Avatars missing and theme settings inaccessible since 1.0.8 upgrade

[fiery]

SMF Version: SMF 1.0.8

Can anyone please help me with this? (Apologies in advance, because I am not technical. My husband usually does all this but he's night shift and spent the whole evening before work trying to figure it out and is now sleeping, but I thought I'd ask for any ideas of what he could try later.)

Ok, this is my understanding of what the problems are :

We ran the critical update to upgrade to 1.0.8 and can't see the avatars display anymore.

Also when you go into admin>edit features and options>theme settings, it just gives the standard error page, so the theme settings are inaccessible.

When you try to edit forum news, it lets you in, but when you try to save it, that also gives the error page.

Last night he set up the forum a number of times in an effort to resolve this and managed to transfer the posts over ok to the new install, but it still didn't fix the problems. I know that Mike did also try a number of themes to see if they would work with it, but no luck.

Oh, and we lost the buttons that we'd added before to access our chats, blog and galleria.(I think that possibly has something to do with the themes, but I'm sure you good people will know better than me obviously.)

I'm sorry this is so sketchy but I really don't understand how it all works.  Here's a link to a post he did this morning just before heading off for some sleep, maybe that'll give more help than I can.

http://www.themegaphone.net/forum2/index.php?topic=1284.0

I'll try my best to answer any questions. Sincere thanks in advance for any help that you might be able to give.

take care
fiery aka Kay

[sawz]

Cannot connect to your site?

[fiery]

I don't know why that would be, sawz, I've been on the site all morning and it's seemed fine. 

Please try again. Thanks.

[J. Williams]

Its not down at all, it seems the server/host has blocked IPs since its accessible via phpproxy.

Are there any files in the attachments folder?

[sawz]

Cannot connect to your site?

it was down for me for about 30 minutes. i know this cause i tried several times.

[fiery]

Its not down at all, it seems the server/host has blocked IPs since its accessible via phpproxy.

Are there any files in the attachments folder?

I'm sorry, JJ, I don't know anything about any of that. What I'll do is get him to come check the thread once he gets up in a few hours. Thanks very much for responding.

sawz, I appreciate you trying to help very much too, thanks. Sorry I can't add anything useful, guys.

[megaphone]

Hi Everyone and Thanks for trying to help. I work nights so Kay was trying to find out something before I got up so  I would have something to work with. I have used the SMF I have for almost a year now and we have something like 8500 post that I am trying to keep from losing. Here is what happened and it may or may not have been related to the 1.08 update. Very well could have been just coincedence that I got did the update at the time this all started happening. I could be that somehow or other my forum has gotten hacked. If so we need to know this too and how it may have happened.

Here is what happened. The forum has always worked fine with no problems. The update patch to 1.08 was installed fine it showed. However, at the same time we noticed that the avatars of posters were not showing up. When I went to access the "theme setting" in the forum admin panel, I was given my "error" page. Eventually I found that the "news box" was also affected when I went to post a news notice for our members that we were working on gettting the avatars back up. After hours of trying to figure out something I uploaded another copy of SMF into a different folder with a different name in a totally different database. Thinking I might be able to move a file from a the new working copy to replace a corrupt file in my current SMF forum. When this did nothing but deleted the mod's and addon we had to the forum and left us with the basic theme but still no avatars nor ability to post news.

I also tried going the other way and dumping the "members, and messages" into the new working SMF forum that I had just installed into the other data base. After sometime this was successful, however, the same results happen. I could post, but no avatars, nor any news options.  I have also tried replacing the "settings.php" with a new one and adjusting the config items as needed and while I can get the forum working again I still have the same problem.

As far as the already posted suggestions. The path and urls should be correct since we have used the forum for over  a year with no problems. The only recent change was month ago when I became a reseller for hosting and so my hosting company moved my account from one server to another and I had to adjust the config settings to reflect the new change. But that was 4 - 6 weeks ago an no problems with that. The only other thing I have really done different was to start using the SSI feature to show the most recent forum stuff on the opening page , but this two was done over a month ago with no problems related to that.

And the last major change like that I done was went from a register and post right away option to the register and validate from the email (like this forum has) option in and effort to stop the spam posters.

On the "blocked IP". I have many spammer IP's blocked and I had to block "ranges" vs the actual IP because many of the IP's would not block until I blocked the whole range. Many were "ripe"  and "ru" IP addys so it is very possible an IP was blocked because I had to block ranges. I apologize to anyone who tried to help us and could not access our site.

For anyone who wants to try and help us figure this out. My site is

hxxp:themegaphone.net [nonactive] (forum post are displayed on the opening page using the SSI.php"

Forum link:

hxxp:themegaphone.net/forum [nonactive]

If anyone has a suggestion as to how I can even save the "members, post, topic's, and boards" to a new forum that would even help. We sure would hate to lose a years worth of post and topic's not to mention trying to get all the members to re-register.

Thanks
Mike Brandon
The Megaphone

[fiery]

We lost it all in trying to fix it, so are starting all over again from scratch . 

Special thanks go to sawz for coming to the board and trying to help us. Mike's gone to get some sleep before work and won't be back online now till the early morning, so I just wanted to say a heartfelt thank you on behalf of us both to those who tried to help, and make sure that no one spent time on it when they could be helping another.

Thanks again, you have a wonderfully helpful forum here and we really do appreciate your efforts.

take care
fiery aka Kay

[fiery]

Well, I'm back..

Don't know whats going on but we got into the admin panel ok, and then when I tried to add a board, it was the error page again.  Couldn't access the theme settings either again despite us being able to be logged in a little while. Any ideas welcome.

[J. Williams]

Please can you give us an error log of the errors, if you do have some in it?

Try using Repair Settings.php

[megaphone]

JJ, thanks for you suggestion on the "error log" and thats interesting. There is no errors showing in the error log on SMF nor in my cpanel error log? But here is the url  I get (which as i have said is the 400 error for my site) when I click on "current them settings". I can get to the "edit features and options" just fine and have even tried clicking on the "theme settings" link from there but I still get taken to my 404

hxxp:www.themegaphone.net/forum/index.php?action=theme;sa=settings;id=1;sesc=62f6b519d66186af952c3f6ebb7b5f2b [nonactive]

Any reason I would not be getting logged errors on this either on the SMF error log or my cpanel log?

And of course now that we have nothing there since we lost it all, if anyone would like to login to our SMF forum as admin to check this out for themselves just let me know and I will sent up an admin log in for it. I mean right now its only an installed forum. Lost all members and post

[J. Williams]

I can't see any as it looks like UK Ip's are banned

You can try your cpanel log and your SMF Log

[megaphone]

JJ, sorry for that. Yes many UK addies are banned for spam reason. Seems most of the people that would register to post the links to "hard driver cleaner, or cheap precriptions..ect was from UK or RU. I only banned the IP's ranges for the IP's that posted because banning the IP usually did no good.

However I will go right now to the IP Log and clear your IP. I am sure it will be the last one there.

Thanks

[megaphone]

JJ,

Your IP has been cleared. Again I do apologize. This spam stuff is way out of hand and it really only hurts the people who are trying to use the internet as it was intended.

[J. Williams]

Still down, my IP is: 82.1.225.228 so you must have cleared 80.*

Just trying keeping a looking for the main trigger such as same IP

[megaphone]

Hmm , no I clear your ip and 82 * just in case so should not have any problems accessing it. I got the confirmation that users from 82 would now be able to use the site but will check again just in case

[J. Williams]

Okay it works now, any possibilty of an someone talking to you over an instant messenger?

[megaphone]

jj,

I just made you and admin so you can check out whatever you need to. Kay has MSN, I don't but I can have her sign on if you have msn

[J. Williams]

Yes, my msn address in my profile here. I'll give a look

[fiery]

Good news, the forum's working almost 100% and we managed to get hold of a backup of the posts and restore them all!  ( please don't ask me tech details, I have no idea how it was resolved lol)

Thanks so much for the help- we've also upgraded to 1.1 RC3 and only issue we still seem to have is not being able to change the news (we get the standard error page when we try save it) but apart from that, all seems well. A big thumbs up to JJ Williams especially, he was a great help to us.

Mike's going to get some well earned sleep now, but I just wanted to let you all know. Cheers!

take care
Kay