Troubleshoot OSCommerce Session Issues Between HTTP and HTTPS

This could be a problem with the cookie settings. These are easy to fix with a simple change in the includes/configure.php file. This guide will help you troubleshoot OSCommerce session issues between HTTP and HTTPS.

How to Troubleshoot

For this example, we will be using the https://secure.Bluehost.com/~username url.

Edit the configure.php file located in the includes directory for your OSCommerce install. For this example, it is:

~/public_html/catalog/includes

There are 5 lines in the configure.php file to be concerned with:

• define('HTTP_SERVER', 'http://www.example.com'); // eg, http://localhost - should not be empty for productive servers
• define('HTTPS_SERVER', 'https://secure.Bluehost.com/~username'); // eg, https://localhost - should not be empty for productive servers
• define('ENABLE_SSL', true); // secure webserver for checkout procedure?
• define('HTTP_COOKIE_DOMAIN', 'www.domain.com');
• define('HTTPS_COOKIE_DOMAIN', 'secure.Bluehost.com');

The third line defines that when you are dealing with checking out and account configuration, you are using a secure link. All other links will be unsecure. You want to make sure that the HTTP_SERVER and HTTPS_SERVER domain names are equal to the HTTP_COOKIE_DOMAIN and HTTPS_COOKIE_DOMAIN settings as well. You will notice you do not include the "https" or the "~username" or any other folders at all, just the domain name.

Summary

To troubleshoot OSCommerce session cookie problems, you need to edit the configure.php file within your ~/public_html/catalog/includes directory for your OSCommerce install. You must ensure that your HTTPS_SERVER and HTTPS_SERVER domain names are equal to your HTTP_COOKIE_DOMAIN and HTTPS_COOKIE_DOMAIN settings.