Various issues with 1.1.21 and advice needed!

[Leon P]

Hi there!

We have a forum for our business which is running on 1.1.21 and has developed a series of problems over the past couple of years.  I'm not very tech-minded myself so we have a webguy who looks after it for us, but he's been increasingly busy with his day job recently and hasn't been able to complete any upgrades or maintenance for us, for quite some time now.  I'm really looking for any advice that you can give as to why some of these things are happening and what the potential fix is for them?  If it's something I can do through my Moderator login, I might be able to take of it myself?

Apostrophes - If anyone tries to start a topic with an apostrophe in the Subject box, when you click 'Post' it comes up with a 'Hacking attempt' screen and won't post the topic. 

Board Order - The order of our boards and sub-boards has jumped all over the place recently.  They are all showing in the correct order in the Admin section, but from the front end they're all out of order.

Newsletters - We have a little over 2000 members and we used to send monthly newsletters out to them.  We had to stop doing this as the newsletter sending process was taking 20+ minutes with several 'MySQL has gone away' messages.  I would normally F5 refresh when this screen came up and it would eventually work it's way through to 100% sent.  Many members would receive the newsletter 2 or 3 times though.

Newsletters (again!) - The above error evolved into simply crashing the forum completely and we would have to contact the webguy to bring it back up.  I'm afraid I don't know what he had to do to fix it, I think he mentioned that it could be the volume of emails causing the hosts to take it down?  Or dead emails from old accounts that were bouncing back and causing an error?

Registration - We turned off the registration about a year ago as we were getting so many spam accounts trying to get in.  Ideally I'd like it turned back on with some kind of bot-check or Captcha check box, but I don't think I can do this through my own account?


I'm guessing that an upgrade would probably help to fix most of these but I don't think there's any way for me to do that from my end?  The forum is hosted through the webguy's account as well, so I can't access any of the files for it.

I am able to change emails and passwords through my Moderator account, so there's a chance I could edit the Admin account details to give myself access to that?  Would that have any effect?

Apologies for not having more info on this, as I say I'm not a tech guy but I really need to get something sorted out to fix our forum.  It's a vital part of our business and these problems (especially the newsletter being out of action) are really affecting our sales.

Thanks for any help or advice you can give, our forum is here: hxxp:pendrakenforum.co.uk [nonactive]

[Antechinus]

The short version is: SMF 1.1.x is a very old codebase, and is no longer compatible with the current versions of PHP used by web hosts.

Fixing 1.1.x to be compatible is not really a sane option.
See: https://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=534915.0

So yes, upgrading to SMF 2.0.x is the way to go if you want these problems to disappear.

[Leon P]

Thanks for the quick reply, I suspected that might be the case!  Am I right in thinking that the only way to upgrade is with access to the hosting/files?  That's not something I can do through my Moderator login or as an Admin? 

Also, how hard is an upgrade for a beginner?  If I can find out a way to access the files and move it over to our own hosting account, is it something I can do myself or would I be better finding an experienced person to do that?

[Antechinus]

Am I right in thinking that the only way to upgrade is with access to the hosting/files?  That's not something I can do through my Moderator login or as an Admin?

Yes, you need access to your server control panel. FTP is handy too.

Also, how hard is an upgrade for a beginner?

Some of them seem to make it very difficult, but mostly it isn't.

If I can find out a way to access the files and move it over to our own hosting account, is it something I can do myself or would I be better finding an experienced person to do that?

The basic procedure is fairly straightforward. I like to do it like this:

1/ Set forum in maintenance mode.

2/ Set the entire site to the SMF default theme.

3/ Uninstall all custom themes, and delete the files for them.

4/ Uninstall all mods, and delete the files for them too.

5/ Grab the 2.0.x large upgrade pack, upload that to your forum folder, and extract the files.

6/ Go to yoursite.com/forum_folder/install.php

7/ Push a  few buttons.

8/ Wait for it to say it's finished.

[Leon P]

Thanks for all the help, I'll try contacting my webguy again and see if I can get a reply.  Without access to the server/hosting, it would appear I'm a bit stuck!

[SpacePhoenix]

The basic procedure is fairly straightforward. I like to do it like this:

1/ Set forum in maintenance mode.

2/ Set the entire site to the SMF default theme.

3/ Uninstall all custom themes, and delete the files for them.

4/ Uninstall all mods, and delete the files for them too.

5/ Grab the 2.0.x large upgrade pack, upload that to your forum folder, and extract the files.

6/ Go to yoursite.com/forum_folder/install.php

7/ Push a  few buttons.

8/ Wait for it to say it's finished.

Think you missed out a very important first step, make a complete backup (all the files and the whole database) first so that you can revert back if the process goes screwy