Where have my forum modifications gone?
 

Unfortunately my VB4 forum had some downtime over the weekend. I submitted a support ticket at VB.com and they got it back up by re-running the upgrade script. It appears that the forum went down because the templates suddenly disappeared from the database.

Now that the forum is up again, none of our forum mods are working. The mods still appear to be installed and active in ACP > Plugins & Products > Manage Products. However, they are not actually working on the forum.

How can I get the mods working again? Do I need to un-install and re-install them?

Thanks!

Did they add a disable line to config.php ?

Find and remove this line from your includes/config.php file
I'm assuming they forgot to remove that line when they were finished, but that sounds like what the problem is

Thanks Paul and HMBeaty,

That line was in the config file but was commented out with "//".

Anyway I removed it and that seems to have brought the forum down again. http://www.businessadviceforum.com is currently showing a DB error on the home page. I've updated the support ticket at VB.com and hope that they can fix it soon.

Then that means you have a faulty modification. Disable your modifications one by one until the error goes away and you should find out which modification is causing the problem

Thanks for the suggestion HMBeaty, I've disabled every modification on the forum, but unfortunately the DB error remains.

That error is saying you are missing the field lastpost in your forum table. Do you see that field there? That field should not just suddenly go missing. What caused your initial downtime over the weekend? And do you have a database backup from before this problem?

Thanks for the reply Lynne.

How would I check that, sorry but I would not know where to start with that.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to figure that out, neither was Zachery, who fixed the ticket over at VB.com.

Yes I do.

Use phpMyadmin or whatever you normally use to look at your database. Take a look at your table "forum" and see if you see a field there called "lastpost".

Fields do not just disappear like that. When you site went down, did you contact your host? Did you look through you access_logs to see if anything fishy was going on?

Lynne, sorry but I'm not technical enough yet to look at databases.

I contacted my host and asked them to look at the logs and they also cannot figure out why the site went down.

Where can I view access-logs?

Generally hosts provide a phpMyAdmin installation so you can look through your databases. What did you use to create one during your initial installation, or did your host do it for you? They should also have a way to look at your access logs, like in cPanel. Who are you with? Maybe we can offer suggestions if we know who your host is and what tools they offer.

Thanks Digital Jedi, the forum is hosted on a VPS with Servint.net. I'll look at the suggestions you offer and see how far I can get with it.

I'm with the same hosting company, go to your cPanel and scroll down to the Database section and click on phpmyadmin to access your database

ServInt? I *think* I have heard of them. ;)

Hang in there. The CS guys are great! They should be able to get you up and going soon.

Thanks HMBeaty, I'm currently working on improving my IT knowledge by learning some PHP and will hopefully soon move on to MySQL. I have had a look at phpmyadmin but unfortunately due to my lack of knowledge I don't really know what I'm looking at and I don't want to damage anything by playing around in there.

Thanks Boofo, they are currently dealing with the issue and they have been very supportive up to now. Do you have an association with Servint?

I have been with them for a while now. I have referred quite a few people to them, including the illustrious HMBeaty. ;)

Basically all you have to do is scroll through your table names, find the one called forum (usually prefixed with vb_ or whatever you chose upon installation), look at it and see if one of the columns has the name lastpost. Right now your just looking to see if what should be there is still there.