Internal Server Error, when making changes to theme source code

[spitfire80]

Hello All,

Just joined here and was recently asked to admin a forum I am a member of. Im not real familiar with the SMF protocol, but have been looking at the Admin section. Anyhow, here's my question. The forum is SMF 1.1.19. The owner built the site using the default Core theme. I know that the source code of the default cannot be accessed or changed. So I made a copy of the Core theme, so that I could add a new banner in the header and also remove a link to a blog that is not ever used.

My problem is, when i open the index.template.php on the copied (duplicate) forum layout and make make the changes to the source code, by simply swapping out information, and then click "Save Changes" at the bottom of that screen, I get a screen that opens saying. I even opened the index.template.php, WITHOUT changing anything in the source code, and yet, when I click to Save Changes, this same internal error screen appears. Can anyone help and explain why this is occurring? When I copied the default theme and installed it, the next screen said the new copy had installed successfully, so it want as tho there was an error when the copy was made.

Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, [email protected] and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

Thanks for any advice or help.

[Sir Osis of Liver]

I know that the source code of the default cannot be accessed or changed.

Sure it can.

when I click to Save Changes, this same internal error screen appears.

What are you using to edit the template?

[spitfire80]

I know that the source code of the default cannot be accessed or changed.

Sure it can.

when I click to Save Changes, this same internal error screen appears.

What are you using to edit the template?

I was going into the template itself and trying to make the changes directly there... It sounds like this was the wrong way.. ugh

I was looking on the SMF pages and the online manual for 1.1.x and could not find a specific section that talked about this. Can you point me in a brief direction?

Thanks much, Krash.

Jeff

[kat]

What we'd do, normally, is download the file, using FTP, then edit it with a decent text editor, like Programmer's Notepad. (Keeping a copy of the original file, as a backup, obviously).

If you edit the file in-situ, there's no backup. But, as you say that this is on a duplicate forum, that shouldn't be a problem. I winder if the file's write-protected, or something, on the server...

[Sir Osis of Liver]

Ok, you didn't really answer my question, but sounds like you're using the admin template editor to edit the file.  That's doing it the hard way, and you may be getting a mod_security error.  You can ask your host to disable mod_security, but it's much easier to download the file using ftp, edit it in a plain text editor, and upload it back to the server.  You're in the right file, header is in index.template.php.  Make sure you back up files before you tinker with them.