session lost in middle of checkout

Hi

I have a client that enters her orders online (ie orders that she receives offline).
Anyways - she has experienced an issue three times now that conerns me greatly.
In the middle of shopping/checkout she has gotten to "cart empty" notice.

the first 2 times this happened, she was actually checking out.
after entering billing/shipping info and clicking continue - which should move her to the page to confirm her order - she was instead shown "cart empty".
she was using safari on a mac.
after the error she went back and added items to the cart
and the billing/shipping info wasnt saved when she continued checkout.
it was completely fresh session.


the third time she switched over to firefox (on a mac)
and the same thing happened except it happened on the confirm page (final order button)
AND afterward she went back and added items to the cart
and the billing/shipping info wasnt saved when she continued checkout.


I cannot think that this is a scripting issue.
Am I right to think this is a server related issue?
Its the server that is loosing the session right?
We are using blue razor (a godaddy company) and I have concerns over thier servers for other reasons. (customer already had this hosting and wanted to stay with them).

Could it be on the user end?
Im thinking - is it possible that say her internet disconnected momentarily and then reconnected. Would this clear her session?

Any insight/help into this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Sam

I'm not sure if this is specific to the server. But first we need to make sure that this is not specific to the client computer. Can you reproduce the issue on your end, and if yes, can you send me a link where i can reproduce the issue? This will help more in figuring out the issue.

No I have not been able to reproduce the issue.
Only the client has experienced the issue.

But I am wondering if its perhaps a mac issue.
I do not have a mac to test on so I wouldnt beable to reproduce it if that were the case.
And I also wonder if its related to just her - but she hasnt experienced this on any other sites that she shops on either....

And the confusing thing is that whenever she gets this error, she is able to just redo all her steps, and finish checking out. So what leads her to have the error, when she repeats, she doesnt get the error at all. Its the same items in the cart, the same checkout info, etc.


if you have any ideas of where i should be looking for troubleshooting this, that would be great. I have asked to to call me asap the next time it happens so that i can run some tests right then. so id like to get the ideas of what to test.


my theory that i want to test is that it has something to do with the mac in particular and when the transition from the unsecured cart view page, moves to the secured checkout.
i believe that during the transition SOMETIMES the session is lost.

OK, the problem is related to how you access the site.

Different sessions and cookies are used when accessing your domain using:

www.domain.com and just domain.com

therefore, to fix this issue you will need to either contact your hosting provider to make sure all domain.com are forwarded to www.domain.com or use an .htaccess file to do that. This will make sure that accessing the domain is consistent and there is no loss of sessions or cookies.

AHHH
i thought i had written code to do that.
but upon testing i see its not working.

and while the difference in the domain doesnt cause issue in ie , it does in ff and safari both.


THANK YOU for having your noggin on this!

I'm glad i was able to help.