[OJS 3.2.0-3] Spinning circle, HTTPS problems and workaround

Software Support
1

I’ve just upgraded our journals to v3.2.0-3. Fortunately, most bugs I’d identified in v3.2.0-2 have been corrected (thanks, @asmecher and team OJS).

The one remaining bug: some pages do not load all their elements, and the loading circles keep spinning. For instance, the following screenshot shows a circle in place of the header bar:

Screenshot_20200504_091104

The web console identified the problem as mixing secure and insecure content. This is a problem which has been happening since a few versions back.

Our OJS installation is behind a reverse proxy. SSL is handled by a frontend server, which sends normal HTTP requests to the backend Apache, which in turn sends requests to OJS.

In config.inc.php, base_url uses HTTPS as URL protocol, since this is what is seen from the outside. But force_ssl is off; setting it on creates a 302 endless loop.

As a workaround, I added $_SERVER['HTTPS'] = 'on'; to /index.php. This patch was suggested about three years ago ( Ojs 3 + nginx + https (ssl) - #3 by Ph_We ), and it worked again in v3.2.0-3.

2

Hi @lcduarte,

The base_url directive is only used in cases where OJS can’t detect its own URL from an incoming request, i.e. cron jobs that send out email addresses. Have you tried working with base_url[abc] directives, with one for each journal (the journal path in place of the abc example), and one with base_url[index] for the site-wide (portal level) area? Those might obviate the need for the modification.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team