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[Forminator Pro] Form creation, requires confirmation to leave page

After creating a form and saving a draft, on trying to leave the page it displays the common “leave or stay” buttons. Publish and immediately click a menu item and it still prompts. Even try to click the Forminator dashboard. What is it expecting us to do before leaving the page?

On clicking Leave it didn’t save the form and I just lost a LOT of work. :slight_frown:

Tue, 11 Dec 2018 4:33:25
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  • Adam
    • Support Gorilla

    Hi Tony G

    I hope you’re well today!

    I just double-checked on my setup and clicking “Leave” if the draft was actually saved (there was a message that it was) shouldn’t cause any data lost. Did you lost entire form or just some settings? I’m asking because even though I tested that twice, I didn’t try any complex setup so I might need to try again.

    However, I did notice that this confirmation message shows pretty much every time, regardless whether you saved draft or not or published the form, which might indeed be confusing. I was able to replicate this and I got confirmation from developers that it only should be showing up if there really are unsaved changes – so I reported this part as a bug.

    Looking froward to hear from you about that first issue with data loss then.

    Kind regards,

    Adam

  • Tony G
    • Mr. LetsFixTheWorld

    I’m VERY glad that you were able to duplicate the issue with the confirmation.

    With a new form, I saved a draft after every few fields. Then I clicked Publish, and it looked like it did it. To be clear, I did my job in not trusting the tools and saving my work. Not actually publishing, with no warning that there was an issue, was a sort of violation of trust. PLEASE try to reproduce that and get it fixed ASAP.

    So yeah, I lost the entire new form, a bunch of fields that I thought were being saved, and lots of text. If I were the violent type there would have been a real mess here. :slight_smile:

    Seriously, in the big picture, I’m OK with this. In fact I might even be to blame. I opened a Support chat earlier in the day about other data not being saved and it turned out that I had an invalid hook on save_post. But I commented out all of that code At the end of the Support session it was all working and I was not working on that code after that. To be professional about this I need to look in there to see if there is anything left over from that code which might have prevented my form from saving. I really don’t think this is the case, especially since you’re seeing the same confirmation issue in your system, but I need to be absolutely certain before blaming Forminator.

    More later.

    Thanks as always.

  • Adam
    • Support Gorilla

    Hi Tony G

    Yes, the confirmation modal prompt issue is confirmed and was also replicated by others already so that’s definitely a bug. However, it doesn’t seem to be related to another issue – with the form data being lost.

    I just tried now to replicate this, multiple times, and while the prompt was always there (as expected, taking the bug into account), I wasn’t able to “achieve” any data loss. In fact, I even tried to “outsmart” the plugin and leave the page faster than it saves draft/publishes (before even the little “saving” message next to status changed to a green “Saved” message) but even then – when I confirmed that I want to leave the form, it was still saved.

    I added fields to form, changed appearance and behavior settings – but it was all saved properly all times. Granted, I tested it with only WPMU DEV Dashboard and Forminator active and the Twenty Seventeen theme but I still think there must have been something involved in addition. It might be some “left over” from your code but it also might be somehow related to yet another plugin on site. Do you think you could double-check the site again against possible reminds of that code that you mentioned and also perhaps test – like me – with just these two plugins and default theme to see if you can replicate that then?

    There’s also one more thing to test: if you are still able to replicate the “missing data” issue with a current setup – could you give it another go but this time keep the browser “Developer tools” open and switched to “Network” tab and look if any 500 or similar errors show up there, especially related to ajax calls. That might give us some clue on what happened.

    Best regards,

    Adam

  • Tony G
    • Mr. LetsFixTheWorld

    Any info about whether this issue was ever fixed? I haven’t been in Forminator for a while. I just created a new form. It shows the Leave confirmation all the time. The Publish button confirms success, but the Edit page always shows “Unsaved Changes”. I cannot save a form. Period. I’ve tried removing all of the fields and adding just one. I’ve tried going through all of the sections and hitting Save Draft and Publish between each. I turned on logging and nothing is being logged.

    • Tony G
      • Mr. LetsFixTheWorld

      Also: Preview isn’t working, just shows the empty form.
      This works exactly the same with Firefox and Chrome.
      Site is HTTPS.
      This is a completely new site, no custom scripts.

      Solution : I have the IP Geo Block plugin active. Disabling it fixes the problem. I’ll look at this as time permits. I hope someone at Dev can as well. Thanks.

  • Predrag Dubajic
    • Support

    Hi Tony G ,

    I have tested Forminator with this plugin https://wordpress.org/plugins/ip-geo-block/ and I was unable to replicate the issues you explained, my forms were saving properly and there were no popups when leaving the page.
    Is that the plugin you’re using as well or perhaps you’re using a different one?

    Defender plugin now also has GeoIP location blocking under Defender > IP Lockouts > IP Banning, have you considered using that?

    Best regards,
    Predrag

    • Tony G
      • Mr. LetsFixTheWorld

      Predrag Dubajic – Sincere thanks for taking time to look at this. I wasn’t expecting this. Really, thanks!

      The site I’ve created has a very USA-specific audience, so just for the first creation and development I used IP Geo Block (yes, you have the correct plugin) to whitelist country “us” and blacklist all others. Of course that meant blocking WPMU DEV servers until I whitelist them. Again, this was a highly restrictive new-site setting. I need to look closer, but I believe that plugin adds a nonce to the URL query string, which might have affected the Forminator admin pages.

      I will check and export the settings I used, attempt to reproduce the problem, and if it is 100% reproducible I will invite Support in to look.

      • Tony G
        • Mr. LetsFixTheWorld

        Yes, I’m aware of the enhancements to Defender for similar functionality. When announcements were made about those enhancements, I encouraged WMPU DEV to avoid attempting to duplicate really high quality functionality that is already available elsewhere. My reasoning was and is that Dev will never achieve the same level of features or quality as a dedicated plugin – and I say this with full respect and appreciation for Dev and the talented and diligent staff.

        I stand by that original statement. The Defender IP functionality for geo-blocking pales in comparison to the dedicated plugin. I still want and need the dedicated plugin, so there’s no need for me to use the limited and competing features there.

        On one hand, I wish, respectfully, that Dev will think better about this, remove this functionality, and recommend the established leader in this area for this specific functionality. On the other hand, I appreciate that Dev includes this functionality for those who want it, and while I would advise others to consider the wealth of features available elsewhere to fine-tune this aspect of site-management, I also understand that everyone has a choice, and some people prefer to minimize their management in some of these areas.

        Choice is good. Dev offers choices.

  • Predrag Dubajic
    • Support

    Hi Tony G ,

    If you could replicate the issue and have the steps to replicate ready feel free to pass it our way as well so we can check it out further as well and see if there’s anything we can do from our end about that :slight_smile:

    Yes, I’m aware of the enhancements to Defender for similar functionality. When announcements were made about those enhancements, I encouraged WMPU DEV to avoid attempting to duplicate really high quality functionality that is already available elsewhere. My reasoning was and is that Dev will never achieve the same level of features or quality as a dedicated plugin – and I say this with full respect and appreciation for Dev and the talented and diligent staff.

    I stand by that original statement. The Defender IP functionality for geo-blocking pales in comparison to the dedicated plugin. I still want and need the dedicated plugin, so there’s no need for me to use the limited and competing features there.

    I certainly understand your point of view here, but there a lot of variables to consider here, with the functionality requests by members, which features are mainly used and which are more widely used compared to some additional configs that could be lesser known os used.

    But this is a totally different discussion really. We are constantly working on improving the plugins further so we’ll see what the future will bring in regards to GeoIP Blocking functionality in Defender :slight_smile:

    Best regards,
    Predrag