Need file and folder permissions - all!

[tananaBrian]

Hi,
I'm seeing some odd symptoms after moving my SMF forum to a new hosting company (1and1.com):

- Theme (slightly modified Celeste) works when logged out, but goes to default when logged in (using Chrome)

- Sometimes when clicking Post after entering a response to someone, a file download dialog pops up and wants to know where I want to save index.php.  Tried saving it to look at it and it's all binary from what I can see.  AND if you go back to the forum after this weird event, then you will see that your post did indeed work... odd.

- Cannot upload packages:

"Package upload failed due to the following error:
"Although the package was downloaded to the server it appears to be empty"

The package is 2.0.12 upgrade, and I'm running 2.0.11.  http://www.glacierboats.net/forum if you are curious

I suspect a folder and file permissions issue ... and I find conflicting information on the web and manual, e.g. giving all the folders 777 (but do I say to change both files and folder and to recurse... or do the files in a folder get a different permission).  I've heard that 1and1.com will let you do a 777, but you will get a broken forum or 500 response.  Dunno... but can someone please give me a definitive answer on what permissions to set on what files and folders, whether to recurse etc???  For now, the site is hobbling along but can't be maintained if I can't install packages or upgrades...

Can someone please help?

Brian

[Kindred]

those are all host level/settings problems...

chmod should be fine at 755 for directories and 644 for files

I have not heard very good things about 1and1

[tananaBrian]

Pardon my ignorance... but what do you mean by "host level settings"?

thx,
Brian

[Sir Osis of Liver]

Your forum is offline, getting a 404. 

If you're seeing one theme as guest, and a different one when logged in, look in your profile and see which theme you have selected. 

Most recent 1&1 forum I worked on was running on Windows server.  Are you on Windows or Linux box?  755 dirs / 644 files should work on their servers.

Look in Admin -> Themes and Layout -> Theme Settings, see if all theme paths are correct, and all themes listed are installed. 

I have not heard very good things about 1and1

Forum I worked on was hacked, and their support made a mess of it.

[tananaBrian]

Your forum is offline, getting a 404. 

If you're seeing one theme as guest, and a different one when logged in, look in your profile and see which theme you have selected. 

Most recent 1&1 forum I worked on was running on Windows server.  Are you on Windows or Linux box?  755 dirs / 644 files should work on their servers.

Look in Admin -> Themes and Layout -> Theme Settings, see if all theme paths are correct, and all themes listed are installed. 

I have not heard very good things about 1and1

Forum I worked on was hacked, and their support made a mess of it.

Yes ...thank you.  I had very good support from 1and1.com when calling their support line - but was disappointed that there is NO WAY to submit a support ticket, nor record a history of a support issue.  This is unprofessional in my mind.  Combined with what you said above, I decided to go back to my tried and true Linux hosting company, TotalChoiceHosting.com.  Just reestablished my old account with them this morning and updated the DNS settings for the domain, hence the 404 ...it'll take a day or three for the DNS settings to propagate.

If it helps anyone choose or avoid a hosting company for a Simple Machines Forum, here's the high level of what I've recently been through... sigh:

1. Our company's old Drupal 6 (deprecated), hosted at TotalChoiceHosting.com, web site got hacked - just the site, not the database.  Decided to upgrade to ASP.NET, in which I have more development experience (see http://www.glacierboats.com)

2. We switched to SmarterAsp.Net and had good luck deploying our Asp.NET web site there, but after a huge effort and shallow technical support, we failed to get our SMF forum working there.

3. I switched the forum to 1and1.com and they gave me very good phone support, but the lack of email and support ticket submission capabilities ...combined with the recent issues that started this thread have led us to switch again.  I have, as of this morning, switched our forum back to TotalChoiceHosting.com where it had always worked great before.

So ...for non-Windows / non-ASP.NET sites and SMF forums, I can recommend TotalChoiceHosting.com - low cost, good support, stuff just works - I give them a 5 out of 5 if what you need is a Linux/LAMP stack.  For ASP.NET / Windows Server sites, SmarterAsp.Net works fine - but don't expect a lot of depth from their tech support.  They do have a good support ticket program though... I'm just not impressed with the depth of knowledge or willingness to go get the knowledge for tech support - you have to press until they 'escalate to a manager' before you start to get better support.  I give them a 3 out of 5 points.  1and1.com has been poor - great phone support, but no support tickets and no resolution to the issues we ran into.  I give 1and1.com a 2 out of 5 (only for the phone support that we personally recieved).

There ya have it... I'll upload our forum and database on Saturday or so ...whenever the DNS settings have finally propagated out.

Thanks for everyone's help.  I'll use 755 on folders, 644 for files, as mentioned above (thx)... and will post here if I run into issues at Total Choice!

Brian