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I don't know where this goes exactly.. but it's WEIRD

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 8:32 pm
by oneduality
I'm not exactly new to Joomla development, I've put out about 30 sites at this point over the last year, but at the moment I'm seeing some really bizzare things that I have yet to explain.

We've developed a site for a client in a LAMP environment and then sent it to them with instructions on how to get it running on their WAMP server.. we tested it locally running wamp5 1.6.5 and everything looked normal.

When they installed the site, it ran but there is major formatting issues.. when I had them view the site we saw this at the top..

Code: Select all

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>

</head>


<body>

<br>

</body>
</html>
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>

</head>


<body>

<br>

</body>
</html>


This block is repeated twice before the information within the template is displayed and for the life of me I cannot figure it out.

If it matters, we're running Joomla 1.0.13 and as I previously mentioned, Wamp 1.6.5 (php5)

I've had them enable output buffering in wamp, knowing that probably wouldn't help .. we've checked for spaces in the template.. and we simply cannot re-create the issue here

According to them, they've installed this on a Vista and an XP machine with the same results..

Any clues?

Re: I don't know where this goes exactly.. but it's WEIRD

Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2008 1:23 pm
by oneduality
So many views and no response..

By the way, this only happens in Joomla, it does not happen on the main wamp index.php

Re: I don't know where this goes exactly.. but it's WEIRD

Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2008 2:14 pm
by oneduality
Here's some further information, though I'm still stumped..

I viewed the site on my machine where it works fine, I took the rendered html and put it on the machine with the problem, in the website folder as test.php

I viewed test.php in the browser and it appeared fine, which means the web server is not putting these double html blocks in there.

I created test.php and put just a somple

Code: Select all

<?php
echo "hello";
?>


And this viewed fine, so PHP is not inserting the double blocks of HTML ..

Finally, I took the test.php with the static html in there and I replaced the template's index.php with it .. it's entirely static, no php code in there whatsoever.. the only difference is that now it's going through Joomla and Joomla is displaying it ..

Double block of HTML got added .. this is only happening when I run it through joomla .. the ONLY component i have installed is sh404sef .. and yes I tried disabling that.

Re: I don't know where this goes exactly.. but it's WEIRD

Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2008 5:16 pm
by oneduality
This has been solved .. and it ended up being something so horribly simple I wanted to shoot myself.

Every time I'd do edits to the site and send the zip over.. the client would open it and edit the configuration.php file to match is live url and database settings..

He's using an editor that automatically wraps a generic html template around any file it opens that does not have a valid doctype .. well guess what? configuration.php does not have a doctype ... his editor is not php aware and automatically wrapped a generic html template around the contents of his config..

This is why no matter what I did, when I sent it to him and he edited the config .. it introduced this "bug" ..

I doubt anyone will ever encounter this.. I only figured it out when I asked him to send me his configuration.php so I could check for spaces or some other problem ..

Ps. The reason it's handled this way is they are at a distant location and don't like opening up FTP.

Re: I don't know where this goes exactly.. but it's WEIRD

Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2008 7:27 pm
by Rogue4ngel
Glad you were able to figure it out!

Re: I don't know where this goes exactly.. but it's WEIRD

Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2008 11:56 pm
by oneduality
Rogue4ngel wrote:Glad you were able to figure it out!


Yeah, goes to show you that sometimes the solution is simple and you shouldn't overlook even the minor details.

I spent approximately 11 working hours trying to work through this remotely .. would have been a better use of time to just drive out to that location despite the distance :)

Ohwell

Re: I don't know where this goes exactly.. but it's WEIRD

Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2008 2:06 am
by Rogue4ngel
Welcome to the wonderful world of technology! Story of my life.

At least you know you won't do it again.

Re: I don't know where this goes exactly.. but it's WEIRD

Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2008 2:18 am
by oneduality
Rogue4ngel wrote:Welcome to the wonderful world of technology! Story of my life.

At least you know you won't do it again.


Haha now you know why I feel so retarded, I have been in the business for 11 years, I was sued by AOL for writing the first ICQ bot .. I should have known ... but sometimes the obvious evades you because you expect it to be more complex..

This is why I want to give up my career of software for bartending on the beach :) I'm ready to retire