Constant logging out on every action

john · February 18, 2026, 4:30am

MODX 2.8.6, PHP 7.4

I’ve been working inside MODX for a site for the last 3 weeks without a problem. It’s been on maintenance mode for the last 4 days. Today I see a new problem when I logged in and nearly every action I do in MODX I get logged out with a dialog box for logging in again.

This happens in the privacy tab as well as in other browsers.

I have no clue what’s causing it.

Also the server it’s on has other websites with MODX versions that do work.

Has anyone experienced this?

My next step would be to try using PHP 8.x

Thanks

John

john · February 18, 2026, 4:53am

Update.

I upgraded to PHP 8.1. Same problem for a bit. Then I decided to take it off of maintenance mode. Worked fine!. Then I put it back on maintenance mode. Continued to work fine.

So this is the point where I’m at. Maintenance mode on, no issues.

Still, I don’t know what caused that.

john · February 18, 2026, 12:24pm

So this morning, same problem with maintenance mode ON. So I turned it off again, and no prompts for login.

halftrainedharry · February 19, 2026, 9:45am

So what exactly do you mean by “maintenance mode”?
Is this when you change the system setting site_status?

john · February 19, 2026, 3:23pm

Yes, turning site status off gives me no more of those login issues. However, it worked before so still not sure what’s going on. I’ll do an upgrade to 2.8.8 later and see if that makes a difference.

halftrainedharry · February 19, 2026, 4:28pm

It’s also unclear to me, what causes the issue.

The only thing that changes when site_status is set to No is, that the function checkSiteStatus() now also checks the state of the session and the view_offline permission:

github.com/modxcms/revolution

core/model/modx/modx.class.php

1ff7d39c4


      
          public function checkSiteStatus() {
              $status = false;
              if ($this->config['site_status'] == '1' || ($this->getSessionState() === modX::SESSION_STATE_INITIALIZED && $this->hasPermission('view_offline'))) {
                  $status = true;
              }
              return $status;
          }

But this function gets only executed for requests to the frontend.

The requests in the MODX manager should always work the same, whether site_status is set or not.

john · February 20, 2026, 2:06am

Yeah that is weird. Is the function unchanged between 2.8.6 and 2.8.8?

halftrainedharry · February 20, 2026, 12:37pm

Yes. According to the ‘blame’ functionality on Github, the function hasn’t changed in 9 years. (And the latest version of MODX 3 also still uses the same function.)

dev_willis · February 26, 2026, 5:09pm

My first thought is that it’s something to do with session cookies. Just a guess.