CLOUD v4.7

Hi.

For a few days, I've been receiving the following message when I revisit my site (already logged in):

The CSRF protection key did not match. This may indicate a plugin or theme is out of date. Please contact technical support for more information.

Error code: 2S119/1

I have made no code changes, various themes are simple variants of the default theme, and I have not altered the theme I use (or any theme) during this period.

Any ideas?

Could you let us know what pages you are on? Can you actively reproduce this?

7 minutes ago, Marc said:

Could you let us know what pages you are on? Can you actively reproduce this?

It happens every morning when I first visit the site. I'll play around and see if I can trigger it in some consistent, reproducible manner. It happened again today.

I seems that this started after Invision checked out some problems at my site a week or so ago.

And I've just checked out problems with the editor - the logs indicate that IPS reverted the editor to default. This has wiped out my changes and additional buttons/functions I created. I do not know if I have copies. I am extremely unhappy. Did Invison take a backup of my modifications?

Theme-specific H1 and H2 header blocks, and a related 'page' block; anchors; horizontal rule. There might be more - I do not recall right now.

This stuff is not second nature to me - it takes me considerable time and effort.

I would need to know when that was in order to advise, as havent been onto your site to look at this issue. Usually, reverting would happen with the support tools in the admin CP, and be re-added once thats been tested. Its usual for them not to have been re-added without telling you, and I suspect may actually have been something has gone wrong on the system during the revert process that has caused that

The most recent Editor activity by IPS. Includes a prior episode.

IPS Temp Admin Default editor configuration restored via Support Tool. 07/05/25 21:40

IPS Temp Admin Default editor configuration restored via Support Tool. 07/05/25 21:39

IPS Temp Admin Default editor configuration restored via Support Tool. 07/05/25 21:39

IPS Temp Admin Customized editor configuration restored via Support Tool. 04/03/25 10:42

IPS Temp Admin Default editor configuration restored via Support Tool. 04/03/25 10:41

9 minutes ago, Marc said:

I would need to know when that was in order to advise, as havent been onto your site to look at this issue. Usually, reverting would happen with the support tools in the admin CP, and be re-added once thats been tested. Its usual for them not to have been re-added without telling you, and I suspect may actually have been something has gone wrong on the system during the revert process that has caused that

I should mention that Invision did not properly restore my apps to their state before your checks. One app which was disabled by me prior to your checks was re-enabled along with the others. So, yes, there is a problem.

I think it also worth mentioning that, really, the community should be put into maintenance mode first. I have one app that should not be disabled with the community remaining active.

32 minutes ago, Como said:

I should mention that Invision did not properly restore my apps to their state before your checks. One app which was disabled by me prior to your checks was re-enabled along with the others. So, yes, there is a problem.

I think it also worth mentioning that, really, the community should be put into maintenance mode first. I have one app that should not be disabled with the community remaining active.

You would need to ensure this is mentioned any time you request support. If someone needs to look into any issues on your site, then disabling of 3rd party items is something that would be expected

25 minutes ago, Marc said:

You would need to ensure this is mentioned any time you request support. If someone needs to look into any issues on your site, then disabling of 3rd party items is something that would be expected

I suggested this to tech support (after the fact):

I should add, though, there is one app - xxxxxx

- that never should be disabled without the community being placed

into maintenance mode as it affects member privacy. Just a heads-up.

Their response:

unfortunately there's no way to achieve this. When the support tools are run, all 3rd party apps are disabled

---

And as to the point about my additions to the text editor - will/can this be fixed?

Edited May 12May 12 by Como

If items have been disabled that you need to have enabled again, you would need to do this from the admin CP. There would be no other way to do this.

Yes, with some items, we may well need your site on in order to test the issue in question. Unfortunately, there is no real way around that. We have to be able to test without 3rd party items enabled, as Im sure you can understand.

Hi @Marc. This is not clear to me.

1. If I request that my site is first placed into maintenance mode before apps are disabled, will Invision honour this or not?

2. The tools Invision ran failed to return my apps to their prior state after Invision was done.

3. Why were my additions to the text editor not reinstated, and can this be fixed?

Edited May 12May 12 by Como

59 minutes ago, Como said:

If I request that my site is first placed into maintenance mode before apps are disabled, will Invision honour this or not?

It depends on the nature of the request. If this is something that requires the site to be online in order to see the issue, this may not be possible. In other scenarios it may be. Really this would be case by case depending on the scenario at the time.

1 hour ago, Como said:

The tools Invision ran failed to return my apps to their prior state after Invision was done.

Yes, I understand that is the case

1 hour ago, Como said:

Why were my additions to the text editor not reinstated, and can this be fixed?

If you would like me to start an investigation on your site to determine why this may have happened, we can do that. Please note however, that in order to start this, we would need to do the very thing you are trying to avoid, which is why I hadnt recommended this. By this, I mean, we would need to be disabling and reenabling items to see what is causing the issue.

1 hour ago, Como said:

Why were my additions to the text editor not reinstated, and can this be fixed?

I'm sorry to see that seems to have happened to you on your site. You would unfortunately need to re-add those. If they were not reinstated by the reverting back on the support tools, there aren't any other options available for us to add those back. If there were, I would certainly be looking to do that for you

8 minutes ago, Marc said:

It depends on the nature of the request. If this is something that requires the site to be online in order to see the issue, this may not be possible. In other scenarios it may be. Really this would be case by case depending on the scenario at the time.

Understood.

8 minutes ago, Marc said:

If you would like me to start an investigation on your site to determine why this may have happened, we can do that. Please note however, that in order to start this, we would need to do the very thing you are trying to avoid, which is why I hadnt recommended this. By this, I mean, we would need to be disabling and reenabling items to see what is causing the issue.

So long as the community is placed into maintenance mode / taken offline, that should be fine.

8 minutes ago, Marc said:

I'm sorry to see that seems to have happened to you on your site. You would unfortunately need to re-add those. If they were not reinstated by the reverting back on the support tools, there aren't any other options available for us to add those back. If there were, I would certainly be looking to do that for you

So, Invision has no back up then!? I do not know which computer I used or on which backup I might have copies, or even if I have copies. I don't what else to write about this. I was not expecting Invision to remove content or anything I've added, and certainly not without it being backed up. I guess I'll hunt around - I was not expecting to need these again - so maybe I have copies, or maybe not.

4 hours ago, Como said:

So, Invision has no back up then!? I do not know which computer I used or on which backup I might have copies, or even if I have copies. I don't what else to write about this. I was not expecting Invision to remove content or anything I've added, and certainly not without it being backed up. I guess I'll hunt around - I was not expecting to need these again - so maybe I have copies, or maybe not.

Keep in mind that the only way to restore this functionality would be to restore your whole community back to the point which editor toolbar existed. We do not advise or do partial restores as this can lead to relational data corruption or issues as there are countless items in our database which relate to one another. Due to this, it is not really advisable to perform a backup for something rather small.

4 hours ago, Como said:

So long as the community is placed into maintenance mode / taken offline, that should be fine.

Just so you know, putting the community in maintenance mode would take this offline for the period of which we are exploring. This would be done during our support hours and we are unable to schedule when this gets done. Are you happy with us proceeding?

13 minutes ago, Jim M said:

Keep in mind that the only way to restore this functionality would be to restore your whole community back to the point which editor toolbar existed. We do not advise or do partial restores as this can lead to relational data corruption or issues as there are countless items in our database which relate to one another. Due to this, it is not really advisable to perform a backup for something rather small.

No. For the reasons you outlined, I do not wish a partial restore. Neither, of course, do I wish a full restore. But I am a little confused about this. It seems that some kind of back up of the editor settings was or should have been created prior to the editor being restored to its default configuration. Was a back up created, and if so, did Invision's tools simply fail to restore to my configuration? If this is the case, is there still a copy?

As it happens, I have backups of most of what I created for the editor. I still have to work out exactly how I did it before, but I'll work it out. However, there is a trust problem here - I pay and rely upon Invision to create backs ups. This surely includes backing up settings and content I add to ACP prior to work Invision performs on my website.

13 minutes ago, Jim M said:

Just so you know, putting the community in maintenance mode would take this offline for the period of which we are exploring. This would be done during our support hours and we are unable to schedule when this gets done. Are you happy with us proceeding?

Upon reflection, do NOT work on my website to test out this - it is not worth the risk. There appears to be a problem with Invision's tools and I do not wish to see them tested out on my live web site.

Assuming there is no backup for the editor, I guess there is no point in discussing this further. But there is still the matter of the CSRF Protection Key error. But similar to the non-backup/restore of my text editor, the problem with the CSRF warning is not worth the risk if you intend to use the same tools which failed to backup/restore at least two areas of the back end (enabled/disabled apps and the text editor). Please test Invision's tools elsewhere.

4 minutes ago, Como said:

But I am a little confused about this. It seems that some kind of back up of the editor settings was or should have been created prior to the editor being restored to its default configuration. Was a back up created, and if so, did Invision's tools simply fail to restore to my configuration? If this is the case, is there still a copy?

As mentioned by my colleague, we do not know what went wrong in the restoration of the Support Tool and your editor. Something went wrong in that process, which is why we need to investigate it.

4 minutes ago, Como said:

However, there is a trust problem here - I pay and rely upon Invision to create backs ups. This surely includes backing up settings and content I add to ACP prior to work Invision performs on my website

Believe there is confusion here. The Support Tool disables and holds on to your custom editor configuration. However, in restoring that configuration, something went wrong and there are no means to recover it. Outside of that process, the only other option would be to restore a full community backup. Which, for reasons we have explained and you align with, you do not wish for the full community backup to be restored.

I understand your position and I wish we had that editor configuration for you but, unfortunately, in technology things sometimes just go wrong. The backups which you pay for in a catastrophic event are there and you can indeed restore them. However, as mentioned above, sometimes, its just not worth it. At the end of the day, your and your user's content is worth more than rebuilding that editor configuration.

15 minutes ago, Como said:

Upon reflection, do NOT work on my website to test out this - it is not worth the risk. There appears to be a problem with Invision's tools and I do not wish to see them tested out on my live web site.

We will certainly respect that. However, please note that we will not be able to determine what went wrong and thus, resolve your issue. Therefore, in the future you may encounter it again.

16 minutes ago, Como said:

Assuming there is no backup for the editor, I guess there is no point in discussing this further. But there is still the matter of the CSRF Protection Key error. But similar to the non-backup/restore of my text editor, the problem with the CSRF warning is not worth the risk if you intend to use the same tools which failed to backup/restore at least two areas of the back end (enabled/disabled apps and the text editor). Please test Invision's tools elsewhere.

The "tools" are a part of the software. You can see these in ACP -> Support You can use them when you disable these items manually in ACP -> System -> Applications / Plugins / Editor / Languages.

If you do not wish for us to disable your third party items, you can certainly do this and test for yourself or let us know once they are disabled so that we can investigate.

Hi @Jim M. Oh - so Invison use the very same tools for disabling and enabling apps as I would. I took the explanation from tech support to mean that something else was used. In which case, it was just that the tech mistakenly re-enabled an app I had already disabled. Yes?

Additional suggestion: cannot the tool only re-enable the apps which were already enabled before the tool was first run?

This should have happened, I'll ask the previous support tech if there were any issues while he was running the support tool.

But further to this, how would the text editor be temporarily restored to configuration default and then returned to my settings with additional functions? I can see no way to do this except to manually copy each additional button code and images. Assuming this is the case, was this done prior to 'restore to default configuration', or was there an oversight and no backups created? If I was given heads-up, I would have made sure to have full copies myself (and/or I could have disabled all the systems you required - I've done it before for you).

Edited May 12May 12 by Como

47 minutes ago, Como said:

Hi @Jim M. Oh - so Invison use the very same tools for disabling and enabling apps as I would. I took the explanation from tech support to mean that something else was used. In which case, it was just that the tech mistakenly re-enabled an app I had already disabled. Yes?

But further to this, how would the text editor be temporarily restored to configuration default and then returned to my settings with additional functions? I can see no way to do this except to manually copy each additional button code and images. Assuming this is the case, was this done prior to 'restore to default configuration', or was there an oversight and no backups created? If I was given heads-up, I would have made sure to have full copies myself (and/or I could have disabled all the systems you required - I've done it before for you).

The Support Tool is a tool that has been a part of our software for the life of version 4 and has been used millions of times by our clients and staff in ACP -> Support. It is an automated means to disable then re-enable the customizations in your community to troubleshoot complications of these customizations. It uses the same functions as when you disable/enable these by clicking those buttons manually. Without our team further investigating this, there are no conclusions or guesses which we can make here, I'm afraid.

To disable the customized editor toolbar, you would either move out your custom buttons one-by-one or click the "Restore Default Editor Configuration." You would need to manually note this, however, as there is no means to restore it without using the Support Tool.