4.5: "Network Error - Unable to reach the server."

[joanne]

I suspect it might be night where Coleman is, so...

I am just dabbling here, as I am not a techie, but based on the above, have you checked which users have the "skip IDS check" permission?  It should be the admin users.

[Coleman Watts]

Good evening

Joanne's suggestion is a good one. If it happens for non-admin but not admin then permissions may well be at play.
When you do reproduce it, you'll be able to get more info about the error by examining the ajax response in your browser's console.

Also, everyone who's experienced stuff like this will be happy to know I've done a lot of improvements in 4.6 wrt ajax error reporting, so once folks start upgrading to that version we'll get a lot fewer of these "mystery" errors.

[groston]

My apologies to Coleman and Joanne: I had intended to write, in my original post, that per the previous posts, I did check the box 'CiviCRM: skip IDS check' for all privileged users. Further, just to be clear about what I had written previously - I have a regular (non-administrator) account and I assigned that account the same privilege as that of a user who is having this problem, but I did not have the problem (even though the privilege levels are ostensibly the same).

Another comment: I did not find any record of the error in the log file. I will have to visit one of my users who is experiencing the problem and look at their browser console to get the full error message.

[ericross]

Just had this error and worked around it by setting my outbound mailer back to mail() from SMTP to be able to get a good test mail. I've used the same mailer settings for some time and there aren't any issue with my SMTP server.


FYI:
- Skip IDS didn't help me.

- My site is running with WordPress so not likely a Drupal issue.
- I'm using my admin account - nothing intermittent for me, error every time.


This thread is a little old but I noticed reply 15 commenting on Send an Email. Maybe this is helpful.

[Jon-man]

We had a problem viewing and editing pop-up forms (activities and notes) so by disabling this functionality it works.

The setting is in: -
/civicrm/admin/setting/preferences/display?reset=1
(Enable Pop up Forms - disable this!)

Jon-man

[Coleman Watts]

@Jon-man - this is a heavy-handed solution. Pop-up forms drive a lot of the interface and disabling them will have a significant impact on the user.
Did you investigate the problem? Was there an error in the console? Misconfiguration on the server?

[cerelli]

Also I have the same problem. New installation of wordpress.
Network Error Unable to reach the server. Please refresh this page in your browser and try again

HELP ME PLEASE !!!

[Coleman Watts]

Cerelli - we can probably help you but need you to do your part. Which of the troubleshooting steps in this thread have you tried?
Once you have done them, please post the exact error message you're getting in your browser console, complete steps to reproduce the problem, and some idea of the scope (does it happen on every screen, certain screens, or just one? Any particular circumstances needed to trigger it?)

[cerelli]

Thank you Coleman, the problem was when, in groups setting, the problem was when I wanted to enter a new group from "Manage groups".
When the popup opens, than appear all blank qith erros.
I desactivate some plugin (Jetpack and Piklist) in wordpress and all works well now.

Thanks

[palmquist]

I am experiencing this so-called "network error" (every time I try to view contributions) after upgrading to 4.5.6. There is no custom code involved in viewing contributions, but I do have four custom fields (2 alphanumeric, one date, and one number).

However, Jon-man's "heavy-handed" solution solved the problem for me, allowing me to access the information a constituent was requesting.

Sometimes "heavy-handed" solutions are what it takes. 

(At the very least this seems to me to be a bug of an inaccurate error message.)

We had a problem viewing and editing pop-up forms (activities and notes) so by disabling this functionality it works.

The setting is in: -
/civicrm/admin/setting/preferences/display?reset=1
(Enable Pop up Forms - disable this!)

Jon-man

[Coleman Watts]

Sometimes "heavy-handed" solutions are what it takes.

Well admittedly it's less "heavy-handed" than uninstalling Civi and switching to other software
But the trouble is that since popups aren't the cause of the problem, disabling them doesn't actually solve the problem.
The problem is that you have javascript errors on your website. This might cause a few, or maybe hundreds of subtle and not-so-subtle bugs with CiviCRM. Popups are often the most obvious victim but there are probably others, and some of them may be hard to spot (like form fields not showing up when they should). I expect that if you don't address the underlying problem you'll probably be posting again on the forum sooner or later about other perceived bugs or missing features or things that aren't quite working right.

The good news is, there is probably one fairly simple cause of your problem and once you fix it you can turn popups back on and some other things you might not have even noticed were broken will start working again too.

This is such a common problem that I'm going to start a new master forum thread about it...

[palmquist]

The problem is that you have javascript errors on your website.

Good point! (And you are accurate in your assessment that we may be having other problems which likely trace back to the same javascript issue.)

But I'm a bit confused by the wording "javascript errors on your website." This seems to imply that there are javascript errors which are not part of CiviCRM. But (to my knowledge) there is no non-CiviCRM javascript on our website.

Or could there be an issue I need to address with our host regarding javascript compatibility?

[Coleman Watts]

I've answered this question so many times now that I decided to put together a more comprehensive resource that I can point people to. Congratulations you're the first
http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php/topic,35850

[Coleman Watts]

palmquist did that document help you?