Howdy y’all. A user of my website just sent me screenshots that he is getting an “AccessDenied” message when he clicks on some of my downloads. I’ve used “user switching” to give it a try myself and am successfully accessing the files he can not.
I’ve logged in as one of my own test users with the same user role as him and that also results in success. Any ideas as to what could be causing this error for this one user?
Thanks!
It’s probably a caching issue, or maybe one caused by some security setting or plugin. Try installing a logging plugin to give you some idea too of whether he is using a specific browser or operating system.
I downloaded a logging plugin and I didn’t learn much about this particular user. It’s still unresolved and now I have 2 more users that are experiencing this issue. Any ideas as to what I can do to fix this? Doesn’t make sense that it’s caused by a plugin since it’s not happening to most of my users. Not sure what to do…
Of course it could be caused by a plugin! It’s all just code.
Don’t make assumptions. You will never find the answer that way.
You need to try deactivating all other plugins, changing themes, and getting your users to try different browsers (and clear their browser caches). My money is still on a caching or security plugin issue.
Ha! ok good point.
So I don’t have a caching plugin (I tried using Comet Cache Pro but it didn’t work for my site so I de-activated it) and I don’t have any security plugins. The site is hosted on Amazon.
I’ve got the following plugins running on my site… do any of these stand out to you as a potential culprit? I’d like to avoid de-activating all the plugins since I have hundreds of users that rely on the website and that would be quite disruptive.
Thanks for your help Tim.
I only use two of those plugins (User Switching and WP Crontrol), so I can’t answer that. What I’d suggest is that you install the Query Monitor plugin (by the same developer as those two), and see if it comes up with any relevant information.
thanks. i’ll give it a try
Looks like most of my php errors are associated with s2member 
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IxkV0EFzGtpUTqKXfJr7A8nVYVERei6i/view?usp=sharing
They aren’t errors. They are notices. There’s a huge difference. Those notices typically occur when something returns null. Jason evidently knew that, so suppressed (as you can see in your graphic) them so they don’t pollute a page. None of them are problems at all.
I see. Ok thanks for helping me through this!
Unfortunately though I’m still in the dark as to what the problem is. So frustrating!
The error message is from Amazon, not your site. Now that you seem to have established that there are no problems with your site, you should talk to Amazon. I suspect that your users are doing something that Amazon doesn’t permit, and so it’s Amazon’s security that is keeping them out.