CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Hello, I'm hoping someone here can point me in the right direction. I've been trying to figure this out for the past few days, searching the Forums, and trying different things without any luck.

Background: I installed a brand new installation of Joomla 3.3.6 with CiviCRM 4.5.0. My site is completely over HTTPS, with regular HTTP connections forwarding to HTTPS via a Apache Rewrite rule. The Joomla site is located at https://www.site.com, with the CiviCRM site at https://www.site.com/administrator/?option=com_civicrm.

The steps I took to install was (1) install Joomla per their instructions -- no errors, (2) install CiviCRM via extensions -- no errors.

First time I launched CiviCRM from within Joomla Administrator site using a Super User account, it took a few minutes to load. Everything is snappy once loaded, but the dashboard has a constant "Loading..." message. As long as I stay in the session, navigating is snappy. Then, when I tried to enable the Force SSL option, I received an error: "You need to set up a secure server before you can use the Force Secure URLs option". When I close my browser and log back in again, it takes another few minutes to load for the first time, and still get a "Loading..." message for the dashboard.

I've tried clearing the cache from Joomla and CiviCRM, and the backtrace in the logs mentioned the connection timed out. Although it didn't specify where it was timing out, there was mention of the dashboard.

The SSL issue could be related to the dashboard, as I know the Force SSL option uses the dashboard to check if the site is over SSL.

I've started over from scratch a couple times, all with a brand new installation, and couldn't figure out the issue. I finally did an installation over HTTP, and while it was slow to launch CiviCRM the first time, the dashboard did finally show up.

I read somewhere some people were having issues with mixed mode (HTTP and HTTPS), but since I have all HTTP traffic forwarded to HTTPS, I don't think that's the issue.

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks

Thanks danc for the suggestion. I disabled all URL rewrites from HTTP to HTTPS, but that didn't work.

Update! After bashing my head for 4 days, I solved my issue. For anyone else who's having this issue, this is how I fixed it.

My server is behind a firewall with a NAT. After doing a trace using Firefox and Firebug, I realized that my server was trying to access https://www.SITE.com/administrator/?option=com_civicrm&task=civicrm/ajax/dashboard&op=get_widget&key=KEY&id=1 from the server. My server knows that SITE.com is resolved via a public IP address, but can't access it since I'm behing a firewall with a NAT.

Solution was to add the internal IP address of SITE.com to my /etc/hosts file.

xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx SITE.com

I restarted the networking, tested that SITE.com was resolving to my internal IP, then launched CiviCRM. Worked like a charm! The first page that used to take 4-5 minutes to load came up instantly. Also I'm able to use the Force SSL option.

I'll suggest adding this to the wiki in case anyone else has this issue in the future.