Please help me !!Panic situation , my members & boards playing hide & seek :(

[rishab555555]

I recently moved converted and moved my forum from 1.1.13 to 2.0 RC5 and from shared server to a VPS.

Everything is working fine but today i saw a strange thing !
When i created a member as a global moderator and created 1 category and 3 boards related to Indian politics !!
but after 12-13 hours i am seeing that boards and category has gone away

then after 12 hours it came back...and now they are again not there on my site!!! please tell me what can be the problem !

[Joker™]

Check the admin log, just in case someone might have deleted them .

[rishab555555]

no ! there is no such log !!

[Illori]

in admin -> core features turn on moderation, administration and user logs and save the page, in the future you will have logs.

[rishab555555]

yes i did it but still the same problem

[mashby]

No Moderation Logs:
Had 1.1.13
Updated to 2.0 RC5
Added a global moderator
Created 1 category and 3 boards
1 category and 3 boards disappeared, reappeared, and then disappeared
Enabled Moderation Logs:
No logs for the 1 category and 3 boards disappearing

Have you been in contact with the global moderator you added or any other admins on your site? Maybe they might have some insight as to what is happening on your site.

[rishab555555]

I have created the account of global moderator for myself only and posted only from that account

[akc42]

Are you sure your hosting company hasn't restored a database from a backup?

[rishab555555]

I migrated my website to the new host myself..I have'nt allowed my host to access my VPS

The main problem is that , now those post have came back and the boards and child boards i created today morning have gone away.

This process is going on since last 2-3 days
Please help me , i am stuck badly !!

Only due to smf my website ranking is shooting high day by day and now when i can approach locals for advertisement ...Smf is angry from me

[SlammedDime]

It's possible there is some odd DNS caching going on from your ISP.  I would assume that since you moved to a new host and VPS, you had to change the nameservers for your domain, correct?  If you still have FTP access to your old shared host, FTP in and manually edit Settings.php and set Maintenance mode to 1.  This way if there is some odd DNS caching going on, if you get your forum and it shows in maintenance mode, you'll know you are on the old site.

What can you do to correct this?  Nothing, unfortunately.  It's the nature of DNS propagation and caching.  Until your ISP has fully cleared their DNS cache (and they may have multiple, to reduce loads from their customers), you would experience this on and off.

[rishab555555]

Yes i have correctly changed my nameservers !!


But ya ! my old host still has the files of my forum and the account of cpanel !!!

Can this cause the problem ?

Shall i remove it ?

[akc42]

Can you look directly in the database (using something like phpmyadmin) and see what is there?

[rishab555555]

Yes i havve access to phpadmin !!

By the way thanks a lot in advance for support !!

[SlammedDime]

If you still have access to the old host... then I would actually recommend replacing the main index.php file with something that says 'You have reached the old site' or something like that...

[akc42]

Yes i havve access to phpadmin !!

By the way thanks a lot in advance for support !!

So what do you see when you look at your smf database.  The smf_categories table should show your categories.  Does it have the one that has gone missing?  What about smf_boards?

[rishab555555]

Yes i have access to my old host !!
okay i will do as you !
I hope i'll get something from that !

One more thing ?

I have'nt change much of the permissions of the files and folders after migrating to this server as i did'nt have the backup !

I manually copied files of root in root of new host ! and database etc .

Can there be a problem of permission ?

[rishab555555]

Yes i can see all the categories in the database there !!! but not on the forum

[akc42]

I have'nt change much of the permissions of the files and folders after migrating to this server as i did'nt have the backup !

I manually copied files of root in root of new host ! and database etc .

Can there be a problem of permission ?

Can you be clearer and more specific.  Most of moving from a shared host to a vps requires you to know what you are doing to even make the basic site display.  You seem to be able to do that, yet you are asking questions that imply you are puzzled.

Did you really copy the database files?  Most shared hosting companies don't let you get at the database itself, only a backup.

Also,  on your hosting company the files probably were owned by your account.  But on a vps, you probably want the files owned by www-data (depends how you set up apache, and what version of it you used).  How did you set up the apache "Sites-available" file in your VPS so it knows where you smf installation is.  It shouldn't matter to much for most of it as you are only reading the files.  The bit where it won't work properly will be attachments and things like that.

If you have your new categories in the database, then I suspect SlammedDime's view that something is wrong with the DNS access files on your old host is more likely the case.  I had a problem recently where SMF is installed on a completely separate VPS to the main web site, with a separate subdomain name, yet the main hosting company's name server served BOTH the ip address of the VPS and the ip address of the main hosting machine.  It was pot luck which one the browser picked, so sometimes the site was there and sometimes I got a message from the main site.  By setting your old site's index.php file to say you got to the old site, rather than process it like an SMF site would help you be sure if that was the possible problem.

[rishab555555]

1.I was on a shared server and wanted to go to VPS
2.As i did'nt have any backup what i did was:
3.Compressed all the files into a zip archive from my cpanel and downloaded it.
4.Then i uploaded this archive to my VPS cpanel's root which just the same as it was in my old cpanel account.
5.Then i downloaded database from phpmuadmin and uploaded it to my new VPS account.
6.It was working fine but this is going on since last two days !!!


Now can you help me ?

[akc42]

I am sorry, but I don't know how a vps with cpanel is configured.  I have a vps, but I only have shell access and use standard linux commands to check out things like file permissions. I also have to manually configure my apache configuration to support each site I want to use in my vps.

It sounds like you have cpanel to configure things and I don't know  how it does it, so can't really advise you on how to.