Absolute Chaos Discussion Boards
Welcome => Rules and News => Topic started by: Chaos on August 20, 2021, 11:16:53 PM
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As you may know, this site is running on really old software and the host is forcing updates to the operating system and the mySQL database. In addition to that, both this board and the fiction archive scripts are written with a version of php that is not only depreciated, but now is considered to be past "End of Life" and will not be supported by the new OS or DB (or PHP version). That's the bad news.
Now the good news:
After some finagling, I have successfully copied the current fiction archive to a new server to try to get it to work with php 7 and a new database. It seems to be working as expected. So, I think I should be able to upgrade it on this site before the server upgrade and it should work. Worst case scenario, I have a working copy of it on a temporary site and can share a temporary URL until it can be fixed on this one.
Similarly, as of this evening after even more finagling I was able to copy this forum to a temporary location and successfully got it to upgrade to the latest version of SMF. The theme we're using right now is not available for that version, so the site's look will change. I found one that should work pretty well, but if anyone is interested in going on a theme search (or want to modify an existing theme) I'm happy to install/update that.
So...there's still a chance that this site will be in chaos for a short time, and don't be surprised if you stumble on the site in "Maintenance Mode" off-and-on over the next couple weeks. But I'm pretty confident that it'll get worked out (or at least should be recoverable up to today's fiction and today's forum messages...)
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Thanks for taking the time and effort to save the site and forum!
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Thanks Ash for the time effort to keep the site and forum going! I appreciate you.
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Thanks, guys!
I think the forum has been successfully upgraded. So, this message also doubles as a test. :broccoli:
Please let me know if you run into any weird issues...
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Yay!! So far so good! The only weird thing I've noticed is the URL of the forum has a string of numbers in the front (looks like an IP address?), followed by ~ac/fictalk/index.php. Is it supposed to be like that?
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Ooh, now we have spammers starting porn threads. :(
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Yeeeeah. Those have been removed. I didn't notice that with the upgrade to the new forum version it removed the membership verification questions for registering. I reinstated those and banned the new memberships from the past day.
The other thing I noticed was that apparently something in the upgrade caused all the avatars to be unassigned. It looks like they're still on the server and you can go back into your profile and add avatar(s) again. You should be able to find and assign your old one, or can take the "opportunity" to upload a new one. Note: I haven't tested new avatar uploads yet, so if you try it before I do and it doesn't work, let me know...
Hmm...looks like the smileys are also missing. No more dancing :broccoli:? I'll work on that, too...
Edit: ...And the dancing broccoli has returned. Fortunately, that was an easy fix. :party:
Edit2: And the avatar issue, I think, is fixed.
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Thanks for all your hard work! Just popped on for the first time today, and everything looks good!
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Has anyone tried updating a story since the site upgraded? I just tried posting a new chapter, and I keep getting an error message that says "A fatal MySQL error was encountered."
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Well...that kind of sucks.
I had updated a story, but not added a new one or a new chapter to one. But I tried now and did get the error. I'll start working on a fix, but unfortunately will likely not be able to get it completed today unless it turns out to be an easy fix. :crossing fingers:
Edit: Alas, not a simple fix. I can't find a reason for the error. I re-set up the site on a backup server to see if the problem replicates there...and it did NOT replicate. The good news is that since it didn't replicate, it should be fixable. The bad news is that since I can't get the reason for the error it's going to be a bit like finding that pesky needle in a haystack, so it may take a while...
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No worries, thanks for trying to figure it out!
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I'm sorry to be the one who keeps reporting issues, but I noticed there are all these strange characters (’) in place of certain punctuation marks (apostrophes and quotation marks, maybe others as well). We had a similar issue on the old site, which seemed to be worse with stories written in Microsoft Word because of the way it automatically formats certain punctuation marks (flipping quotation marks so they curve the right way, turning three periods into ellipses, converting hyphens into em-dashes, etc.). At some point, AC stopped recognizing those punctuation marks, so I had to do a lot of editing and reposting of my old stories to get them to look right again. Now it's doing it again with newer stories I wrote in Google Docs and posted as plain text to attempt to remove any weird formatting that might cause an issue.
It sounds like it's a problem with the character set. Here's an explanation I found: https://blog.codeasite.com/weird-characters-like-a-are-showing-up-on-my-site/ Hopefully this is something that can be fixed easily. Thanks for looking into it when time allows!
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Don't feel bad for reporting the issues--it's really appreciated! Now getting them fixed may take some time, but it definitely helps to know things I need to look at! (Of course this is all hitting during moving week for 2 of my nephews, so my time is limited this week to work on getting these issue fixed.) I believe I should be able to run some code in the database to update the story summaries and notes to correct the encoding, but am looking for a way to mass update it in the text files for the story text as well, which may take longer. Or I may see if restoring from the backup taken right before the upgrade might undo whatever happened, too.
By all means, if you spot any other issues, please let me know and I'll keep plugging away at it. :cheers:
(Edit: That link you provided was really helpful, too! Easy fix. I think it should be good now, I am still going to make sure the character set gets updated in the text files just because I think it'll make future upgrades or conversions easier, but the code from that link I believe will mask the issue in the meantime.)
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Yay, my stories look normal again! Thanks for looking into it; I'm glad it was a quick fix for now.
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Alas, the overall issue where it won't allow new chapters to be added remains elusive. I rebuilt the site (again) to one of my other websites to try and duplicate the error and it's not getting that error (or another error that was causing me to not be able to delete some of the obviously "spam" members without going and editing the database directly.)
The good news is the new chapter problem doesn't seem to be affecting the database itself at all because I was able to use it in the alternate location without having the same issue(s). The story directories seem to have the correct permissions since existing chapters are able to be updated. So, that seems to indicate something weird in the efiction scripts. To get archive functionality back, I suspect that I'll need to uninstall/delete it off this server and reinstall the efiction software. That shouldn't be too bad (unless it doesn't work...) so hopefully I'll be able to get it back up and running this weekend. Don't be surprised if you stumble on the site and it appears to be down. Most likely that's when I'm working on the reinstall and it should be back up shortly...
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Thanks for everything you're doing, Ash! I know nothing about code, but I'll always send good vibes your way!
On a side note, I'm loving this little news banner on top. "Spammers will be banned. Repeat spammers will be fed to angry penguins." I need more hard-hitting news like this, lol!
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thank you for your efforts here, is there anything you could use help with? i have no experience in this realm really as far as i know but wanted to ask!
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thank you for your efforts here, is there anything you could use help with? i have no experience in this realm really as far as i know but wanted to ask!
Thanks so much for the offer! Alas, not a whole lot that I can "outsource" to others. The past couple weeks have been busy getting the kids settled into a new school year (and a new apartment in one case). I keep thinking I'll get more time than I actually do, but hey, that's life in general isn't it? :)
An update, though not a very big one. A reinstall of the files did NOT resolve the overall issue with the new chapters/stories for the fiction archive. I have a few more ideas to try and hope to get those done this week. Worst case, I'll just reinstall this forum over on my "temporary" site where the archive is actually working and then move the absolutechaos domain to point at that website. But that'll still take time. Thanks all for your patience while I'm working through this!
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Thanks for the update! Sorry the reinstallation didn't work, but I'm glad to hear you have other ideas to try.
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Sorry no update on this lately--I managed to get my IP address banned from accessing my site *facepalm* for a lengthy period (likely due to a huge amount of traffic as I was causing by installing/uninstalling, reinstalling, updating, etc. D'oh!!) And my server host was not exactly helpful in getting that resolved. So, now I've finally got access back. I strongly suspect that I will be moving this forum to the server that already has the archive working rather than continuing to fuss with this server that doesn't seem to like efiction software...and which the hosting support is lacking.
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Thanks for the update! Glad you got your access back. What a headache!
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Thank you for the update and for your hard work, Ash! That does sound like a headache. Glad you're well at least!
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Any updates on how the site work is going? I'm still holding out hope that we may be able to post stories again here someday.
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i hope we can post soon im working on 2 different stories
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I hope so too, but it's been a long time since we've heard any updates on the site situation. In the meantime, I've just been posting on AO3.