Howdy Steve and all

[ruskin]

Been away awhile, had some health issues etc... glad the place is still here. Hope to pop around a little more often now!

Ruskin/Judy

[Skhilled]

Hey sweetie!!! How are you? Glad to see you again!!!

[ruskin]

Haven't bee too bad. Having some issues with vertigo right now (8 wks now) Haven't been online much these days. I started a online home business for my sewing/quilting stuff which keeps me busy now.

I haven't used SMF or any forum for a while, but am trying to help a novice friend get her forum situated into a SMF installation. So far it's not going well lol. Her original forum is on one of those "free" phpBB forum places and they got notice that they may be shutting down their service. So she wanted to move to her own host where the rest of her website it, which is Godaddy. The issue we are having at the moment is that the phpBB I first got her to install is screaming for an update and those are not the easiest thing to do, especially for her, someone who has never done that before. So I got her to install SMF and she sees everything ok, but on my end it's dropped the default theme. I only see text, no theme colours or layout etc. And it's again outdated. Godaddy must not update their auto installer too often. I don't know if I can get her to install SMF just the regular way but I sent her to the repair SMF page and if that doesn't work then that's the route we'll have to take next.

Hope all is well with you!

Judy

[Skhilled]

Wow! I hope you get better soon! I did click you website link and looked around there. My GF is into the same things. She has a fashion design degree and can make just about anything and has several various types of sewing machines, sergers, embroiders, etc...yes, I know a little about sewing. LOL

Ok, let's see...

1.  I can help with the phpBB update...providing that she has access to the database and can back it up. A lot of free services will not allow this without some sort of payment. I've converted my skhilled.com site to phpBB which is now called braisedbutt.com. I may be changing it back to SMF soon but not sure atm.

2.  If she can get a backup of the database, I can help her convert it to SMF so that she can keep all of her members, posts, pm's, etc.

3.  Godaddy is excellent for domain registration, etc. but is a horrible hosting service.

4.  Using autoinstalls may be easy but a lot of them are not updated regularly due to the high number of programs they contain. It will take quite awhile to update them all and work out any bugs for each one.

Keep me updated on what's going on and i may be able to help.

[ruskin]

Unfortunately they are wanting a "donation" to obtain the back up file. I think she is wanting to just start over with a clean slate anyway right now. She has a lot of boards they are not using anymore etc.

Oh I hear you on the Godaddy... I'm still at my Canadian host and have been for years. Been quite happy there. I know that many don't update their automatic installer. My host has been pretty good about it though, so I don't mind using it there. I probably wouldn't anywhere else though. Her site is very slow to load compared to my demo copy of it.

She's got a thing about it being secured with SSL... I'm not sure she understands the concept of that. She doesn't process credit cards or anything so I'm not sure why she has that. I just want to get her to the point where we can start copying stuff over or get the database file or something... anything...

I love sewing more than computers I have to say lol. I got into collecting vintage Singer machines and have a few (cough, cough, 24 of them, cough, cough...) in my collection. I call it "my museum" lol. My husband Dan is responsible for finding many of them for me on Craigslist lol.

[Skhilled]

The biggest deal with security now is making sure that your site uses https instead of http and that includes SSL. SSL has always been more secure. It will tell browsers and the user that your site is not secure like it does here. Click on the "Username" text box as if you are going to login. You must do this as a guest. Sites that use https/SSL do not do that. I'm moving everything here to new hosting cause this hosting as become pretty bad.

So, the the best (and free) thing to do is get hosting that already has that installed. The one I use on my new hosting is called "Let's Encrypt". It's free and very easy to install if your hosting supports it like the list of hosting here here. Keep in mind that all of the hosting listed there may not be good hosting! LOL

https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/web-hosting-who-support-lets-encrypt/6920

You and she can read more about it here:

https://letsencrypt.org/

You can also install it yourself on your hosting, provided the hosting will also it. It will be a bit harder to do yourself, especially, if you do not know much but not out of the question. I've been meaning to post something about it here but I guess I've forgot. LOL

My new hosting is: https://squidix.com/

They've been very good so far and are rated very well! Installing the certificate was very quick and painless! It was already installed on the server. All I had to do is click on it and choose which of my domains to use.

My GF uses our basement for her "Studio", as she calls it. I call it her "dungeon". LOL

[ruskin]

I'm not even sure how to install a certificate having never done it before lol.

[ruskin]

I've been trying to get her to run the repair_settings.php file but she is getting this error. Near as I can tell her path to the file is correct.

The page cannot be displayed because an internal server error has occurred.

[Skhilled]

Why are you running repair_settings if you are starting from scratch? It should only be needed if you are moving an existing board to a new server or new folder.

The 500 error is usually due to incorrect file or folder permissions. To find out what they should be you upload a file or folder via ftp and a see what it says.

[ruskin]

The default theme failed to load upon install..
We're going a different route now. I'm going to house her forum for her then she doesn't have to muck around with it.

[Skhilled]

Go to Admin -> Configuration -> Themes and Layout -> Theme Settings. At the bottom click "Attempt to reset all themes". Also, you can run repair_settings.php.

[ruskin]

Will do thanks, just waiting on some info from her and then I can move ahead.

On a side note, I was sad to read the thread saying that Crip had passed. I didn't know him personally, but I do remember him from SMF. Sad news indeed...

[Skhilled]

Yes, Jeff was a good friend.

They still keep his site up and running.

[davejo]

Welcome to the mad house Judy

[ruskin]

Thanks, glad to be back!