False Confirmation of Manual Plugin Installation

Hi there,

I have the pro version of the Better-Search-Replace plugin that I need to install from .zip. I read the documentation and got the upload working correctly. However, MWP confirms the upload was successfully, claims that the installation was successful on both of my single WP sites, but after I “sync” dashboards the plugin cannot be found on either site. When I directly inspect each site, the plugin has clearly not been installed.

What should I do about MWP giving me false confirmations of plugin installations?

Uploading a zip file is not the samen as installing a plugin. Are you sure you did this via the Plugins - Install plugins screen?

After that you just need to enter the license on each child site to get the updates.

Hey @dragonsway

Can you also check that you are using only the installable files in that zip?

Sometimes these ZIP packages when downloaded from paid marketplaces have PDF instructions or other miscellaneous files inside, and another ZIP that was supposed to be used for installation.

Thanks for the feedback fellas

@bojan I am sure that the zip is the installation zip and -not- “miscellaneous” zip that you mentioned because I manually installed it on my WP multisites.

@josklever I appreciate the documentation… but I followed those directions completely.

Successful Upload

Successful Installation Affirmation

Successful Dashboard Sync

No activated plugin in child site directly or in MWP directly

I can make a screen capture video if necessary…

The only thing unique about my set-up is that I am working on a test server with self-signed SSL certificates, therefore, I used your “Disable SSL Verification” option to get rid of a curl 60 SSL error message.

FYI,

I just went to one of the child sites above and directly / successfully installed the plugin zip file

Just noticed the red “x” whoops…

And if the installs are failing… why? Clearly the plugin, successfully installs directly… Is there a log somewhere?

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Sorry for the flood of post… I just figured out the problem… I randomly moused over the red x

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Glad you managed to figure it out.

Yes, red X means that the installation is failed. The progress bar indicates that the task was attempted on all selected child sites, but not that it was successful on all of them.

@bojan thanks for a clarification of the indicators… I was actually hoping you could instruct me on how to resolve the cURL error shown in the last post. documentation welcome

The error message is not generated by MainWP but is a generic server-related error message, which is where the issue lies.

Check your system report if you have a similar error message for the Self-connect test. If so, the issue is probably related to the Dashboard server. If not, it may be related to the Child site server.

You can also try checking both the Dashboard and Child site on this website to see if there are any problems with the SSL certificate.

After that, it may be best to contact the hosting support and see if they can figure out what exactly is causing the issue.

Feedback & Question:

These are just my initial thoughts, feel free to ignore the “babbling noob” happens often, :face_with_diagonal_mouth:

Feedback:

1.) Be explicit - as a new user, with “new eyes”… redefining the word “installed” to mean “sites attempted installed”, coupled with a progress bar that says 100% is misleading. “2/2 attempted site installs completed, results below” or something like this would probably eliminate some initial confusion

2.) Expand error indicators - I randomly discovered that the red x contained a tooltip diagnosing my problem, hunting bugs shouldn’t be luck. I understand, appreciate, and like your clean UI, however consider only on failures where the red x appears adding ‘more info [red x]’ as this would probably lead to users understanding their troubles more efficiently.

3.) I noticed that troubleshooting the cURL error 60 SSL problem is outside the scope of your support. I understand the policy, becuse there is, in fact a wide variety of ways to troubleshoot this across systems. However, in light of the fact that this error, destroys a core functional component of your plugin’s usability… I think it would be more useful to users if you created a single knowledgebase page… that begins with the giant header:

“Troubleshooting cURL error 60 is outside the scope of our support, however we provide the below information as courtesy to our users. If none of solutions below work for you we suggest that you contact your sysadmin for more assistance. If you would like to add your solution to this error to this page, please use the submission form at the bottom”

You can have an intern spend a day cruising stackoverflow, medium, etc adding the most common / recent solution to the page. And if your SEO is efficient, your knowledgebase of different solutions to this problem eventually drives more traffic to sight, increasing awareness of your product, increasing $$.

(i.e. it is a little abrupt to tell potential customers ‘we don’t support this, good luck…’ while they are trying get core functionality to work.)

Alternative: Same outside scope of support message above, then a single page with common methods of adding validated SSL certs to test environments. :thinking:

In any case, for anyone else that confronts the cURL error 60 problem while using this plugin in a test environment my eventual solution was copy my entire self-signed certificate and paste it to the end of ../wp-includes/certificates/ca-bundle.crt

This solution works for the site on which MWP is installed… (I can install zipped plugin, but doesn’t work for child sites - can’t install zipped plugins, child site ssl add to its on wp-includes/ceertificates/ca-bundle.crt and the MWP parent’s ca-bundle.crt as well… :-/

Question:
I now have a single error in my Server self connect:

I can find nothing in the knowledgebase to troubleshoot this:

Any pointers?

thanks

Additional question:

I added my child site’s self-signed SSL to the parent sites wp-includes/certificates/ca-bundle.crt and I added the cert to the child’s wp-includes/certificates/ca-bundle.crt as well. The child plugin only shows: Server self connect: Not expected HTTP response body: error on the server page.

However, when I try to install the zip plugin, I again get the cURL 60 error for the child site… The parent MWP seems to now be "falsely reporting" the cURL error 60 problem… This seems like a problem on the plugin side… :thinking: thoughts appreciated?

(disconnecting / re-connecting child site from MWP has no effect)… same non-existent cURL error…hhhmmm

Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory…” so I changed tactics and decided to use mkcert to generate validated root certificates for my test server domains.

Now all of my single sites are on a validated SSL and I have moved my MWP dashboard to a WP fresh install.

I was able to add my single sites to MWP Dash without any SSL warnings and without disabling SSL verification (mkcert worked).

Unfortunately, the server info page of MWP Dash and Child sites, again, all had cURL error 60 problems. Therefore, I again copied the respective certs to wp-includes/certificates/ca-bundle.crt

cURL error 60 problem gone from all sites. Only problem remaining is Server self connect Not expected HTTP response body … no clue of how to resolve that.

With regards to my zipped plugin install… same problem. Installation fails because MWP is falsely reporting cURL error 60… :upside_down_face: help?

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@dragonsway

Thank you for the thoughtful suggestions. I can see how making the errors and their description stand out more would make troubleshooting easier, and I have passed those suggestion to our development team.

We have also taken the suggestion for making a help document covering the troubleshooting of cURL error 60 under consideration.

As for the cURL error 60 when installing a ZIP file - would you mind opening a private Help Desk ticket so we can collect some additional information & investigate further?