Your session timed out while posting.

[Altronous]

Hello SMF community,

I have inherited a forum to maintain and inherited some problems to resolve too. I apologise in advance but I do not have experience with setting up these kind of things so I ask in advance that you dumb down your answers as much as possible.

So the forum has an issue. When trying to post with characters !"£$%^&* in a post anywhere the following message is displayed.

Your session timed out while posting. Please try to re-submit your message.
No subject was filled in.
The message body was left empty.

This isn't the only way to cause the error. Attempting to modify a post that contains an excessive amount of spaces. ie hello,                         how are you doing? Will also cause the error. Copy and pasting the text from the modify box into a new post will cause the error. Removing all the excessive spaces will allow the post to be published.

SMF 1.1.13
The error log shows nothing.

Can anyone help.

Thanks in advance.

[Ninja ZX-10RR]

Hi and welcome to SMF!

Your smf version is *EXTREMELY* out of date... First things first, please update at least to 1.1.19, if you want to do even better please update to 2.0.8 (even though you will need to reinstall all mods and themes, all updated if they exist).
If you want more informations about updates please check this page --> http://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/Upgrading
Personally I would highly recommend you to upgrade to 2.0.8 as 1.1 is almost at the end of his life...

[Altronous]

Thanks Ninja,

I'll get back to you with any problems I encounter. 

[Ninja ZX-10RR]

You're welcome and for sure let us know how it goes I am not very expert in 1.1 but there are many users around that will help you anyway if you decide to stick with 1.1

[Altronous]

I've downloaded 2.0.8 zip and am making a back up now. Just have to gain access to the server which the forum resides on. I have no idea where it is. Can hopefully get that information from the previous admin and creator.

[Altronous]

LMAO.

First problem encountered. The back up. I assume i'm in the right place. Forum maintenance - Backup Database. Check all boxes and hit Download.

Got a 404 error. Not found.

[Ninja ZX-10RR]

Wait wait wait you can't just patch it with the smf 2.0 dude... Check the manual for the specific procedure --> http://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/Backup did you follow this one?

[Altronous]

Yes I did. I did not have access to the server cPanel so i was trying to use SMF admin to make the backup.

I have asked for access to the cPanel.

[Ninja ZX-10RR]

That is way better keep going when you get access you will be able to follow the whole procedure

[Mstcool]

LMAO.

First problem encountered. The back up. I assume i'm in the right place. Forum maintenance - Backup Database. Check all boxes and hit Download.

Got a 404 error. Not found.

Don't use the backup that the forum provides. It's not recommended. Only use the one that phpmyadmin provides. :p

[Altronous]

Thanks for your help so far guys. I'm still waiting for log in details to the backend.

[Ninja ZX-10RR]

Omg, I thought you had sorted it out already... You're welcome but... Tell the previous admin to wake up? so that you can solve those problems?

[Altronous]

I have the info. Cpanel backup done. Upgrading time.

[Ninja ZX-10RR]

Finally let us know if you have problems in that

[Altronous]

So ftp the unzipped files to the same location as the current files?

Do I replace old files with new?

[Ninja ZX-10RR]

This page  describes it way better than I could --> http://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/Installing , the section about uploading stuff even if in this case you don't need to create a database if you want to import it.

[Altronous]

I'm upgrading, not installing so I already have a copy of all the old file in the target directory.

[Ninja ZX-10RR]

Yes but since SMF 1 is *extremely* different from SMF 2.0.x it doesn't change that much that's why I linked that one.

If you check this page indeed (http://custom.simplemachines.org/upgrades/) you won't see any package that will bring you from 1.1 to 2.0 because it simply cannot be done like that. You will have to wipe out all the files (excluding .htaccess and the database itself), then install smf 2.0.x (suggested 2.0.8 of course), import the older database and then install any modification and/or theme you may wish to add

[Altronous]

I downloaded the large upgrade from this page.

http://download.simplemachines.org/

Is this the correct thing to use?

[Illori]

that is why we have http://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/Upgrading which upgrading will take you from 1.1 to 2.0 without any issues.