After upgrading, the whole message board has disappeared.

[Antechinus]

Ok, I think I have solved the problem. When I checked some of the files I found that the main http://japantown.awardspace.com/messageboard/index.php file had somehow acquired the code content from Settings.php. The Settings_bak.php file had the code content from Sources/Subs.php. I think that when you were upping all the files you got a couple of critical ones mixed up.

The forum is up again now and seems ok on basic guest view, but the admin login you gave me does not have the correct password so I'm unable to get into admin and run full checks. I could have pigged around in the database creating and approving a new admin account but thought it would be easier to just get the pass from you.

[Johnnymushio]

I have a couple questions. I am not sure if this is related to just normal things that happened when the forum is upgraded or not, but I will have to go check my old threads to see how to put things back the way they were, for example:

The favicon is no longer there.
The board is now 100% in width, instead of 765px (I might leave it like this)
I had an image at the top of the board, and under the image I had a link that linked back to the home page.
This image -> http://japantown.awardspace.com/welcometojapantown.gif
Actually not that image, the image said "Japan Town Message Board", but for whatever reason I can't link to that now.
The background used to be white.
And that SMF logo at the top used to me removed.

Are these things that get reset when the forum is upgraded?

As for the password I have no clue. I figured I would just reset the password since it is not working for some reason. After I requested an e-mail to be sent to me to reset the password, well, no e-mail was sent to me. Then I think back a couple years ago and remember how I was trying to make a contact form on my site and how my free host didn't allow e-mail's and things like that to be sent to people, so I am guessing that is the problem. Is there a way to manually reset the admin password in the database? No secret question was set, I am not sure if that was an option in 1.1.4.

Lastly, I am still a bit confused how the problem occurred in the first place. It is really bizarre that parts of files were put into other files. All I did was upload the files from the large upgrade, I didn't touch anything besides that. Any idea how it happened?

[Illori]

when you upload all new files you would revert any changes to the themes if you uploaded new versions of them.

for your admin issue take a  look at this I accidentally deleted my admin account, what do I do? then you can manually change your old admin account password once you are back in the forum via the profile.

[Johnnymushio]

After running the query, it said:

Affected rows: 0 (Query took 0.0009 sec)
SQL query:
UPDATE MBmembers SET ID_GROUP = '1' WHERE memberName = 'Johnnymushio'

If 0 rows were affected, I am not sure if it did the trick. And if it did work, I don't know where to go from here.

Ah, I should have read better. I have to make a new user then run the query.

EDIT

that did the trick, thanks

[Antechinus]

I have a couple questions. I am not sure if this is related to just normal things that happened when the forum is upgraded or not, but I will have to go check my old threads to see how to put things back the way they were, for example:

The favicon is no longer there.
The board is now 100% in width, instead of 765px (I might leave it like this)
I had an image at the top of the board, and under the image I had a link that linked back to the home page.
This image -> http://japantown.awardspace.com/welcometojapantown.gif
Actually not that image, the image said "Japan Town Message Board", but for whatever reason I can't link to that now.
The background used to be white.
And that SMF logo at the top used to me removed.

Are these things that get reset when the forum is upgraded?

<snip>

Lastly, I am still a bit confused how the problem occurred in the first place. It is really bizarre that parts of files were put into other files. All I did was upload the files from the large upgrade, I didn't touch anything besides that. Any idea how it happened?

Last bit first: the only way I can think it could happen is if you used your host's file editor to copy paste the content in those files. IOW, copy Settings.php content from desktop and paste it into index.php by mistake.

Regarding the rest: all files are overwritten in a large upgrade so custom coding for favicons, banner, etc gets wiped and you're back to default.

[Johnnymushio]

That's a nice theory but, I didn't do such a thing, really. Maybe it was some kind of rare update problem, or ftp problem, where it uploaded parts of the files into other files? But I have never heard of such a thing happening. When I read your PM this morning saying that I was pretty baffled how that happened. I guess I'll just cross my fingers the next update time and hope it works.

I PM'ed you the forum admin username and password, but I think everything is pretty much set. I just have to make the custom tweaks to the theme again. Also, you said the theme goes back to the default when I use the large upgrade, does that mean if I only use the small upgrade this wouldn't happen? It shouldn't take too long for me to tweak the theme again, I'm just a little rusty. Or if I am feeling lazy, I guess next time I could just not upload the new theme folder when I upgrade. That shouldn't cause any problems, I think.

I'm not sure how much time this took you to fix, but I cannot thank you enough. It was really nice of you.

[Antechinus]

Oh well, if you didn't use their file editor then I have no idea how the content got mixed up. It could be an ftp glitch but it would be a very unusual one. It may be a glitch in their control panel. Impossible for me to tell, really. However, the content was switched in those files. It even had the complete headers with the file names, which made it rather obvious when looking in them.

I didn't check absolutely every function in SMF but I ran forum maintenance options and checked some of the basic forum functions. It seems ok now and the file list checks out as being up to date, so I don't anticipate anything else being switched.

The small upgrade does much the same as the large upgrade. The name is a bit of a misnomer really as it still overwrites a lot of files. It refers more to going from one version to the next (ie: small jump) rather than going from an ancient version to the current one (ie: large jump).

I would not advise skipping the Themes folder as sometimes there are changes. However, if you keep up to date you will be able to use patches rather than upgrade packs, and these patches install via the package manager like mods. Like mods they also edit specific parts of the code rather than overwriting entire files, so they usually don't cause any problems. If a patch becomes available for 1.1.13 there will be a notification on the main admin centre page.

Cheers.

[Johnnymushio]

Antechinus, you are right. As I am sitting here trying to do the simplest thing of adding a image to the top of the board, I was baffled. No matter what I did, I couldn't get it to show.

So I went into my hosts file manager and I looked at the top. It said "successfully saved blablabla.gif".

But I never even touched the gif, but that explained why the gif wasn't showing up.

Somehow, for some reason, the index.template.php code was saved into the gif.

A very bizzarre, frustrating, confusing glitch. I will contact my host about it.

I am not entirely sure how it comes about though. It may have to do with having two tabs open at once in the file manager. I guess there is no more multitasking for me.