I have been trying for the past 4 days to get support on a fairly urgent and potentially security risk problem on our website. The Amember plugin for Joomla appears not to work with Varnish caching system. It does not allow users to login on Joomla using the Amember plugin which was designed for this purpose. Our members have had reports of coming to the website and being logged in as an entirely different user with full control over that users account. Big problem. After waiting 3 days for a response i finally get one from Anton telling me to edit Varnish (whatever that means). When i tell him varnish is simply a caching system and the problem lies with Amember's plugin for Joomla - he tells me to instead edit a joomla core file (no information as to what i need to edit - just a 1 sentence response). I have been a customer for Amember for years. I try not to contact Amember with support queries as I know they are quite slow in responding and seem short staffed. However, this issue has forced me to use their support system. And now i feel like tearing my hair out. Alex - sort it out!
Dear Sean, I am sorry for response of the support staff, it was absolutely incorrect and unacceptable. I had a talk to the support person about it. However, I can promise only one instant solution for this case: for now, disable varnish caching system. I hope you understand, when we develop a plugin (say a Joomla plugin) we are simply unable to test it will all available Joomla plugins. Our plugins are designed to work fine in clean Joomla install, and as I know, it works. Regarding Varnish, I will check if we can work it out. However, I hope you understand, we cannot give warranty about every Joomla plugin available that aMember will work with it. Alex
Hi Alex, Firsty, thank you for responding. It's the lack of communication and apparent disregard of customers concerns which frustrate so your response is welcome At the moment we can't disable varnish - our website recieves, on average, over 2 million unique visits per month and a huge number of pageviews. Because we use Joomla which is fairly resource intensive - disabling varnish would end up taking our system offline within a couple of minutes.
Sean, are you using aMember login widget or any part of aMember code inside joomla? Normally, aMember just adds customers to Joomla users database. It does not modify Joomla behaviour. Optionally, there is a login widget for single-login with aMember. Do you use it? Are you using aMember v3 or v4?
Hi Alex, We aren't using the widget, we're using the plugin which (as you say) adds users to the Joomla database. We are using Amember V3 pro right now.
Sean, I have to say that the problem has no any relation with aMember. It is a general Joomla/Varnish configuration issue, and I believe an Joomla profi could help you better. Look at this article http://www.stardothosting.com/blog/2011/08/08/varnish-caching-with-joomla/