Avatars not displaying

[emaaoz]

Hi,

Recently the majority of the avatars on my site have stopped displaying. Those that are linked from other sites still show, but Tue majority are called from the database and generate 404 errors.

Looking in phpmyadmin the entries exist, but for some reason they do not display.

The board is at thelabradorsite.com/forums [nofollow]. It's v2.02.

Any suggestions would he gratefully received.

Thanks

Oz

[Matthew K.]

Have you check the ./attachments directory? Fitting that I assist you I suppose since my username is Labradoodle-360

[emaaoz]

There are a number of files there, but nothing obviously imagey.

Nice username. Lovely dogs too.

Oz

[emaaoz]

Does anyone have any other ideas for this?

[Matthew K.]

I do believe they should be in /attachments. Contact host for a backup?

[Illori]

all the avatars and attachments have their filenames encrypted so that you cant call them in a browser directly, what type of files do you see in the attachments folder?

[emaaoz]

The names are certainly encrypted, they are just long seemingly random alpha-numerical sequences.

Interestingly when I try and re-upload an avatar I get this message

The attachments upload directory is not writable. Your attachment or avatar cannot be saved.

despite the permissions being 777 for that folder.

[Illori]

try 755 on that folder instead

[emaaoz]

Hi Illori,

hanks for the suggestion, it hasn't made any difference I'm afraid.

[Illori]

then ask your host to look into the issue.

[emaaoz]

I'm really not convinced this is an issue with the hosting.

The site is on my own shell account along with a large number of other sites all using various forum/blog platforms.  The only one that is an issue is this one.  Using SSH to look in the directory shows a number of files, when I place an image directly in that account it is viewable with no problems.  That would suggest that the issue is somewhere with the php scripts calling information from the mysql and generating the correct html.

That is not something I am capable of fixing with my current level of knowledge of this platform.

[Chen Zhen]

Try a permission setting of 755 for the actual forums folder.

[emaaoz]

Hi Underdog,

Thanks for the suggestion, it already is 755.

Oz

[Chen Zhen]

An incorrectly configured  .htaccess file can possibly cause this.
A folder will obey a .htaccess file in the same directory or if one does not exist it will obey one from a previous parent directory.
ie. your wordpress main directory.

I pulled up a reference for possible proper configuration for a wordpress forum using smf in a sub-directory such as yours: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/second-wp-installs-an-smfs-directories-point-to-404

[emaaoz]

I don't use .htaccess.  I use lighttpd instead.

The thing that puzzles me is that I don't recall making any significant changes.  I don't have any mods other than 2.01 and 2.02 updates and I'm using the default theme.  But it used to work!

Could one of the updates by conflicting somehow with lighttpd?

[Chen Zhen]

I don't use .htaccess.  I use lighttpd instead.

The thing that puzzles me is that I don't recall making any significant changes.  I don't have any mods other than 2.01 and 2.02 updates and I'm using the default theme.  But it used to work!

Could one of the updates by conflicting somehow with lighttpd?

lighttpd files have a similar function to .htaccess although the syntax is different.
Improper configuration could cause some sub-directories to flag a 404 error.

When I attempt to access that directory directly it throws a 404 error when the index.php file should make it go to the index ($boardurl).
This seems to indicate that either a .htaccess file or a lighttpd.conf file is configured incorrectly.

[Chen Zhen]

You said nothing else is installed, yet your url's are not appearing as default.

[emaaoz]

That's interesting. The list of installed mods shows nothing but the updates.

Is there a way I can check properly?

[Illori]

what else shows in the list, even if they are not listed as installed?

[Chen Zhen]

Was SimpleSEF or PrettyURLs previously installed?

[emaaoz]

To the best of my knowledge there have been no mods installed and activated.  vBulletin style Meta Tags was installed but not activated.

The only proviso is that I am not the only person with admin level privileges.  Will this sort of thing be logged?

[Chen Zhen]

Actually it is Search engine friendly URLs that is enabled that is causing that.
I've never used that option & was temporarily fooled by it shortening some of your URL's.

Today when I tested your Smileys & avatars directory, I was able to view some default images without issue & your index.php files in those directories are now redirecting me to the board index when I try to access them which is the correct behavior.  Atm I have no idea why I could not do that yesterday unless perhaps you figured something out in that regard or ... Hmm.. I could have sworn I double checked that url yesterday because this was my first thought . Oh well.

So now the only issue I see is that you have your directory settings incorrectly configured.
Adjust them properly in your SMF admin (check all directory settings) and your images should work correctly afterward.

ie. this is the directory that your current settings are attempting to use for smileys:
http://thelabradorretriever.co.uk/forums/Smileys/default

This is the proper url for that same directory:
http://www.thelabradorsite.com/forums/Smileys/default

... you need to change thelabradorretriever.co.uk to www.thelabradorsite.com

[emaaoz]

I'll get onto that straight away.

Thanks, I have a good feeling about this!

[emaaoz]

A little time ago we were running on the other URL and mirrored on the current one.  I changed that so we were on the tidier URL and obviously didn;t make all the necessary changes in the admin area.

I've done that now and whilst the avatars haven't re-appeared people are now able to re-upload them and have them display.

Thanks very much to everyone who has helped, I really appreciate it.