logged in members difficulty playing MP3s

[ctctc]

Cernek.com is my band's three-page website. My band members and I (8 users) go there to listen to the MP3s from our practices and performances. The homepage is accessible to the public where several MP3s are listed and can be played by anyone, and the second page contains password-protected content for logged in band members only. It has all has worked flawlessly. (The third page is a requirement of using s2Member to notify non-logged in users that they do not have access to the band members only page)

Yesterday I became aware of a problem where logged in members were having difficulty playing MP3s on the band members only page. Only a few MP3s will play, and only sometimes, while most MP3s will not play. Everyone seems to be able to play all of the MP3s on the homepage without a problem.

I have built the site using WordPress (v 3.2.1), List Yo' Files to list all of the MP3s in a particular folder (practice or performance), WPaudio to play the MP3s on demand, and s2Member to handle membership access to the protected content. All plug-ins and themes are up to date.

What could be causing this problem from s2Member? Please advise.

[ctctc]

I can now rule out the following troubleshooting:

I've installed quick cache. There is no improvement.

On my web host server we have confirmed that there has been no bandwidth throttling, a check of the MySQL slow query files shows no abnormally slow processes, the MySQL database check is okay, all scripts are up to date. Tech support can see no reason on their end why this should be happening.

[Eduan]

Maybe one of the plugins isn't compatible with the other(s).
Have you tried doing a compatibility check?

To do it simply disable each plugin one at a time (not s2Member) until the problem goes away, if it doesn't go away then compatibility is not the problem.

[ctctc]

Thx, I have disabled 2 plugins and only have 4 plugins left active all of which go to the funtionality of playing mp3s: s2Member, Exec-PHP, List Yo' Files, and WPaudio. The problem persists.

[Harty]

Just for fun, put the private mp3s on the front page, to see if they work. If they do the issue is with s2member.
Double check your coding for the mp3 files.

[ctctc]

I just copied all of the code (including s2Member security) from the band members page to the home page and none of them played. I then tried only copying the mp3 code to the front page and all of them play. It does seem to be an s2Member problem. Thanks for this troubleshooting tip!

What now?

[Harty]

Are the private mp3s in the s2m protected download folder? If so, take them out of that.
You should also experiment with a different mp3 player.

[ctctc]

Actually, when I first set this up I only used custom capabilities and didn't protect any folders. In your previous post you wrote "double check your coding..." I'm looking at that now and find some things in s2Member have changed. For example my code shows <!--p if (current_user_can("access_s2member_level0")){--> but the new code shows <?php if (current_user_can("access_s2member_level0")){ ?>. are these subtle differences the cause of the problem?

[Harty]

Hi.
Can't really comment on that coding. But if it were me, I'd try a different player.
When I mentioned check your coding earlier, I was referring to the coding for the player on your private page.

[ctctc]

Thx. I tried a different player with the same results: all mp3s play on the non-protected page; no mp3s play on the s2Member protected page.

[Harty]

Check this link for ideas...
viewtopic.php?t=2451&p=7563

[Cristián Lávaque]

Actually, when I first set this up I only used custom capabilities and didn't protect any folders. In your previous post you wrote "double check your coding..." I'm looking at that now and find some things in s2Member have changed. For example my code shows <!--p if (current_user_can("access_s2member_level0")){--> but the new code shows <?php if (current_user_can("access_s2member_level0")){ ?>. are these subtle differences the cause of the problem?

It looks in your post there that you're using HTML comments instead of PHP tags. Could you please post inside code tags the code you're using for your protected MP3s? viewtopic.php?f=36&t=2780

Thanks!

[ctctc]

Thx. When I created the code, I copied your examples using PHP tags. I have no idea how or why they were changed to HTML comments, but even if I change them back to PHP tags the problem persists.

I found that List Yo Files! and wpaudio had been abandoned by their developers and that many people have posted known incompatibilities with the current version of WordPress. I installed a new player, haiku. With the previous player wpaudio disabled, the new player haiku will not play the protected MP3s. However if I uninstall WP audio, now haiku plays all MP3s, including the S2 member protected files, beautifully. Interesting, apparently disabling an add-in does not take it completely out of the stream of code.

[Harty]

Removing / deleting unwanted plugins is a good tip. Thanks.
Steve

[Cristián Lávaque]

Yeah, one would think that deactivating the plugin would prevent it from loading and having any effect at all, but like you found, it's not the case.