Photo Gallery Forums

Hello everyone,

we're having a major issue with the administration in the X3 Pro system. My 13-year-old son has been publishing his photos and articles without any problems for about five years. 

Yesterday, my son came home upset because, although the website is working, the admin panel isn’t working at all, and he can’t add new content or edit old content. I found that after logging into the X3 Panel, the folder structure (left menu) doesn’t display. When he clicks on the folder list, the window turns gray and nothing happens. You have to refresh the page. System functions—Settings, Tools—all work. For example, you can change the template and design. 

I thought maybe something had broken (or rather, that my son had done something he shouldn’t have), so I restored the entire website from an offline backup. Still the same behavior. I updated X3 to the latest version.  No result. I upgraded PHP from 5.5 to 7.4. Nothing. I performed a completely new, clean, full installation using the X3 installer. The installation went OK, the diagnostic script reports no errors, but the behavior is the same. The front-end works, but content management does not work at all. 

I don’t see any abnormalities on the server, and I haven’t received any information from the provider about changes made to the configuration. But of course, I can’t rule that out. We’re just users. 

Please, do you have any experience with this behavior? Do you have any ideas on how to resolve the situation? My son is desperate, and it’s really bothering him.

Thank you very much for any response. Jakub Sr. & Jakub Jr. (Sispunda)
Website: https://sispunda.cz
Screenshot from the panel: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/qarsr6ers32cm7veanykz/AIvpmRwlpeDdjijzp2yR-TY?rlkey=j5es8fbhh315nej8s8k5vymd7&dl=0

Hello. When something like this happens suddenly, and even persists after you restore a backup, it points to changes on the server. It's not like X3 can change itself in any way, right? In fact, server updates are usually the main reason, most often new firewall introductions. Or maybe something with the content folder structure (perhaps you can validate it manually from FTP or from hosting file manager?).

First of all, do you have any error log you can check? There might be one inside the hosting control panel?

My next step would be to ask for control panel login, as that's the only way I can start diagnosing.

I have had the same problem for many months now. I have to reload the page at least once, sometimes twice until I'm able to see the full control panel and modify anything. Even when I have the full panel accessible, it takes forever to add a new folder or make changes to the website. It takes at least three to five minutes until I can make a successful change after login. I haven't measured this, it's what it feels like. It might have to do with the many folders I currently have and the large images, or maybe it's due to a rather slow internet connection. X3 might not the best solution for my type of website with so many folders and images (utopia-photography.ch). I've been rebuilding the site the old way during the last weeks with css, js and html to replace the current X3 page (I haven't switched yet, since it's a lot of work), and I wish I could stay with X3. In the beginning X3 was so much easier to deal with than coding it myself. Also, when visiting my web page, it takes a lot of time to load the galleries. But that's probably due to the fact that I have too large images (1200px wide, but in good quality) without thumbnails. 

utopia wrote: I have had the same problem for many months now. I have to reload the page at least once, sometimes twice until I'm able to see the full control panel and modify anything. Even when I have the full panel accessible, it takes forever to add a new folder or make changes to the website. It takes at least three to five minutes until I can make a successful change after login. I haven't measured this, it's what it feels like. It might have to do with the many folders I currently have and the large images, or maybe it's due to a rather slow internet connection. X3 might not the best solution for my type of website with so many folders and images (utopia-photography.ch). I've been rebuilding the site the old way during the last weeks with css, js and html to replace the current X3 page (I haven't switched yet, since it's a lot of work), and I wish I could stay with X3. In the beginning X3 was so much easier to deal with than coding it myself. Also, when visiting my web page, it takes a lot of time to load the galleries. But that's probably due to the fact that I have too large images (1200px wide, but in good quality) without thumbnails. 

Why not make a new post? The original post was solved, and was specifically related to new firewall rules on the users server, which were blocking the script from saving data.

Your post seems to be related to something completely different: Slowness. Yes slow can of course be related to the amount of folders and dirs on your server, but only for certain processes. It wouldn't affect normal "save settings" or "uploading" for example. Besides, even if you have a lot of files and folders, this wouldn't be slow on modern SSD disks. It could be (and it actually sounds like) your host uses old HDD disks, which is very slow (and ver unusual) in this day and age. The only other reason would be that the host simply is slow (and over-shared with other users).

I can only diagnose further if I can test the website and login to the panel.

Thanks for your reply, Karl.

Jakub Sr.'s description matches exactly what I have observed as well: “the admin panel isn’t working at all, and he can’t add new content or edit old content. I found that after logging into the X3 Panel, the folder structure (left menu) doesn’t display. When he clicks on the folder list, the window turns gray and nothing happens. You have to refresh the page. System functions—Settings, Tools—all work. For example, you can change the template and design.”

However, in my case the issue can be resolved by reloading the page or logging out and back in. That said, the panel has generally become slower for me as well. Today I found that this can be improved temporarily by logging out of the panel and then logging in again.

Every time I rename a folder or create a new one, the panel becomes extremely slow. Since the underlying causes in my case seem to be different from Jakub’s, I will analyze the situation in more detail and may report back in the forum in a few weeks.

Many thanks, 
Markus

utopia wrote:Jakub Sr.'s description matches exactly what I have observed as well: “the admin panel isn’t working at all, and he can’t add new content or edit old content.

But this customers request was already solved, and it was related to a FIREWALL security rule on the server, blocking POST requests (from the panel). This issue had nothing to do with performance or slowness

utopia wrote:I found that after logging into the X3 Panel, the folder structure (left menu) doesn’t display. When he clicks on the folder list, the window turns gray and nothing happens. You have to refresh the page. System functions—Settings, Tools—all work. For example, you can change the template and design.”

However, in my case the issue can be resolved by reloading the page or logging out and back in. That said, the panel has generally become slower for me as well. Today I found that this can be improved temporarily by logging out of the panel and then logging in again.

Every time I rename a folder or create a new one, the panel becomes extremely slow. Since the underlying causes in my case seem to be different from Jakub’s, I will analyze the situation in more detail and may report back in the forum in a few weeks.

I can only diagnose from here if you can provide a link. It sounds like the system is slow, likely related to one or more of the following: Slow hosting, slow disks (HDD), large folder structure, other website processes going on somewhere else, over-shared hosting.

X3 itself hasn't changed of course, so it must be something on server. If it was related to the amount of folders, this would only affect the loading of the menu, not saving settings.

Karl, 

I've added the link to my website above: https://utopia-photography.ch/ Or do you mean the web hosting provider? 

Best wishes, 
Markus

utopia wrote:Or do you mean the web hosting provider? 

I did mean the link, but with the control panel LOGIN, because that's the only way I can diagnose your problem, which is specifically related to the control panel. Please send panel login in Private Message or email karl @ photo.gallery.

utopia wrote:https://utopia-photography.ch/

I did check your website, and it's extremely slow, although I am far away in Asia. It's still not normal. In the screenshot below, it's loading static assets (images), and each image takes up to 10 seconds. This looks like HDD disks, although your host claims to use only SSD disks.



Perhaps you can tell me who is the hosting service? What hosting package are you on?

I checked some more images, and they take up to 15 seconds even if they are not too big. If this is the speed that your hosting manages to deliver static assets, then it will be the same proportional speed of disk operations, like X3 generating the panel menu dynamically.