How to report a bug / error / issue

Please note:
In case of any Ossn Premium or paid component related issues, please contact Open Teknik, respectively the company you have purchased your software from.

In case of any free component and theme related issues don't open a discussion in the main thread, but use the component/theme page instead. This way the responsible developer will receive a notification email automatically.


In any case, don't expect people here to have supernatural powers, a seventh sense ... whatever.

Thus, if your report just looks like "Ossn is not working", this forum will be as clueless as you are. And without any background nobody will be able to help you.

So, with every error report we need at least:

  1. a step-by-step description of what you did and/or screenshot to help us reproducing your problem
  2. the URL of your site
  3. the operating system/version of your device
  4. the brand/version of your browser

The next requirements depend on where/when the problem occurs:


Case A: You're still in the beginning of the Ossn installation process and...

  • you are getting a message that your data directory is not writable
  • you are getting a message that mod_rewrite is required
  • you are getting a blank page
  • your server responds with a page of type 403 (= access forbidden)
  • your server responds with a page of type 404 (= page not found)
  • your server responds with a page of type 500 (= internal server error)

In order to track down your problem, then

  1. Download the System Info component ( https://www.opensource-socialnetwork.org/component/view/1963/system-info )
  2. Unzip it locally on your PC
  3. Follow the instructions in TOOLS-README.txt
  4. Give feedback when you're done with step 1 to 3 and provide the error log of your webserver

This log gives an instant insight where and why your site stopped, and that's why it's absolutely necessary to include it with your report. In doubt, ask your provider how to access it - in case you're running a self-hosted site on Ubuntu the file is located in /var/log/apache2/


Case B: Ossn has been installed without problems, your site is basically running - but you are experiencing issues here and there.

  1. Log in to your Ossn administrator backend
  2. Disable cache
  3. Install and enable the System Info component ( https://www.opensource-socialnetwork.org/component/view/1963/system-info )
  4. Enable Ossn Error reporting ( https://www.opensource-socialnetwork.org/wiki/view/1954/how-to-enable-ossn-error-reporting )
  5. Disable all additonal componts you may have installed (keep System Info enabled)
  6. Switch back to the default theme in case you're running a different one
  7. Repeat the action which was causing issues
  8. In case the issue has disapperared now, re-enable your extras step by step until the issue pops up again
  9. From your community's main menu on the left, click
    the Files subfunction of System Info and scroll down to the bottom in order to see the latest entries of your error_log.
  10. In case you still don't have a clue what's going wrong, install the standalone ossninfo.php as explained in Case A
  11. Create a test user account
  12. Give feedback and provide test user credentials when you're done with step 1 to 8.

Finally, please report different problems separately. Open a new thread for each single issue.

Thank you.