Contents
Troubleshooting - Plugixa Exam
Start here. Most reports fall into one of these, and three of them are the plugin doing exactly what it should.
Things that are not bugs
These generate the most support mail, so they are first.
“I edited the exam and it did not change for the person sitting it.” Correct. The question set, order, points and settings are frozen into the attempt when it starts. Your edit applies to the next person who begins. See Exam Runner.
“The candidate submitted but sees no score.” Either the exam’s release policy is withholding it, or a manually marked question on the paper is not marked yet. Until an essay is marked, the review of the whole paper stays locked, because a partial score would disclose the rest.
“A pool gave everyone the same questions.” The pool’s rules match exactly as many questions as it draws, so there is nothing to choose between. Widen the rules or write more questions.
Nothing appears on the front end
| Check | Why |
|---|---|
| Permalinks | Visit Settings -> Permalinks once after activating. The plugin registers rewrite rules and WordPress needs to flush them. |
| The Pages tab | The plugin’s pages must be mapped. See Settings. |
| The App Manager | A capability that is off does not register its routes, shortcodes or blocks. |
| The exam is published | And its opening window has started. |
A shortcode prints as raw text
The tag is misspelled, or its capability is switched off. A capability that is off does not register its shortcode, so WordPress has nothing to expand and shows the literal text.
Emails are not arriving
In this order:
- Is WP-Cron running at all? The queue is drained on a schedule. A site with
DISABLE_WP_CRONset and no real cron job queues mail for ever. - Does the site send any mail? Test with an SMTP plugin before suspecting this one.
- Is the template enabled? “Submission received (staff)” ships off.
- Is the score blank in the body? That is the release policy, working.
If mail arrives only while an administrator has the admin open, you are on a build older than 1.0.0 with the cron-interval bug. Update.
Somebody cannot start an exam
| Message | Cause |
|---|---|
| “Please log in” | Access is by role or Restricted, and they are signed out. |
| “You do not have access” for everyone but admins | The exam is Restricted and the Cohorts capability is off. That fails closed on purpose. |
| No message, just no button | The opening window has not started, or it has closed. |
| “You have used your attempts” | An attempt may be stuck in progress. Caps count in-progress rows. |
That last one is the common one. Look in Attempts for an open attempt, close it, or let the inactivity sweep do it.
An attempt is stuck in progress
Three rules close an attempt: the deadline passed, the window shut with window close action set to close, or it has been silent longer than idle timeout minutes.
If none applies, nothing will close it. Check that idle timeout minutes is
not 0 on that exam, and note that the sweep runs opportunistically off ordinary
admin requests and is throttled site-wide, so it is not instant.
Everybody scored zero on one question
Nothing is marked correct on it. The question editor warns at save time. It is the most expensive mistake in the plugin, because the paper renders perfectly.
The timer looks wrong
The countdown in the browser is drawn from a deadline stored on the server. A suspended tab catches up on the next render, which looks like a jump. The deadline itself never moved, and changing the machine’s clock does nothing.
One person sees another’s data
This should be impossible: the portal, results and the runner are served uncached
and send DONOTCACHEPAGE. If you see it, something in front of WordPress - a
proxy, a CDN, a host-level page cache - is not honouring those headers.
Right-to-left or translated text is wrong
Arabic, French, German and Spanish ship with the plugin, and the admin, the runner, the block controls, the templates and the emails all read one text domain. If a certificate PDF shows disconnected Arabic letterforms, you are on a build older than 0.7.0.
Still stuck
- Read the page for the feature you are using; most have their own troubleshooting table.
- Reproduce it with the demo dataset on a clean install, which separates “the plugin” from “this site”.
- Contact support through your Plugixa account.
What to do next
- Getting Started if something is not set up yet.
- Exam Runner for anything about a paper in progress.
- Settings for capabilities and pages.