Problems logging in to SiteAdvisor as a site reviewer?

[Hayton]

Has anyone else encountered this problem?

1. Go to the rating page for a site, any site. Find one that hasn't got any comments yet.

2. Scroll down to Feedback ("Be the first person to post the comment") and click the Comments button.

3. Right. Let the fun begin. Here's the Comments page, with the Username and Password text boxes inviting you to identify yourself. So, enter them both and now press Enter, or click on Log in.

4. If you're logged in now, you're not part of this grumble. Off you go, and while you're about it go and buy a lottery ticket. It's your lucky day.  But for the rest of you ....

5. You're not logged in, are you? There are the text boxes, as before, and "Be the first person to post the comment!" taunting you from the foot of the screen. Except perhaps you are, and SiteAdvisor is being schizophrenic. Or possibly paranoid. Go to the top right of the page and there's another "Log In or Register" up there. Don't ask me why it's there, but it is. Click on 'Log In' and see where it takes you ...

6.  Logged in then, but not logged in. Go back to the Comments page and it still shows the same login screen as before.

I think I might have the answer. Hover the mouse over the Log In button and see what shows up in the status bar at the bottom of the screen : Javascript .

So I called up the Javascript errors-and-warnings console in Chrome to see if it showed anything. And it did, quite a lot, but especially this.

[blocked] The page at https://user.siteadvisor.com/forums/login.php ran insecure content from http://www.siteadvisor.com/cs.psp?bbsessionhash=2c28b39a6bbdde5187d43eef7af…1413004943&bbid=394824&b....
(login.php:1)

So the login code is using PHP to validate and process the input, and somewhere that input includes "insecure content".

I give up. Is it just a Chrome problem, a particular setting in Chrome perhaps? Does it also happen in Firefox? Or in IE? (8, 9, 10, 11?)

I wonder if this is the reason why wherever the SiteAdvisor pages have a Captcha code it seems to take a couple of dozen attempts before the system deigns to accept what you've typed in? I'll look into this later.

Message was edited by: Hayton on 20/10/13 07:14:23 IST

[spc3rd]

Morning Hayton,

     I can confirm the same issue you've described is also occurring in Firefox.  It's rapidly becoming a real pain to review ANY site now.

[Hayton]

I looked into the Captcha problem and that is something else, not related to this.

However, I found something else to puzzle over. In the error message I included in my post there is the URL "https://user.siteadvisor.com/forums/login.php".

This is yet another login page for SiteAdvisor. Click on that link and you get this -

Enter your details and (if this is consistent) you end up here -

But at least you're now logged in to SiteAdvisor. Right? Actually, yes, you should be. But there's no indication anywhere that the login has succeeded. You have to find your way to a site report, where the rating page still gives no indication of your login status, and then click through to the Comments page before you find out if the login was successful or not.

I think that's an area where SiteAdvisor can and should be improved. It might need to go into the Product Ideas section to have a chance of being noticed, but even then it's not likely to be implemented any time soon.