Link to document in File Manager not working

Nick, ToastNotables Club 2345

Just yesterday, our club SAA had a variation of this problem, and I've been able to reproduce it, to my annoyance. We have links to things we use a lot in our members only menu (see Att1), many of which are documents for download. When clicked on, these now give us the "Not Logged In" screen Att2.

I'm going to send our members an email on how to use the Member Downloads page in the meantime.

Nick Almasy, VPE
Toastnotables Toastmasters

To be able to access anything in the members section you must be logged in this will not change.
Click the link in the email log in and then click the link again if needed.

nalmasy wrote: Nick, ToastNotables Club 2345

Just yesterday, our club SAA had a variation of this problem, and I've been able to reproduce it, to my annoyance. We have links to things we use a lot in our members only menu (see Att1), many of which are documents for download. When clicked on, these now give us the "Not Logged In" screen Att2.

I'm going to send our members an email on how to use the Member Downloads page in the meantime.

Nick Almasy, VPE
Toastnotables Toastmasters

Nick, thanks for the post on this. I actually thought I had already implemented an "on-the-fly" member login for this scenario, but I guess that was wishful thinking.

In any case, I made some tweaks to the code, so you should now find that if you click on a link to a members only download file when you are not already logged in, it triggers a member login dialog. (Could you please confirm that you now see that and let us know?) Once you do that log in, it should proceed to load the Member Download page and trigger the download.

This whole process is a convoluted mess of three different parts of the system doing redirects, passing messages, etc. etc. ... Essentially, a big pain, but one that I also think is necessary. Thanks for your patience and thanks for your communication.

2345 Toastnotables, Nick,

Steve, Brian, et. al.,
Thanks for your work on my problem, especially done at late hours!
I logged in at a time when Steve probably had just made the changes, and found the functionality as described in his post. However, if I’m not logged in, I can’t explain how that can be (see Att3); the site is telling me I’m logged in—and not only that, I can look at agendas, and even download some of the other members only files.

Here’s how I’ve proceeded:

1. Log In.
2. Bring up the agenda for the next meeting (as shown in my previous Att2.)
3. Click on “Wizard of Aaahs Template” at the left pane—this gives me a login screen with the Member Downloads page in the background.
4. Log in again.
Now I only see the Member Downloads page, and if I click on “Wizard of Aaahs Template” again, I’m taken back to the Member Downloads page, specifically to:
toastnotables.toastmastersclubs.org/memb...loads.html?mdownload
+Wizard_of_Aaahs_Template.xlsx
+notloggedin
+1535740674

A third member, Wendy, has now sent me an email reporting the same problem. She and Jeff, our Sergeant at Arms (who first noticed this) are almost surely using PCs. I’m using Safari 11.1.2 on MacOs 10.13.6.

I’ve ditched my cookies and other website data several times, and I’ve tried reloading the website from the ‘reload from server’ link at the bottom of the home page, as well as closing the browser and even shutting down completely overnight.

I haven’t tried renaming the file, but off and on I’m having the same problem with some of the other links, so I’m not sure if that would help.

Thanks

(sorry for the long post... but you got me thinking a bit. )

It looks like there was some caching issues going on here also. Please click the reload link at the bottom of your screen. (or just clear your browser cache)

I looked at the downloader code, and the cache busting looked like it needed a bit more "oomph", so I tweaked that. I did notice the anomaly you reported in your last post, but after I cleared my browser cache and added some more cache busting code, everything seems to be running as expected now.

However, you may well run into some caching issues in the future if you are linked to files that are frequently changing. (not really the fault of FTH... blame your browser for that) This is an interesting case and makes me think maybe I should add an option in the Custom web pages / links for the code to automatically add cache buster parameters for links to frequently changed resources. (e.g. like a spreadsheet )

Additionally, as far as logins go, while 2345.toastmastesclubs.org and toastnotables.toastmastersclubs.org refer to the same website from our perspective, from your *browser's perspective" they are different URLs and each has its own set of cookies and login state. Thus, if you navigate to 2345.toastmastesclubs.org , log in, and then click on a link containing toastnotables.toastmastersclubs.org/jdownload.cgi ? ... you will see a login dialog unless you had also logged in via toastnotables.toastmastersclubs.org because browsers see those as different URLs and thus have different cookies (and login states).

This matters for you, because your referenced link is tied to a specific host URL involving your website alias. It won't be a problem for you if you were not already logged in, but if you were logged in via a different URL, you will see the login pop-up. You might be better served by just ditching the https: //toastnotables.toastmastersclubs.org from your links and just use relative links (e.g. /jdownload.cgi? etc.) which would work the same regardless of how you logged into your website.

Bottom Line: Relative URLs are almost always better when referencing info on the FTH server, unless the URLs are in email. (everything has to be absolute explicit URLs in emails.)

Nick, Club 2345.

Thanks, Steve--brilliant! I can see why your digital tip jar is full!