Site Down After Database work and Clearing Cache

[Ford Doctor]

I tried going to my client area and it says my license does not include email assistance???

I was getting the DB table warnings about changing from MyISAM to InnoDB and then table configuration not being dynamic in my control panel. I followed instructions on changing the tables to InnoDB and was successful. Checked my site and all was well. Found 25 tables that were "compact" and followed instructions to convert them to "dynamic" and checked my site and all was working. Was in my admin CP and rechecking for problems before updating my suite and decided to clear my cache.  Now NOTHING is working, and I get an error screen when accessing the site.  https://www.forddoctorsdts.com

I did back up my DB but for some reason I can't get it to complete so for now I have left it alone.  How do I get assistance from support to look into this? 

Edited November 12, 2022 by Ford Doctor

[Ford Doctor]

Alrightie!  It's been so long since I had to restore a database from a backup that I forgot how to do it properly. With that said I restored my website successfully. Always happens after asking for help. 

I still have no idea as to what happened after clearing cache. Do I REALLY need to be concerned with the database recommendations? 

 

[teraßyte]

Yes, those database recommendations for InnoDB help making the site faster overall. And the change from Compact to Dynamic is to support larger indexes.

 

That said, since you've already restored the site I'm not seeing any error right now. Without knowing the actual error it's not possible to know what exactly was wrong.

[Adlago]

There is a possibility - that you have changed one of your database tables to an unacceptable format.
Try - change a few DBs, then remove cache site and so on until all databases are normal.
It's a gratifying circumstance that you managed it yourself. And you will manage again but in slow steps. Only a few databases in change in one step.

[Ford Doctor]

A faster site would be a benefit however it is the Control Panel warning that has me going at this. Since the error took the whole thing down completely out there is no way of knowing... at least with I am capable of looking at unless there is an error log that might show something. 

 

As for the approach - I was doing the change all in one shot 225 tables or so then I had to change 25 to dynamic, one at a time. I too thought of doing this a few tables at a time. 

 

So now that it's been running a few hours I have errors in my logs, and I lost a lot of customization.

Edited November 12, 2022 by Ford Doctor

[Adlago]

6 minutes ago, Ford Doctor said:

A faster site would be a benefit however it is the Control Panel warning that has me going at this. Since the error took the whole thing down completely out there is no way of knowing... at least with I am capable of looking at unless there is an error log that might show something. 

 

As for the approach - I was doing the change all in one shot 225 tables or so then I had to change 25 to dynamic, one at a time. I too thought of doing this a few tables at a time. 

Do not expect an improvement in site loading speed after changing the DB. There is such a change, but it is negligibly small to see it as a real indicator.
Site loading speed is dependent on mutual loading of CSS and JS, and one more thing. But that's another topic.

[Ford Doctor]

Meanwhile, the cost of a license has gone up and now I cannot submit a support ticket for assistance? ☹️

[Ford Doctor]

23 minutes ago, Ford Doctor said:

Meanwhile, the cost of a license has gone up and now I cannot submit a support ticket for assistance? ☹️

And it looks as though my credit card information had expired! My last two license purchases were never paid and expired so that answers THAT! 

[Jim M]

1 hour ago, Ford Doctor said:

Meanwhile, the cost of a license has gone up and now I cannot submit a support ticket for assistance? ☹️

Please be advised that this is where you submit a support ticket now 🙂 . However, it is the weekend so support responses from our team may be delayed. You should have received an email last year explaining the shift to our community for support. With that said, the only thing that has changed about our support is the method where you start it, all the same great support that you know and love previously is still here. Our technicians still have secure access to your access details for your community in our Client Area, we can escalate things to a ticket if needed, etc... We found that a large percentage of support requests were similar in nature so that having a large, searchable forum to contain those in would benefit everybody. Plus, you can now receive input from other community administrators who encountered similar issues. We have been saying for years that communities are great for support but have never really been enacting that, so this was also a large push for us to "eat our own dog food" so to speak.

Could you please clarify where you're at with your support issue? It sounds like you have restored your community back so it would be a little hard for us to investigate the issue unless there are further information about the error encountered. Additionally, if you were performing database changes, it would be advisable to reach out to your hosting provider/sever administrator to see what exactly happened. As this is a server management action, they would be your first contact and if you are not familiar with these tasks, I would suggest working with them to ensure they are done accurately.

[Ford Doctor]

1 hour ago, Jim M said:

Please be advised that this is where you submit a support ticket now 🙂 . However, it is the weekend so support responses from our team may be delayed. You should have received an email last year explaining the shift to our community for support. With that said, the only thing that has changed about our support is the method where you start it, all the same great support that you know and love previously is still here. Our technicians still have secure access to your access details for your community in our Client Area, we can escalate things to a ticket if needed, etc... We found that a large percentage of support requests were similar in nature so that having a large, searchable forum to contain those in would benefit everybody. Plus, you can now receive input from other community administrators who encountered similar issues. We have been saying for years that communities are great for support but have never really been enacting that, so this was also a large push for us to "eat our own dog food" so to speak.

Could you please clarify where you're at with your support issue? It sounds like you have restored your community back so it would be a little hard for us to investigate the issue unless there are further information about the error encountered. Additionally, if you were performing database changes, it would be advisable to reach out to your hosting provider/sever administrator to see what exactly happened. As this is a server management action, they would be your first contact and if you are not familiar with these tasks, I would suggest working with them to ensure they are done accurately.

Thank you for the explanation on how support now works. My confusion comes from the "Create a support ticket" showing in my control panel as well as in my Client Area here. I did receive an automated response advising me of what you laid out here.  No worries now! 

 

As for clarification:

In preparation to upgrading my version from 4.6.6 to the current release I heeded some of the warnings I encountered about my PHP level, non InnoDB tables and some tables not being "dynamic." My thinking was to tackle all of that before upgrading. Here is how it went:

 

1. Changed PHP to 8.0 a week ago - no issues detected. 
2. 11/12 - backed up my files and my database.
3. 11/12 - successfully changed MyISAM tables to InnoDB - checked site and no issues detected.
4. 11/12 - successfully changed the 25 tables from compact to dynamic - checked site and no issues detected.
5. Verified the warnings were cleared in my Control Panel and was going to disable my plugins and perform my upgrade to the current release but decided to first clear my cache. As soon as I did that my main site as well as my Admin CP would not load - ERROR 500 appeared when loading the website. Checked and verified my database information and settings in conf_global.php and everything looked good. 
6. 11/12 - renamed the just modified database
7. 11/12 - restored the database with the backup I created earlier in the day - the site came back however I noticed a lot of my theme changes were now gone and there are some blocks no longer functioning. Took a break and looked into it later in the day and noticed my error logs were spiking. Looked deeper into it and I can't make any sense of it. 

At this point I do not believe my host will be of any assistance. What I need is the Invision Community Team to look into this and simply correct whatever is happening (now) and return the site to proper operation. Once completed I will then upgrade and clean up my theme and tackle the database in the future as it seems it will be necessary in the future. I will likely have someone who is better qualified than myself take care of it...

Edited November 13, 2022 by Ford Doctor

[Jim M]

19 minutes ago, Ford Doctor said:

Verified the warnings were cleared in my Control Panel and was going to disable my plugins and perform my upgrade to the current release but decided to first clear my cache. As soon as I did that my main site as well as my Admin CP would not load - ERROR 500 appeared when loading the website. Checked and verified my database information and settings in conf_global.php and everything looked good. 

We would need to know what this 500 error was. A 500 Internal Server Error is very much like the check engine light on your car. It says something is wrong but not what or where. You would need to gather the log entry for this particular error from your server error log. If it is a server error, you would need to work with your hosting provider. If it is a software error, you would need to provide it to us so we can guide further.

19 minutes ago, Ford Doctor said:

11/12 - restored the database with the backup I created earlier in the day - the site came back however I noticed a lot of my theme changes were now gone and there are some blocks no longer functioning. Took a break and looked into it later in the day and noticed my error logs were spiking. Looked deeper into it and I can't make any sense of it. 

Theme changes are stored in the database so sounds like something is not matching up here or a partial restore was done. If your database version is not of the version your files are for, you will need to restore both files and database, otherwise, you would need to run the upgrader.

[Ford Doctor]

The database and file versions were not changed. And it looks like all 241 tables are present.

Edited November 13, 2022 by Ford Doctor

[Jim M]

2 hours ago, Ford Doctor said:

The database and file versions were not changed. And it looks like all 241 tables are present.

If the database was restored then it would indeed be worth checking all that was stated there, I'm afraid. Otherwise, we would need the logs as mentioned.

[Ford Doctor]

UPDATE: 

I once again reset my cache to see what would happen and I was able to recreate the error 500 which then became a 403. After a bit of investigation, it was determined there was an error with an .htaccess file.  I have no clue as to why or how, but they corrected it and my site is back at 100%. I also got some advice on converting the database tables as well. Thank you for the direction! 

Edited November 13, 2022 by Ford Doctor

[Randy Calvert]

It's odd that a DB change would be impacted by .htaccess.  However I'm glad you got to the bottom of the problem!  

[Ford Doctor]

56 minutes ago, Randy Calvert said:

It's odd that a DB change would be impacted by .htaccess.  However I'm glad you got to the bottom of the problem!  

I agree HOWEVER my suite installation is in a subfolder despite being the main domain for my hosting account. That is accomplished with an edit to my .htaccess file which should not have been affected by the database changes that were made. 

 

BTW I forgot to mention I contacted my hosting support in my last reply...

Edited November 13, 2022 by Ford Doctor

[Marc]

14 hours ago, Ford Doctor said:

UPDATE: 

I once again reset my cache to see what would happen and I was able to recreate the error 500 which then became a 403. After a bit of investigation, it was determined there was an error with an .htaccess file.  I have no clue as to why or how, but they corrected it and my site is back at 100%. I also got some advice on converting the database tables as well. Thank you for the direction! 

Very glad to hear you managed to get the site sorted and back online 🙂