I am running Apache 1.3.26 and PHP 4.3.1. The problem I am having is when visitors to my site fill out my online form and hit submit, the information from the form doesnt apear to come across in the post. But, if they hit refresh and resend the data, it DOES come through. Or if they hit their back button on the browser, then hit submit again, it will work. Its just the intial time they hit submit that it seems to not work. This one has me a bit stumped. What would cause information to not come through in the post on the first try? The stranger thing is, this server has been up and running these forms for a few years without problem... but in the last few weeks, this has been happening. Can anybody offer some suggestions or advice on things to check? If you need more information about my configuration, scripts, etc... let me know.

Thanks much!
Joe

You say its been running those forms for a few years without problems? Has the server been running the same version of Apache/PHP the whole time, or has it been upgraded recently...or ever?

Perhaps you could use etherreal to see if hte browser actually sends the data? It sounds like a broken browser or cache server to me.

Nope, nothing has changed in the last year... I checked the time stamps on lots of files relating to PHP and Apache, and they are all about a year old (almost exactly). Nothing has been upgraded or anything.

The problem seems to be somewhat random, sometimes I will fill out the form and it will be processed correctly, then I try it again, and it fails. I did 3 in a row that were successful, then 2 in a row that were unsuccessful, then 1 that wa succesful. It seems to be random. Sometimes the POST comes through, other times it doesnt.

Just now I downloaded php-4.3.5 and installed that (or tried to) hoping to accidently fix this POST problem by reinstalling PHP, but I cant seem to get php 4.3.5 to install over 4.3.1. Everything runs successfully, but then I run phpinfo() and it still has the old version number listed. This is a side matter though... main problem is still the forms not working 100% of the time...

Nothing stands out in error logs or messages. I am stumped... this sucks. heh

Maybe you could post some code snippets? Perhaps its the php code that is buggy?

Possibly... but not likely. Just because its the same code we use on probably 10 different sites... they have all worked flawlessly for over a year. Our developer hasnt touched that script in a long time... so I dont think so. I will talk to him about posting up some code though... just so you can take a look. My instinct says its server related though....