Topic: Find and repair errors

[sheryltoo]

I see a link for this in my administration panel and I was wondering if I should click this every now and then?
Will it fix an errors you might have gotten when you installed a mod?
Sheryl

[bigguy]

It is good to do regular maintenance yes. If it does find anything wrong it will try to fix it. Welcome to the site btw.

[Smoky]

lol ditto sheryltoo.. welcome to smfh!!

BigGuy beat me to it.. 

[sheryltoo]

Thanks for the welcome. I actually joined awhile back but I guess I never asked any questions.
I've had a message board on SMF for over a year but never really did much to it until recently.
A lot of this is very confusing for me but I expect my board might get busy now that I'm actually using it and I want to be sure everything runs smoothly.
It's nice to know there's a site that can answer some questions for me and help me out.
I think I'll go run that tool now, after I back up my site.
All these things I never thought much about doing.
Sheryl

[bigguy]

Play around a bit it won't break. Always backup your site either from the admin panel or from cpanel if your host has that. Its very important to keep a regular backup. I do this sites every night, sometimes twice a day if I am playin with it.

[sheryltoo]

When I got my first computer, the computer store owner said the same thing to me about using the computer.
About a week or two after I bought the computer, I called the store and told him everything was disappearing from my computer screen. He said to turn the computer right off and bring it to the store.
It turns out I had the Michael Angelo virus and it was eating up my entire maybe 16 MB hard drive, lol.
Or was it KBs back then?
It's hard to believe just how much you could do with those 286 computers, lol, assuming you've been using computers as long as me, if not longer.
I have learned a lot from trial and error but when I only mess up my own computer, I'm not too concerned. I don't want to mess up my site and have people not be able to get to it so I might be a little more cautious when making changes.
And php is Greek to me. I've come a long way with HTML and still learning. I've also been trying to learn css but that's a little confusing.
I bought a book on php but it's way over my head.
It's so nice of people like you who'll post the exact codes we need to find or change when we're trying to fix something or make changes.
I would never know where to look.
Thanks for your help.
BTW, I backed up my database and will try to do it on a regular bases.
Sheryl

[bigguy]

I remember 286 computers. My first one was a ibm 286 with windows 3.1 on it, lol. Since then I have used every single operating system out for windows and some that aren't out, lol. I have been building my own and fixing computers now for 10 years or more. I almost had a business open for computers but decided to go another way. So yeah I know all about trial and error, lol. I still play with computers but now I am trying my hand at webpages and stuff. I have been doing this now for about 3 years I think or maybe a bit under that. Glad to see you backed it up. Try to make it regular.

[sheryltoo]

I think I've been playing with computers around 10 years too. My first computer had one of the first CD roms sold at the computer store we bought it at. It was 1 speed and pretty slow.
I have had a ton of computers since then, some real lemons but the good thing about lemons is, it made me learn how to fix a lot of the problems.
I don't really understand the programming part of computers but I know how to format and reload windows. Every time something went wrong with one of my computers, I'd wipe it out and reload it. It was a lot cheaper then taking it to the shop.
I even learned how to install a DVD drive and a hard drive but that was by just replacing what was already in a computer with the new drives.
I'm not really afraid to try things on my computer and I love to learn all I can about using a computer or anything I do in regards to a computer so I'm really trying hard to understand all the coding needed to make SMF work.
I've been able to apply some of my html knowledge into figuring out what some of the php codes mean but I don't know what echo means or what the $ sign means and I see them a lot in the coding.
Maybe if I play around with this stuff enough, I'll learn something.
Sheryl

[tyty1234]

The $ sign represents a variable, and echo basically means what it says. It echoes what you want it to say. For example:

Example of echo.

:

echo "Hello World!";

This will simply read "Hello World!" on your web browser. You always need a (single/double) quote to echo something. You can also echo HTML.

:

echo "<p>This is a paragraph</p>";

More on echo can be found at http://www.php.net.

Example of $ sign:

:

$hello = "Hello World";

This just basically assigns "Hello World!" to the variable $hello. You can do loads of things with variables, but for beginners, you can also echo variables.

:

$hello = "Hello World!";
echo $hello;

When echoing variables however, you do not need the quotes, and this will just simply read "Hello World!" on your web browser. This is the same idea as the example above.

Play around with variables. They're fun. See what you can discover. 

[sheryltoo]

Thanks for the mini tutorial. So if I'm understanding this correctly, the $ works the same way as assigning rules like in css?
I bought a book that says it teaches you PHP, My SQL, and Apache  in 24 hours a couple months ago when I thought I'd be trying to get my message board on SMF running and I never got further then the first section that gives you the basics for php because it didn't make sense and I wasn't sure how to test out what it was telling me to do.
The book came with software but I didn't understand how to install it and set it up, plus I wasn't sure I needed it since it's all on my host site.
Could I have just downloaded a .php file to my host and opened it in a web browswer like I do with .html files?
 
Anyway, I just opened that book this morning and now after making some changes in codes, because of some help I got here and at other smf help sites, things are starting to click.
I'll have to try experimenting and reading further in my book.
 
And maybe you could answer one other question for me. Why use php and not html and CSS? It seems as if there's a lot more coding involved in php. I use to think html was so hard but it's a piece of cake compared to php, lol.
Perhaps it's because I really don't understand it.
I'm going to go click that link you posted and see if I can learn some more.
Sheryl

[sheryltoo]

I just wanted to get back to you quick and say I see some of my questions have been answered at that link.
I'm going to try doing their tutorial and play around a bit.
That's a great site. Thanks so much for leading me there.
Sheryl

[sheryltoo]

Speaking of errors, I'm getting this error when people try and upload certain avatars to my site:
 
The attachments upload directory is not writable. Your attachment or avatar cannot be saved
 
What exactly does that mean? I went looking through the various settings for attachments and avatars and see there are several uploaded at my site by different people so I don't know why so are ok and some aren't.
Would it have anything to do with the size of the avatar?
And if I understand what I was looking at correctly, it appears there's a space limit as to how many kbs can be uploaded to my site.
Does this mean if too may people decide to upload an avatar from their computer to my site, some won't be able to because I've exceeded my space limit?
Right now I'm no where near being close but perhaps I should suggest people store their avatars some place else?
Sheryl

[ccbtimewiz]

Generally that error occurs when SMF cannot write the attachments directory. This is often due to permission malfunctions with your server itself.

The solution is to CHMOD the directories to proper intervals (such as 0777 or 0655). You can often do this through your FTP client.

[sheryltoo]

After I asked this question I went searching the smf site to see if anyone had this problem and it seems some have had this problem however they were told to set the permission to 755, which is what my avatars are set at.
I never changed that permission and people have uploaded avatars to my site so why would it stop working?
Sheryl

[bigguy]

Some hosts have their servers set differently. Some servers will ask for 777 for all files and folders. While this in itself is NOT a security risk alot of hosts will go to 755 permissions instead which means basically that the public has less permissions to do things than any other group. No matter what the permissions are if a server is not secured properly by the host then a hacker will get in.