Subscriber Role and Login Welcome Page

I have a test account that I am walking through all the stages of a refund. I have gotten the PayPal account refund to immediately demote the refunded user to a Subscriber role.

Now, the issue is that the refunded/demoted Subscriber account can still log in to the site and access the Login Welcome Page which I thought would be restricted to s2Member 1 level and above. The page in question has this in the s2Member area of the page in the admin area:

This Page is your:
Login Welcome Page
( automatically guarded by s2Member )

The second issue is that when that refunded/demoted Subscriber account clicks on other pages in the site that are restricted to s2Member Level 1 using the Post Level Restriction, a blank page appears, not the Membership Options Page.

Thanks for any help you can offer.

Thanks for the follow-up :-)

I have a test account that I am walking through all the stages of a refund. I have gotten the PayPal account refund to immediately demote the refunded user to a Subscriber role.

Awesome!

Now, the issue is that the refunded/demoted Subscriber account can still log in to the site and access the Login Welcome Page which I thought would be restricted to s2Member 1 level and above. The page in question has this in the s2Member area of the page in the admin area:

This Page is your:
Login Welcome Page
( automatically guarded by s2Member )

I understand. I’ll try to clarify this for you.

This special Page is protected from public access at all times. A User/Member MUST be logged-in to access your Login Welcome Page. However, anyone with a WordPress Subscriber Role, or higher (i.e. s2Member Membership Level 1, 2, 3, etc) will be able to access your Login Welcome Page. The Login Welcome Page is the first page a User/Member will see upon logging in. If they can login, they can see this Page.

If there is other content that requires Membership Level #1 or higher, a Free Subscriber will NOT be able to access that content of course. If you have content on your Login Welcome Page that is intended for paying Members ONLY (and NOT for Free Subscribers), you can either move that content to a Post/Page that requires Membership Level Access, or you can wrap that content in your Login Welcome Page with s2Member’s Conditionals. See: Dashboard -› s2Member® -› API / Scripting -› Simple/Shortcode Conditionals

---

The second issue is that when that refunded/demoted Subscriber account clicks on other pages in the site that are restricted to s2Member Level 1 using the Post Level Restriction, a blank page appears, not the Membership Options Page.

That’s very strange. I’m not aware of any bug in s2Member that would cause such a thing. If problems like this persist, please send us a Dashboard login and we’ll have a quick look for you. Please do that privately. See: s2Member® » Private Contact Form

Thanks for getting back to me Jason.

OK, I understand how this works now for the Login Welcome Page.

If we can solve the second problem of the blank page issue, then I can make this work. I sent the login info for the refunded/demoted Subscriber account so you can see if you see the blank page as well. What I was doing was clicking on Member only content from the Memberhip Dashboard (the Login Welcome Page) such as the Member Forum and other links on the navigation pull down menu under Member Area.

This happened for me using FireFox.

Details received. Thank you!

It appears to me that s2Member is redirecting the Free Subscriber properly, to your Membership Options Page. However, your Apache web server is responding with the following HTTP status code.

HTTP/1.1 414 Request-URI Too Long
Server: Apache

HTTP/1.1 414 Request-URI Too Long

The URL that s2Member is attempting to serve is only 308 characters. Generally speaking, the maximum length of a URL should be capped around 2000 characters, not at 300 or less. I suggest that you contact your hosting company about this, and see if they can provide you with some insight.

You might also want to have a look at this KB article. It could be Mod Security, implemented by your web host.
http://www.s2member.com/kb/mod-security-random-503-403-errors/

While trying to get HostGator to understand this problem, I may have figured out part of the problem. They kept trying to recreate the error in order to see what is happening. What I noticed is that they kept getting redirected to my Join Now page (where my payment button is located) but I had my Membership Options page set up as my Member Benefits page.

I have now fixed that. However, I am still having the original error.

When I log in using the refunded/demoted Subscriber test account I see the Member Welcome Page as expected. Then when I click to go to members only page, I see a blank page and that long URL. The techs at HostGator keep telling me that they see the Join Now page, fully loaded. No errors.

How do they see the right thing and I get this blank page?

I also did ask them to simply fix it based on your input from above and here is the conversation we had around that:

[Kim Dushinski]: What about this error: HTTP/1.1 414 Request-URI Too Long Server: Apache
[Anthony G.] There is not a setting for length of a URL but there is one for input variables
[Kim Dushinski]: What are input variables? How does it get changed?
[Anthony G.] This would be an example: http://domain.com/phpfile.php?variable=value&variable2=value2

Those things on the end are variables, input_variables would only be for PHP and not for http, and this setting would be modified at php.ini
[Kim Dushinski]: OK, not sure what that means exactly…
[Anthony G.] At this point I would need to be able to replicate the error on my end to further investigate it but I am unable to do so, I have been trying to see the error but its not coming up on my end.

Any ideas you can share to get this solved will be much appreciated.

Thanks for the follow-up :-)

It sounds like your hosting rep is referring to this PHP configuration option. Located in your php.ini file.
See: http://php.net/manual/en/info.configuration.php#ini.max-input-vars

In your conversation, did you mention Mod Security? HostGator runs Mod Security, and it’s possible for Mod Security to block you, but not block them; just due to the nature of Mod Security. Please try the suggestions posted here, or ask your hosting company about Mod Security tweaks.

See: http://www.s2member.com/kb/mod-security-random-503-403-errors/

If problems persist, I would also try to reproduce this on a clean installation of WordPress, just to rule out the possibility of this being related to a plugin conflict or a rogue script contained by one your plugins/themes in WordPress®.

I can confirm this works as expected in the latest release of WordPress v3.5 and s2Member v130116. Therefore, I have to assume this is an installation-specific issue. However, if you can reproduce it on a clean installation of WordPress, we’ll be happy to take a closer look for you.

UPDATE: I just took a quick look at your php.ini file (your PHP configuration), and I don’t see anything there would be a problem for s2Member®.