DOCman Configuration Errors and Problems

Last updated: 15 June 2022

Can't upload MP3 / MP4 files

When uploading mp3 or mp4 files if you encounter the following error; " Unable to open i/o files", there are a few things that you need to check to ensure that you can upload these filetypes:

Check that you have not deleted mp3 / mp4 file extensions in DOCman's settings (Components > DOCman > Settings > Allowed file extensions). By default DOCman allows both mp3 and mp4 files to be uploaded.
Make sure that you have sufficient disk space to store the files and that the file permissions are correctly set (CHMOD 0644)
If you have a firewall extension installed on your Joomla site (e.g. RSFirewall), check that mp3 and/or mp4 filetype extensions are not in the banned list.

Buttons not styled correctly on document details page

If you are using a Rockettheme template and are experiencing issues with the 'edit', 'delete' buttons and the 'new', 'popular' etc tags not being rendered correctly you need to set the advanced ' build title spans' setting to 'No' in your Rockettheme template configuration.

"HTTP error: Upload URL is wrong or doesn't exist" upon submitting a document

You should be using Notify 3.0 with DOCman 3.0. You'll find the latest package here.

Problems with downloading files via Google Doc Viewer

Please note that the maximum file size limit for the Google Doc Viewer preview is 25MB, this is not a limit that we can change.

Problems with playing MP4 files on iPhones

iPhones can only recognise files with .M4V, .MP4, and .MOV file extensions and compressed in H.264 or MPEG-4 format. If your .MP4 files are not compressed in this way, they can't be opened or played smoothly with your iPhone. You need to convert your .MP4 files to iPhone compatible format first.

Another solution would be to make use of the built-in video player in DOCman 3.1, which can handle the MP4 format regardless of whether or not it's not compressed correctly for iPhone.

Learn more about playing video and audio files with DOCman's built-in media player

There is a known issue when playing audio and video files on DOCman. Symptoms of this issue are DOCman being unable to determine the audio/video file length which breaks the length indicator and progress bar of the built-in player. The player may also suddenly stop within the first minute of playback.

We have determined that range headers requests which are used for streaming content are misbehaving on webservers running http/2, the most recent version of the HTTP protocol. Until we find a suitable solution for this issue, we recommend that http/1.1 is used instead.

Homepage redirect when performing DOCman save/cancel/edit actions

Our extensions require a valid referrer header to be sent to operate correctly. If your Joomla site's referrer-policy is set to not send a referrer, for example because the referrer is set to referrer-policy: origin or referrer-policy: no-referrer it limits the browser to only send the host and schema information back to the server but not the full URL.

DOCman uses the referrer to determine where you are coming from and where to redirect you after a cancel, or a save action. By setting your referrer-policy to referrer-policy: origin or referrer-policy: no-referrer DOCman can no longer do this correctly.

If you have Akeeba Admintools installed on your website then you may have an autogenerated .htaccess file, or you may even have manually edited your .htaccess file to set your site's referrer-policy. (see: https://www.akeebabackup.com/documentation/admin-tools/optimisation-and-utility.html)

Removing the rules in your .htaccess file that set the referrer-policy or changing the referrer-policy to referrer-policy: origin-when-cross-origin will resolve this issue and DOCman will continue to work properly.