Topic: Some more worrying forum issues, please help :)

[landyvlad]

OK so in addition to the theme problem described here: https://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=560762.msg3975881;topicseen#new

Members are reporting other problems which may or may not be associated with the same issue?

Speed of loading pages & of posting.  Thought it was my laptop.  How to explain it . . . ?   Click reply & txt box opens, write reply & push either preview or post & it takes ages or gets 'stuck' half way through, leaving a blank page, sometimes with a header sometimes not. Sometimes it eventually goes through, others not.  Close programme & re-open it.   

I can only access via Chrome today, and it is taking ages to load, Firefox is timing out, earlier I was getting messages saying that the server had been moved, then error 404, when I signed in there was no sign I had been successful, I clicked back to forum and found I had been signed in

It's been taking a couple of mins to post for me, browsing is ok but posting just hangs on 'saving post'.

I am having issues posting, saying "server has moved" also "like" button missing.

and indeed the like button (like posts mod) is missing, replaced by a single character red block and ()

Cannot post any pictures, I keep getting: The attachments upload directory is not writeable. Your attachment or avatar cannot be saved.

I'd REALLY appreciate some help as to how to fix this, and also how this might have happened, so I'll know for the future.

As I said, I haven't made ANY manual changes to the forum, so I am super confused.

[Kindred]

Url?

It sounds like hosting/server issues

[shawnb61]

Check server logs and any activity stats you get...   

Is cpu High?
Unusual crawling activity?
Unusual increase in traffic?
Unusual messages in the SMF error log?

[landyvlad]

OK I'll do that when I am home and can access cpanel etc - thanks

[landyvlad]

The only one I can check at the moment is the SMF error log.

There are a lot of errors, including the following critical error which pops up a lot.
“The attachments upload directory is not writeable. Your attachment or avatar cannot be saved

(This is where people have tried and failed to add an attachment to their post)

There MAY also we some weirdness going on with directory names where it was /home and is now /home3 or vice versa. Not sure.

[shawnb61]

Attachment directory not writeable can mean a bunch of things - from permissions to pointing to the wrong directory. 

I would REALLY look closely at repair_settings.php.  It really sounds like something changed.  Maybe your host reorg'd folders somehow & now you need to adjust your settings.  Of course, also double-check permissions on the attachment & avatar directories, too. 

[Sir Osis of Liver]

I would REALLY look closely at repair_settings.php.

Who is your host?  Looks like they may have moved your forum.  A number of forums were trashed by GoDaddy early in the year when they moved them to "new" servers without notice.

[landyvlad]

netvirtue

I wouldnt go near godaddy with a forked stick.

[landyvlad]

OK well...

repair setting appears to have fixed it.

it had /home3 in the folder tree, and some URLs, rather than /home

I have no idea how that came to be - but that's now been corrected and touch wood it's fixed now !

Thanks all who contributed, it is much appreciated !