Error log count over 5200000, what can cause it??

[Antechinus]

You probably won't need to know FTP at the moment. Your hosting control panel should allow you to make database and file backups, and download them to your desktop. Have a look around. If it's not clear, ask again.

[Steve]

You probably won't need to know FTP at the moment.

True but I only asked because if he did know how to use it, telling him how to fix this would have been quick and easy.

[Steve]

What's your status K?

[Kawiherder398]

Might get a chance to attempt it tonight. First I need to re read the instructions.

[Kawiherder398]

Played a bit last night by opening 2.0.16 with microsoft "notepad".  I don't think that is the one to use!

[Steve]

Why would you open the patch itself? Or am I misunderstanding what you said?

You need to modify your current Profile-Modify.php file (after making a backup).

[Kawiherder398]

Just exploring.  This is all new to me and I had no plans to change anything.

[Steve]

Ah, I see. Doesn't hurt to learn something new.

[Sir Osis of Liver]

You can use Notepad to edit code, but it only allows one undo.  I use Wordpad, just have to be sure to save file as Text Document.  Many here use Notepad++, but I find the interface too busy.

[Kawiherder398]

The learning curve is a bit steep!  Today I learned that part of the high error count is due to "bingbots".

[Antechinus]

Today I learned that part of the high error count is due to "bingbots".

Those are just spiders (bots) sent out by Bing (the search engine) to index content of web sites. The reason they are generating so many errors is not because they are "bingbots", but simply because search engine bots tend to go through everything on a site, and your underlying problem means that every time a page is accessed there will be errors generated.

IOW, don't worry about bots. Fix the underlying problem. Once it is fixed, errors will go away and bots will be fine.

[Sir Osis of Liver]

Clear the error log before you run upgrade.php.  If you're on a crappy server upgrader may choke on 5m+ _log_errors table.  If forum is offline you can empty table with phpmyadmin.