Revolution 2.8.8 pl. MODx Manager does not load when a user logs in. The MODx manager page is blank. All menus are nonfunctional.
I realize this is a very, very old MODx problem that goes back at least twelve years, and has never been fixed.
I’ve tried all the normal solutions:
Clearing cache (in MODx and my browser)
Clearing cookies
Checking the error log
Using a different browser (I’ve tried Chrome, Safari, and Firefox)
No dice. The Manager won’t load.
The error log in /core/cache/logs contains only one entry:
“[2025-05-28 10:01:08] (ERROR in modMenu::getSubMenus @ [path redacted]/modmenu.class.php : 154) modAction support is deprecated since version 2.3.0. Support for modAction has been replaced with routing based on a namespace and action name. Please update the extra with the namespace gallery to the routing based system.”
Nothing, absolutely nothing works.
There are no Manager addons/plugins/dashboard items installed beyond what a stock install puts in.
I don’t want to go on a rant, but a quick Google search shows that this has been a problem since AT LEAST 2011, which does not bode well for the stability or resilience of MODx.
I have been a developer since 1977, so I know what I am about to say is likely to be greeted with rage and howls of protest and I know how awful this is, but:
Perhaps the MODx codebase could do more…error checking? Try to recover more gracefully from unexpected conditions? Be more helpful and informative in the log when errors occur?
Sounds like you upgraded to 2.8.8 without upgrading your Extras first.
I would suggest restoring from a backup, upgrading your Extras first, then upgrading MODX. I suspect your problems will go away. It’s likely a plugin causing that.
Nope. It’s been working in the past for years. Nothing has changed, and no extras need to be reinstalled or upgraded. This server has been stable on Revo 2.8.8 for at least five months. I also have no management extras installed; it’s a stock install from the management end.
Like I said, I’ve seen reports of this problem going back to at least 2011, which strongly suggests a systemic issue with MODx development. Whatever the problem is, I would stake my entire net worth that it is NOT extras.
So you still see the menu bar on the top? What part is blank? the resource tree on the left, the content area on the right hand side?
So this suddenly stopped working without changing anything in MODX or on the server?
Does this only happen on the start page of the manager?
Can you manually navigate to other pages of the manager (e.g. manager/?a=system/settings, manager/?a=security/user etc.)?
These were likely very different issues that lead to the manager not working properly. It’s usually not a problem with the MODX core, but with custom code.
Correct, this started out of the blue; one day it worked, the next it didn’t. No changes to the site other than editing text on a page, no new addons or extras, no changes to the system, no changes to MODx itself.
It happens to the entire manager, which is completely unusable. Trying to navigate to any manager page, such as /?a=security/user, produces only the stripe along the top of the page with the MODx version number and the menubar (which is nonfunctional; menu items appear but do not work).
There does seem to be a very long-standing bug in the MODx manager cookie handling, as in the past I’ve had difficulties logging on that have always been resolved by deleting cookies. That doesn’t work now.
You must have some extras installed because you’re getting that error related to the Gallery extra. I don’t know why you would get that if no extras are installed, unless you used to use Gallery but then uninstalled it and it didn’t completely get deleted.
Any new changes on the server itself, like updated server software? New version of PHP running? etc.
Any javascript errors show up if you turn on developer tools in your browser and check the console?
Have you tried restoring the site from a backup that was taken when the site was still working?
Any signs of hacking on the server in your site directory?
True; that sould have been no new addons or extras.
The server is a VPS that hasn’t changed; same PHP version, same server software. I last successfully logged on to the manager about ten days ago, and all worked fine; now, nothing. It’s incredibly frustrating.
The developer console shows no problems. No signs of hacking (I do infosec, so my site is pretty solidly locked down on that front).
I’m actually in the process of backing up the site, re-uploading it to a different directory, and pointing it to a copy of the database just to see if that helps. Like I said, I’ve seen this problem logging into the manager before, but it’s always been solved in the past by deleting local cookies (dunno why MODx is so sensitive to cookie states, but it is what it is)…but this time that didn’t do any good at all.
If you go to the “Network” tab of the developer tools (in the browser) and then reload the manager page, are there any requests that are not successful (don’t return a status = 200) in the list?
Is there any chance, a firewall on the server blocks a request?
Did you only check the MODX error log file (in /core/cache/logs) or also the PHP log file on the server?
If there is a 500 error, then it usually doesn’t get logged in the MODX error log file.
I’ve never experienced such issues.
If there aren’t any errors and nothing changed on the server, could it be a problem with permissions? Is the user you’re using for the log-in a sudo-user? If not, maybe (temporarily) set the “sudo” flag for this user, to rule out problems with permissions.
this has been a problem since AT LEAST 2011, which does not bode well for the stability or resilience of MODx.
The manager failing to load can happen for dozens or hundreds of reasons, from plugins to back-end, to regressions in the codebase, to browser changes, to extension conflicts, to CloudLinux open files limits, to Dashboard Widgets that stopped working, to permissions, and so on, etc.
Seeing search results for problems for web software that’s been around 20 years makes complete sense. People don’t write about stuff working as it should. They document their problems.
That said, I’d love us to track down what’s going on in your case.
On Errors: I’m pretty surprised that the Manager would fail to load properly and there are no errors in the console, MODX or server (PHP) error logs. What’s the log_level system setting set to?
Hi! Visiting in Incognito was one of the first things I tried.
The server is a VPS; in principle I control it pretty close to bare metal, but in practice, after a few rounds of back and forth with my hosting provider, it appears they’ve made some changes to Apache mod_security that might be causing the problem.
No errors appeared in the error log over the past few days, but today when I tried to log on, I saw this pop up in the error log, which I think might offer a clue:
Updating to add: Turning off mod_security did not solve the problem. That error no longer appears in the server error log. No error whatsoever appears in the server or the MODx error logs, but the Manager still will not load.
No changes to open file settings, and yes, I did indeed try emptying the cache directory and editing the database to disable plugins, without success.
I have finally, in an act of desperation, tried something that did in fact work, though I don’t understand why.
For over a decade, my site has lived at [sitename] dot com, not www dot [sitename] dot com. I don’t like the www cruft, so the site’s canonical name has always been the sitename without the www, and I used .htaccess to redirect www dot sitename dot com to sitename.
In absolute desperation to trim out everything from .htaccess that might have anything to do with anything, I removed that, so sitename dot com and www dot sitename dot com both work.
Lo and behold, that solved the problem.
If I go to sitename dot com/manager, the Manager page does not load. No errors are written to the log (MODx or server), no errors show in the Google console, but it simply does not work.
If I go to www dot sitename dot com/manager, tada! It works!
Not sure if this is a bug in the manager, but I think perhaps it is.
Which .htaccess is that? The one in the base folder?
There should be another .htaccess file in the manager/ folder with the content = “RewriteEngine Off”.
Does this file exist? Wouldn’t this file override the .htaccess file from the base folder on requests to a URL with manager/ anyway?
Is this maybe a CORS issue, where the manager is accessed with www.sitename.com and subsequent requests (maybe to connectors/index.php) get redirected to sitename.com (without the www)?
By chance are there harcoded www.sitename.com in the System Settings or Context settings anywhere? The fact that this is solved by .htaccess adjustment seems strange to me. It also makes me wonder if there’s a hostname config issue on the server if the other bits aren’t right.
I know @halftrainedharry mentioned CORS, but it’s rare for those errors to not get logged somewhere even if the connectors/index.php was running into them.
