the fault of blue host though, just confusion with .htaccess files.
Good luck with your store!
January 6th, 2010 at 4:44 pmAfter several hours of tracking stuff down with the saving config, I’m at my wits end. The ‘Please Wait…’ issue is not a problem anymore.
I don’t believe it’s related to the htaccess files at all, since it doesn’t make a difference whether I remove the one in the root OR the one in the shop folder.
If I use Safari or Chrome, it works fine. If I use IE or Firefox, I either get “page cannot be displayed” or the previously-mentioned “ReadResponse failed” error. From what I can tell, it has to do with the three watermark image upload requests on the page. Looking at Fiddler, the server throws a http 504 error from IE and Firefox when hitting save on either of those two pages. Safari and Chrome return a 302 redirect to back to the edit page.
This *used* to work at one point, and I don’t know what might have caused it to stop working. I’ve tried reinstalling Magento (both 1.3.2.4 and 1.4.0.0-rc1)
Any ideas on what I might be able to try?
January 7th, 2010 at 2:34 pmI think the problem you are referring to is a separate issue then the problem covered here in this article, though the result is the same.
January 7th, 2010 at 3:01 pmJust found this looking for advise on Gzip. I am running a full magento site on godaddy and it works ok. Just to let people know that. I have not enabled Gzip yet though.. not sure if it is possible.
January 11th, 2010 at 6:17 am