Why Greg hates the forum

[The Queen]

The only things that spoil Yosemite are obnoxious tourists and despondent shuttle drivers. But if you plan well, you can avoid them for most of your visit.

Sucks that we have to go home so soon. It'll be good to see and cuddle the beasts, but I will miss the valley.

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

Alternative title : Sweaty Shirt and Upset stomach.

My father called to say he wanted something put on the Serra Website. He also pointed out that he couldn't get on the website. My first thought was "Stupid Dad, can't use the interwebs" Of course when I went to check out his website, I got the same error message he received. So I sent off messages to the service provider. Another one of my websites was having the same problem. I immediately figured conspiracy. A few months ago someone had uploaded phishing software to one of my sites. I got a call from the bank that was being defrauded and was asked to remove the offending files. I did. I decided that my site had been hacked by the phishers in retaliation.

My ISP support people said they had removed the plug-in on my Word Press sites that was causing the problem. The problem was that the plug-in was crucial to maintenance of the site. Damn those hackers. I continued to go back and forth with my ISP people who were telling me it was the Wordpress people's problem.

So I am in the mindset that things aren't great on my servers. I wondered what other sites were having problems. I checked the forum which is of course, the most important and had been acting a little freaky lately. I don't know why it sometimes jumps to mega size. In the admin section, I saw that I was a few iterations behind in the upgrade path. I decided to upgrade to hopefully clear up the problem

That was four hours ago and I just now got the site back on line. All hail the interwebs.

My usual trouble shooting m.o. is to half read the instructions and then figure out I can take it from there. I uploaded the install file, as I was supposed, and then decided maybe I should back-up before I did this. So, I deleted the install file and tried to back-up. It wouldn't let me. I kept downloading blank files as back-ups. I figured when I uploaded the install file, I also must have changed a setting.

I decided to just install and see what happened. I made a copy of the main file and did the install on a back-up file. And voila` error messages out the yin-yang. Not pretty. At least I was smart enough to do it on a copy and the real file was still safe. I opened the copy and was told the forum was unavailable. There was no link on this page to click to get to the admin section.

One of the things the forum people suggested in their FAQ section was to just upload a whole new version of the program and just swap out the config files that connect to the database. I copied and uploaded. I hit the link and got a blank page with phpBB on the top and nothing else. I am having a party. I went to the database server side and was able to see that our database was still there full of posts. It's just the Forum program didn't want to talk to it.

I reread the directions and realized I might have missed a step or ten in the upload process. I redid. I changed numbers. Ooh, look all new error messages.

I eventually I hit upon the right combination of uploads and switch positions to get the thing working. But it was a near thing today. Very near.

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

All hail the interwebs!!!!!

Thanks, G-Man! This emoticon is for you! mt117

[thatguy]

Pull up! Pull up!

--tg

[Drunk Monk]

I was getting error messages all week. I thought it was all of us. Then I didn't log on and saw you all were posting.

I felt so left out...

[Drunk Monk]

wassup with the testimonials subforum?

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

People requested. I responded.

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[Drunk Monk]

Testimonials

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[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

I like you. I think the forum doesn't. It's probably jealous of all those other forums you visit.

[Drunk Monk]

the forum shouldn't be jealous because i'm a forum slut.

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

G-Man, thanks for the new forum. It works fine now except...that it asks me to sign in again to access that forum. New trend in security?

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

In case you logged in between 9am and 10am today you might have gotten the Maintenance message. That is because I was updating the forum to make it bigger faster stronger. For some reason, it used to be when I would update the forum, I would click on the link that said 'Update' and i would go off and have something to eat. Then I would come back and it would say update successful. For some reason, the phpBB people decided I needed some hoops to jump through, so I had to download about a hundred files and then find out where they go and reupload them. No chance of anything going wrong there. Not at all. I only missed one. Thanks the heavens. And here I am, back posting on the forum.

Although there might me be one more error. Some fellow named Legbone left a post.

But the best part is the Forum lives and I did not destroy our mountain of posts.

[Drunk Monk]

BTW, every time I log on here, my Norton Antivirus gives me 'blocked' flags. I override them.

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

Hmmm. That is odd. Do you know why Norton is sending up blocked flags? Does it think the site is dangerous and spewing Malware? Usually I get big warnings from my google overlords when that happens.

[Drunk Monk]

Norton blocked an attack by: Web Attack: Exploit Toolkit Website 32.

I suspect it's some sort of cookie function of this forum.