Troubleshooting

Cannot log in

Check that the Security.salt in config/app_local.php matches the value used when the admin account was created. The salt must be set in app_local.php and not as an environment variable — environment variables are not available to the webserver process, causing the CLI and webserver to use different salts. After too many failed attempts, the login form is blocked for a few minutes — wait and try again, or clear the rate limit files in storage/ratelimit/.

Pages are not showing after save

A newly saved page starts as inactive. It is only visible to guests after being set to Active. Check the page status using the Active/Inactive toggle in the page toolbar.

Search returns no results

If full-text search was just enabled, the MySQL FULLTEXT index may not yet exist. Run bin/cake quality-check or check that the pagesindex table has been populated. The search falls back to LIKE automatically if FULLTEXT is unavailable.

Scheduled publishing is not working

The publish-scheduler cron job must be running. See Setting Up Cron Jobs. Check that the server time zone is correct — publish dates are stored and compared in server time.

File downloads return 403

Each file has per-role visibility settings. If a guest or editor cannot download a file, check the file's visibility flags in the file manager. The file may be restricted to Contributors or Admins only.

Cache is stale after changes

If navigation or chapter numbers appear out of date, clear the application cache manually:

bin/cake cache clear_all

Uploaded images are not displayed

Check that the storage/media/ directory exists and is writable by the webserver user. Run chown -R www-data:www-data storage/ if needed.

Session expires immediately

Ensure the tmp/sessions/ directory is writable. CakePHP stores sessions on disk by default. Also verify the Security.salt is consistent between requests — if it changes between page loads, sessions will be invalidated.