403 error only on one term/product with Smart Search

-- HikaShop version -- : 4.7.5
-- Joomla version -- : 4.3.3
-- PHP version -- : 8.0.29
-- Browser(s) name and version -- : Opera 88.0.4412.40
-- Error-message(debug-mod must be tuned on) -- : 403
Forbidden
Access to this resource on the server is denied!

Hi,
this is a weird one. We keep getting a 403 error when we search for 'Voltaren' on the front end using smart search. It has been indexed several times. We've cleared out the canonical urls and but the issue persists. Users can navigate to the 'Voltaren' products ok and 'eb ajax search' finds the items perfectly well. Also, the suggested terms are working ok with 'Voltaren' in the 'smart search' search box. Even when I unpublished the products and re-indexed to ensure nothing would show up, it still got a '403' error upon searching for this term.

It's a new site we're building so I can't guarantee it will be up all of the time. Any ideas would be helpful.

Thanks,
Ian and Stu

Edit
If I search for 'Voltare' without the 'n' it works. Other products have longer titles and work ok.

Hi,

I have a feeling the error message we see doesn't reflect on what the problem actually is.
Also, I can see you have the "debug" setting of the Joomla configuration activated (at least it was the case at the time of my tests), but the error page doesn't display the debug data on the error.
That's usually because of the error.php of the template. Rename that file and try again to reproduce the error, and that will give you the default error message page of Joomla, with the extra details when the debug is activated.
Do that and we should learn more on what's going on.
I'm feeling the issue might not be linked to HikaShop. HikaShop interacts with the smart search twice:
- when the products are indexed. This is done when a product is saved in the backend, or if you reindex everything in the backend.
- when the smart search is displaying results, it asks the HikaShop SEF router to convert the non SEF URL of the product to a SEF URL. This should be the same whether you search for voltaren or voltare.
Also, besides the template and the modules displayed on the template positions, the main area of the page is display by the smart search system itself.
And if I add the &tmpl=component parameter in the URL, the voltare page still displays fine:
i.imgur.com/qXXz4Vk.png
And the voltaren page still has the same error page.
That indicates that the problem is not with the template or the modules. What's left there is 95% the smart search.

Hi,
the only error shows up as part of the Smart Search indexing;

"Duplicate entry '1-0' for key 'PRIMARY'"

Let me know if clearing out a specific db table will help. Otherwise we might leave it to see if a future version of J4 fixes the issue.

Thanks,
Ian and Stu

p.s. I got onto the makers of 'AdSearch' to ask if they'll be updating their extension as we used this instead of Smart Search with J3 due to other issues.

Hi,

You don't need to reindex the whole index. So that error with the reindex can probably be just ignored.

I would recommend doing what I wrote in my previous message and renaming the error.php file of the template to get the full debug of the error on the frontend. That should give more information on what the problem is.

Hi,
have pm'd you with backend access. I did change the 'error.php' in the template directory but the debug info still didn't show up.

Ian and Stu

Hi,

I did try to rename the error.php of your template with the backend access and indeed I see no change in the error page.
This means that the error page is not displayed within your website but by something before it.
So I did some tests. If I add "voltaren" to an URL on your website, I get that same error.
I suppose your hosting / server might have some kind of security system and it cancels the HTTP request because it sees the name of a pharmaceutical in the URL.
I would recommend checking with your hosting.

Hi,
I was able to activate the system error.php and debug for you to check out. The best way is to enter 'Voltaren' via the 'Advanced Search' page.

Thanks,
Ian and Stu

Hi,

You're not supposed to call the error.php file URL directly. If you do, you should normally not see anything. But even so, it won't tell you anything about your problem.

As I said, the source of the problem is not on your website. You need to contact your hosting support or server administrator (if you have your own server) as the problem is not on the website and you can't do anything about it from the website itself

Ok,
I'll get onto them.

Thanks for taking the time.

Ian & Stu

more info:

We created an offline version of the site using Akeeba backup and a WAMP server. The search for 'Voltaren' works perfectly. So we're going to contact our hosting service and will let you know the outcome.