Forum stopped working & disappeared

[Jonathan Cook]

Hoping someone can help me with this.

I set up my forum several years ago, & everything worked totally fine. I never got a ton of traffic, but the forum itself worked fine.

Now, the forum is basically gone.

 

When I go to the url where the forum once lived, I now get a "Sorry! That page doesn't seem to exist."

I haven't fallen behind on my billing (that I know of), or deleted it (that I know of), or anything else.

 

If I had to guess, I'd point to two possible options:

* I fell behind on upgrading the forum & basically ignored it for a long (since it seemed fine & I wasn't getting much activity.) Maybe that caused problems. If so, not sure what to do now.

* When I log in to admin, I see an error message that "Maintenance Tasks Not Running...it is recommended that you set up a cron or a web service..." Setting up a cron or web service is beyond what I'm capable of technically. Not sure if this is what's causing the entire board to have disappeared.

 

There's plenty I don't know about all this, so I might have easily done something I shouldn't have, or not done something I should have. That said, here I am. Any help or suggestions would be tremendously appreciated. 

Thanks in advance and all the best.

Jonathan

 

 

 

 

 

[Jim M]

Your WordPress site appears to be taking over and redirecting to a 404 not found error. You would want to contact your hosting provider for assistance here as nothing, as we can see, is wrong with our software.

[Jonathan Cook]

Thanks Jim.

I agree - I'm sure the software itself works fine. I'm sure there's something strange with my unique situation that's causing the problems. 

 

I've been working with my hosting provider to try to fix it. We've tested things, disabled various plugins, etc. Still trying to crack it.

The Technical Support Supervisor I'm working with at my provider (SiteGround) asked if there was a way to download a default installation of Invision Community, & advised that I try reinstalling it to a different subfolder on my server. That would allow us to see if it would give us a the same error, or if it would fix it.

Would you also recommend that route? If so, do you know where I could find a fresh install? 

Thanks again & all the best,

Jonathan

 

 

[Jim M]

You would likely first just want to remove and custom redirects on your server. If you're running Apache, often these are .htaccess so disabling/commenting those out are recommended.

If the above is impacting you, creating a separate folder will not help you and you do not need our software to test that. You can just create a separate folder and upload an index.php file. However, you can download our software in the Client Area -> Manage Purchases -> click your license -> Download Invision Community. Keep in mind that you will not be able to install it using your Live license key and will need to use your Test license key. You can read more about our licensing and how to use your test key here: https://invisioncommunity.com/4guides/advanced-options/server-management/license-keys-urls-r344/

 

[Jonathan Cook]

Thanks again, Jim.

During the process of trying to fix the above, I decided to upgrade. (Maybe not a good decision amid everything else.)

During the upgrade process, I was blocked by Sucuri. I changed the settings for Sucuri, & restarted the download.

When I resumed the download, I got the attached error.

Quote

File Check
Some source files are not correct for the current version. If you uploaded the files to your server manually, the process may have failed or not completed yet. Download the latest version from your client area and upload the files again in order to continue.
If you are sure the files have been uploaded correctly, make sure the permissions are set correctly on them.
/home/customer/www/livereal.com/public_html/forums/admin/install/lang.php
/home/customer/www/livereal.com/public_html/forums/admin/upgrade/lang.php
/home/customer/www/livereal.com/public_html/forums/applications/calendar/modules/front/calendar/view.php

 

I went to my hosting provider (SiteGround) to check on these, manually downloaded Invision, found these files, and manually uploaded them.

Then I got the same error.

Since it said "If you are sure the files have been uploaded correctly, make sure the permissions are set correctly on them," I went back to my hosting provider to look at the permissions. 

So, my question now is, what are the "correct" permissions?

When I look at install > lang.php, for example, I can see that my "Permissions" for that are "644." Should I change that?

I have no real idea what any of this means, by the way - I'm clearly not good at this stuff. So I really do appreciate the help. Sorry for the trouble & needing so much handholding.

Best,

Jonathan

 

 

[Jim M]

644 is typical for non-writable files but you will also want to check the ownership of the file. If you downloaded via the system and uploaded via FTP, the ownership could be different. 

Both the permissions and ownership requirements of your server should be asked to your hosting provider.

[Jonathan Cook]

Thanks again Jim.

I'm checking again with my hosting provider to see if they can help me with the upgrade.

 

Given the multiple issues I'm now wrestling with, I wanted to ask: Would one option be to just install a fresh version of the forum and basically start over? Would I be able to import the data (users, threads, etc) from the earlier forum into it?

Eg, instead of the forum being at xyz.com/forums, would I be able to just start fresh at xyz.com/forums2?

Best,

Jonathan

[Jim M]

11 minutes ago, Jonathan Cook said:

Would one option be to just install a fresh version of the forum and basically start over? Would I be able to import the data (users, threads, etc) from the earlier forum into it?

You can certainly wipe your installation directory except for your conf_global.php and uploads folder (and any other attachment folders that you may have). However, completely re-installing is not really a fruitful endeavor with a PHP application as there aren't really any compilation files. Additionally, what you're encountering is a server issue rather than a software issue so you'll just run into the same thing.

 

[Jonathan Cook]

Hi Jim,

I'm still working with support at my hosting provider to try to get my forum working again. 

In regards to the upgrade that stalled (above), the hosting tech support "managed to fix the three files by restoring them from 3rd of September, now they match the Invision Community application version and the upgrade can be continued or stopped."

But then he said he was seeing the following notice:

Quote

"Some applications are not compatible with the core. You need to upgrade all applications in the suite, otherwise the following applications will be disabled: Events"

- with options to "Go Back" or "Continue Anyway."

On the one hand, ideally I'm not doing anything that's "not compatible with the core." But at this point, we don't know how to fix that.

On the other hand, I don't really use Event in my forum. So if that would be disabled and would allow us to get back to a functional upgrade, I'd be fine with that.

If you have a recommendation for us at this point, I'd appreciate it. Thanks again.

Jonathan

 

[Jim M]

6 minutes ago, Jonathan Cook said:

"Some applications are not compatible with the core. You need to upgrade all applications in the suite, otherwise the following applications will be disabled: Events"

This would indicate that the files for the Events application are not the latest which you're updating to. You would need to upload the files for Events again and/or ensure they're accessible by the server.

[Jonathan Cook]

Hi Jim,

To be honest, I'm considering giving up. These problems seem beyond me. My hosting provider has been helping me a lot - much more than I thought they would - but they haven't been able to solve it either.

Are there any consultants/advisers/experts you would recommend? If so, would you mind pointing me in their direction?

Hiring someone like that, who would be able to understand & solve the problem for me, might be my last hope for solving this.

Thanks again for the help,

Jonathan

[Jim M]

You can click "Continue Anyway" and perform the upgrade. You don't need the Events application if you don't use it. However, you should just need to ensure that you upload all files from the client area again and ensure permissions/ownership are correct so your server and PHP can access them.

13 minutes ago, Jonathan Cook said:

Are there any consultants/advisers/experts you would recommend? If so, would you mind pointing me in their direction?

You can certainly reach out to third party providers at: https://invisioncommunity.com/third-party/providers-directory/

[teraßyte]

After reading the replies above, proceeding should be easy as long as you know what you're doing. The hosting can only help up to a certain point if they don't know the software you're using. 🤷‍♂️