Cookie Problem, Internet Explorer Only

Further to this, I’ve now tried disabling all caching and all plugins and the problem still exists. It’s down to a bare hosting environment with no optimisations at all.

Ed

Just a guess, but you might be mixing content, http and https. Depending on browser security settings, it may be rejecting things like cookies. You might want to see the IE browser is throwing any security warning.

Thanks jkhongusc, I thought it might have been that too, so I disabled all HTTPS and tried through a HTTP only connection. It still didn’t work unfortunately, although there we no errors using HTTPS either in the network panel.

The problem could stem from many sources: caching, http/https mixed content, plugins, themes. Have you tried disabling plugins and changing to a default theme to see if you still have the problem?

1) Delete ALL cookies related to your site from IE

2) Try to log in again. If it fails, check what URL value the cookie is giving you. You may need to use https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Editing_wp-config.php#Set_Cookie_Domain

jkhongusc – I’ve tried all of those unfortunately, none have worked. Thanks.

Ipstenu – I’ve tried removing all cookies and using an InPrivate browsing session to no avail. I’ll try setting the cookie domain and report back.

Ipstenu – Unfortunately I get “The constant “COOKIE_DOMAIN” is defined (probably in wp-config.php). Please remove or comment out that define() line.” as I’m using the WordPress MU Domain Mapping plugin. I may try temporarily removing sunrise.php at some point this evening and see if that rectifies anything.

Removing sunrise.php/WordPress MU Domain Mapping also doesn’t change anything.

The cookie domain is sending as .ed.gs for the url littlemead100wc.ed.gs/wp-login.php, this is the same on other browsers, yet they log in correctly.

Have you tried setting IE’s cookie options? IE may be seeing the cookies but not accepting them.

Tools -> Internet Options -> Privacy -> Advanced:

I would select “Override automatic cookie handling”, then accept both first-part and third-party cookies, and select “Always allow session cookies”.

If the above doesnt work, then I would think that there is something funny going on with your COOKIE_DOMAIN. You mention that the Domain Mapping enabled sites work in IE? If that is so, I would install a script that prints out the COOKIE_DOMAIN; and call it from the working and non-working sites to see if there is a difference. I could create such a script if you want.

Yeah, I’ve tried that already unfortunately.

Domain mapped sites seem to work fine in IE, yeah.

I’m at work currently and unable to access my server, I’ll be back home this evening and will test the COOKIE_DOMAIN declaration output then. Assuming I’d need to do something similar to:

<?php
  echo '<pre>';
  print_r(COOKIE_DOMAIN);
  echo '</pre>'
?>

Cheers for the help so far!

I create test scripts either in the wordpress root directory or in the theme directory… depends on whether I am testing a blog or network issue. In this case I would put in WP root dir. I would call this script <WP base>/mydomain.php

<?php
require( dirname(__FILE__) . '/wp-load.php' );

if ( defined('COOKIE_DOMAIN') ) {
echo "COOKIE_DOMAIN: ".COOKIE_DOMAIN;
} else {
echo "COOKIE_DOMAIN is not defined";
}
?>

You can see that the script loads in WP on the first line. After you drop that into WP root dir, access from browser though any blog site – https://site.domain.com/wpdomain.php

I’ve just tested it and both IE and Chrome result in the same result of:

COOKIE_DOMAIN: .ed.gs

It’s the same for all subdomains too. Domains result in the domain name as the cookie, minus the dot at the start.

Do you think it has something to do with the dot at the start of the cookie domain?

> Do you think it has something to do with the dot at the start of the cookie domain?

No, but it is possible. Supposedly .ed.gs and ed.gs are both valid cookie domains. FYI my system reports my domain without a dot: usc.edu

You should be able to force a domain using the COOKIE_DOMAIN setting, but you might need to de-activate the multisite plugin.

I’ve tested removing the following login form check and it creates a wordpress_logged_in cookie, but still goes back to the login page.

<input type="hidden" name="testcookie" value="1" />