Hacks wiping my board
 

Well its a complicated situation at the site I help run, the webmaster who has access to database and all the stuff you really need access to never pays attention to the forums. So for a year I've been trying to keep them alive, a lot of the time the thread table would corrupt and all the threads would dissappear, so constant wipes every month started occuring. All I had was FTP access to the site, no vb.com info for a reinstall or anything. I finally got the info I needed to reinstall it and now the boards are up. But the last few wipes of the threads were because of hacks that were installed...id upload the product then goto the forums and the threads were either empty or labeled invalid. And this didn't happen to all the hacks I uploaded...it was really really strange. And I'm not an expert at this stuff so its very frustrating being left in the dark without support.

My webmaster friend (who knows so much more than me about databases and stuff) suggested the reinstall (full database wipe), so i did that. But now I'm weary of running any kind of plug-in. I installed them all before I opened the forums. But the members want more stuff to be added, and so do I. But I am so weary of the wipes, this is a board with thousands of members and they've had to endure so many things I don't wanna put them through it anymore.

So what I'm asking is do any of you know what might be happening? And do you think it might happen again if I install more things. Keep in mind the errors weren't caused by hacks, its just the last two wipes were caused by that. I still don't know what the heck was wrong. So any help/advice is greatly appreciated.

And I don't know if I posted this in the right area or not, so all I'll say is this: :banana:

Where did you get the hacks from that were causing the wipes?

I got em here.

one was the show new reps, and the other was the advanced warning system. But I don't think they are the reason...i mean yeah they caused it but there was probably some other problem.

I'm sure the hacks themselves had nothing to do with wiping anything. Others have used both of those hacks with no such problem arising from them.

It might have been a bad install, as we all have done a time or to. I still tend to screw up the tiniest things when installing a hack, but the product system helps alleviate a lot of it these days. If I don't touch the code, I can't mess it up type of thing. ;)

As good as the product system is, we are still going to get those hacks that don't play nice with other hacks. It can't be avoided all the time. ;)

So your saying go ahead and just pray lol?


Cause I can't make backups...its such a unique and crappy situation :(

No, I'm saying if there is a problem, it isn't necessarily those 2 hacks causing it.

And in coding, praying never works, Take a look at a few of my crappy hacks and you'll see what praying causes. ;)

Have you tried LiveWire's databack hack for backing up the db automatically?

Disable the hacks and start from there.

I was going under the assumption that he already did. Maybe I misunderstood. :cross-eyed: (Hard to believe that could happen, though.) ;)

Yeah I wiped the forums and reinstalled the hacks i wanted before reopening it. But the forums had been having problems before a hack was ever installed (late last year).

Have you checked with your host to see if they can help you figure out what might be happening? I would start there.