Smileys & Attachments option not showing - Really could use a bit of help please

[MartyHunter]

Fantastic, I can do THAT! THANK YOU 'KINDLY'

I noticed another error in log which may be related, and based on reading other threads (translating from French!) I think it's related to the fact we changed the attachments setting from Manual - SMF Default to organise folders by "years and months". Short version, the admin error shows as :

"The path to the attachments directory (/home/hqb1ejsk2lyo/forum.thehunterslife.com/attachments/445_59da95f28f02de5ac4111529659f770de1af7f8e.dat) is incorrect. Please correct it in the attachment settings area of your admin panel."

I ran repair_settings and that is "recommended". But I am not sure it exists on the forum (And for some reason Cpanel file manager won't let me see inside Attachments folder (have asked host for a reason for that). I CAN see that the permission on "Attachments" directory is 0755. (Pic attached taken from repair_settings.php script)

Should I change back to Manual - SMF Default? (I would prefer year/month ideally)
Or do you have any other suggestions?

Should I resolve before following the 'fresh set of files' routine above, or vice versa?

THANK YOU

[Kindred]

do your file reset first, then we can deal with the attachment ordering

[MartyHunter]

Wasn't sure how quick someone would be able to reply, so in the mean time I contacted my host as I am actually having problems just accessing the "Attachments" folder inside Cpanel File Manager! That made me wonder if there's another issue, or incorrect permissions maybe. They are investigating briefly and asked me not to do anything for half an hour while they look into it.

I will let them finish checking what's wrong with File Manager, and as soon as they log out I will do the file reset and come back. Thanks very much

[MartyHunter]

Ok, I did the refresh. not sure it needed it, but always feel good to refresh stuff, even if it's only a few days old

[MartyHunter]

Ok, I ran repair_settings.php again. Same issue, which the host's dev thinks is an error, as .dat isn't a folder, it's a file.

In repair settings I have TWO entries for 'Attachment Directory':

/home/hqb1ejsk2lyo/forum.thehunterslife.com/attachments
/home/hqb1ejsk2lyo/forum.thehunterslife.com/attachments/445_59da95f28f02de5ac4111529659f770de1af7f8e.dat

Surely that's wrong? But not sure how to fix, do I just clear it out and save?

I suspect I caused this a few days ago by changing attachments handling settings from Manual-SMF-Default to Year/Month which seemed more logical and nicer for admins. But it's not vital, so if needed I can just put it back to Manual-SMF-Default.

If someone could confirm I'd be grateful,  thanks

[MartyHunter]

Screenshot of Attachments and Avatars settings pane:

You cannot view this attachment.

I can't find a way to delete that bottom path (which ends in .dat)

How are these deleted, does it have to be done in code somewhere?

[Sesquipedalian]

The .dat file is one of the attachment files. It should not be showing up as an attachment directory.

To remove it from that list, first set the original directory to be the "current" one. Then you should be able to remove the incorrect entry.

[Sesquipedalian]

More generally, since only the main attachments directory actually exists at this point, it would be best to change the setting back to using a single attachments directory for now. Once you have everything else up and running satisfactorily, you can then change how you want the attachments to be stored.

[MartyHunter]

Thank you very much Seksi (hope you don't mind me calling you that, I am eating at the moment and sick of cleaning my keyboard every time I read your thread replies outloud )

perfect, worked. but before I couldn't select the original one to be "current", it was all greyed out. Maybe it's because I just changed back to ManualSMFDefault. Anyway, looks sorted. Will keep an eye on error log for the next debacle

Thank you

[MartyHunter]

Ha, that should've been spelled SeSKi, not Seksi. Freudian slip I guess.     

[MartyHunter]

Thanks all. Progress today, fixed the smileys too

Two questions if I may:

1. I hadn't thought about redirecting old VB URLs until now. Is it too late? If not, I'd be really grateful if someone could advise how I go about doing so.

2. I am playing with a few themes I have downloaded. I want to make some edits to them, link colours are hard to read and a few other things. I may end up making quite a few changes once I learn a bit about CSS. I'd like to know if that's 'ok' to do? I don't want to break any rules or offend anyone, so is it ok to edit a downloaded template? If so, should I rename it to avoid people judging the creator on my edits! Or should I not do that? Just looking for advice on the etiquette of all this, new to me

thanks again

[MartyHunter]

OoH. I just noticed one of the themes I installed says only compatible up to 2.0.5, I am on 2.1.4. It all seems to be working though. Is it ok to use it, or is it best to uninstall that and stick to ones that say 2.1.4 compatible?

[Diego Andrés]

Themes for 2.0.x are likely gonna be broken in various places if you install them in 2.1
And between patches some have had slight template edits so your best bet is to pick a theme compatible with 2.1.4 or at least 2.1.3

[Kindred]

As for edits,  no problem. Once you download it, you're free to edit as you see fit.
The only exception is copyright...
If a theme or mod has a copyright Statement,  you can't edit that

As Diego said, though, Themes for 2.0 won't work right on 2.1

Regarding redirects... I don't think there is any good way to do a one for one redirect on messages.

[Sir Osis of Liver]

If a theme or mod has a copyright Statement,  you can't edit that

Most of my customizations have been quite different from original theme.  I've always done this -

    SMF 2.0.19 | SMF © 2021, Simple Machines
    smf destek | Customized by Krash

Wouldn't think that would be a problem for theme author.

[Kindred]

If a theme or mod has a copyright Statement,  you can't edit that

Most of my customizations have been quite different from original theme.  I've always done this -

    SMF 2.0.19 | SMF © 2021, Simple Machines
    smf destek | Customized by Krash

Wouldn't think that would be a problem for theme author.

(In some themes/mods, you can remove the copyright, in some you can not, depending on the license)
You can also add your own stuff before or after...  but you can not EDIT someone else's copyright statement

[GL700Wing]

1. I hadn't thought about redirecting old VB URLs until now. Is it too late? If not, I'd be really grateful if someone could advise how I go about doing so.

Never too late in my opinion ...

I migrated a VB forum to SMF just over six years ago and have left the redirects in place because this serves a number of purposes:
1. Firstly, and most importantly in my opinion, it ensures that internal links (ie, within forum posts) effectively remain valid (I thought it was particularly important that anyone - but especially forum members who may be feeling challenged by the change in forum software - could click on a forum link and be taken to the relevant content rather than a 404 page);
2. External links (eg, from other forums, websites,in email messages, etc) to the forum are directed to the relevant content; and
3. Links returned by search engines are redirected correctly (they eventually re-index the forum).

You'll need to update the .htaccess file for your forum - details on the rules @hydtah and I used can be found in the following messages:
Success Story from vBulletin 3.8 to SMF 2.0.15 with 670,000 Posts
Success Story - vBulletin 4.2.0 to SMF 2.0.14

[MartyHunter]

Weird, I have subscription turned on but didn't get any notifications for the many helpful posts above. Sorry, and thanks. Reading through now. Thanks again

[MartyHunter]

You'll need to update the .htaccess file for your forum - details on the rules @hydtah and I used can be found in the following messages:
Success Story from vBulletin 3.8 to SMF 2.0.15 with 670,000 Posts
Success Story - vBulletin 4.2.0 to SMF 2.0.14

Thanks for this. I took a look (3.8 as I was on 3.8.5), I don't understand code, I do know what an .htaccess file is and does, but have only ever pasted stuff in, I don't actually know what it all means.

I notice on that topic they say they used that htaccess file 'with some edits'.
Any chance you could tell me what edits I need to do? I'd love to redirect our old VB urls, there are links within topics to other topics which carried over from vB, but don't work on the new url structure. Aside from SEO issues, it would be nice not to have to trawl tens of thousands of posts to manually edit those links!

Grateful if you could give me a brief heads up on what I actually need to do/edit to benefit from this useful redirect? Thanks very much

[GL700Wing]

I notice on that topic they say they used that htaccess file 'with some edits'.

With the exception of the added 'NE' to the third 'RewriteRule' (which is required) the two sets of rules are identical.

Any chance you could tell me what edits I need to do? I'd love to redirect our old VB urls, there are links within topics to other topics which carried over from vB, but don't work on the new url structure. Aside from SEO issues, it would be nice not to have to trawl tens of thousands of posts to manually edit those links!

Update the path name in the rules to match the path name for your forum (ie, change 'smf_forum' to the name of the directory/folder you installed the forum in) and copy the rules into the .htaccess file in your website's root directory/folder.

Once you've done that check some forum posts to work out if old links are redirecting correctly.

Code Select Expand

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
Redirect /index.htm /smf_forum/

# SMF rewrites for vBulletin after vBSEO removed (including forum directory)
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^t=([0-9]+)&page=[0-9]+&p=([0-9]+)#[0-9]+(.*)?/?$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^t=([0-9]+)&page=[0-9]+&p=([0-9]+)(.*)?/?$
RewriteRule ^(forum)?/?showthread.php$ /smf_forum/index.php?topic=%1.msg%2#msg%2 [NE,L,R=301]

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^t=([0-9]+)&page=[0-9]+(.*)?/?$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^t=([0-9]+)(.*)?/?$
RewriteRule ^(forum)?/?showthread.php$ /smf_forum/index.php?topic=%1.0 [L,R=301]

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^f=([0-9]+)&page=[0-9]+(.*)?/?$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^f=([0-9]+)(.*)?/?$
RewriteRule ^(forum)?/?forumdisplay.php$ /smf_forum/index.php?board=%1.0 [L,R=301]

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^do=newthread.f=([0-9]+)(.*)?/?$
RewriteRule ^(forum)?/?newthread.php$ /smf_forum/index.php?board=%1.0 [L,R=301]


# SMF rewrite for cms author
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^author/([0-9]+)-.*/?$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^r=author/([0-9]+)-.*/?$
RewriteRule ^cms/list.php$ /smf_forum/index.php?action=profile;u=%1? [L,R=301]

# SMF rewrite for calendar
RewriteRule ^calendar\.php /smf_forum/index.php?action=calendar? [L,R=301]

# Rewrite all non-existent directories and folders to /smf_forum/index.php
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /smf_forum/index.php? [QSD,L,R=301]