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* Simple Portal Archived Forum

This is an Archive Forum.

The content in this forum may be out-of-date or have been superseded by newer information, and links in forum pages to other sites may not work.
This forum contains archives for future reference.

Visit our thread at Simple Machines Forum for current support.

SMF 2.1 users: EhPortal is a ported version of Simple Portal specifically designed for the SMF 2.1 branch.
Please visit web-develop.ca to download EhPortal and for its support.

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* Shoutbox

Refresh History
  • Shoutbox is not for support!
  • {OCS}MasterSeal: Yup, Still adore SP
    April 21, 2019, 07:08:06 PM
  • {OCS}MasterSeal: STILL love SP :)
    November 24, 2018, 05:05:50 AM
  • ♦ Ninja ZX-10RR ♦: <3 aegersz
    September 13, 2018, 03:36:09 PM
  • aegersz: I STILL <3 LOVE SimplePortal
    September 13, 2018, 07:11:39 AM
  • aegersz: o LOVE you guys - Simple Portal rocks !
    May 09, 2018, 05:18:59 AM
  • Chen Zhen: our apologies for the site being down.. please read server issues topic
    March 22, 2018, 05:32:38 AM
  • {OCS}MasterSeal: LOL PLEASE forget I just posted that. I found the answer in my own dang post back in 2015. lol sorry!
    July 04, 2017, 10:47:55 PM
  • {OCS}MasterSeal: I know this SB isnt' for support, but I just have a general question. Who would I contact to find out where SP stores its block info? Is it DB driven or files? I searched the site but came up with nothing. probably my fault any insight is appreciated.
    July 04, 2017, 10:43:36 PM
  • ♦ Ninja ZX-10RR ♦: Excuse me but what does Simpleportal have to deal with that?
    February 05, 2017, 08:21:14 PM
  • WhiteEagle: of course IMHO that site appears to be dead :(
    February 04, 2017, 01:08:05 PM
  • WhiteEagle: If I can get that, then I'll use it for that site...
    February 04, 2017, 01:07:35 PM
  • WhiteEagle: decided to not use SMF for any projects, unless I can get a copy of the premium version of the fanfiction archive plugin
    February 04, 2017, 01:06:54 PM
  • expertdecisions: cloudflare
    January 28, 2017, 08:01:47 AM
  • aegersz: SM release 2.0.13 !
    January 12, 2017, 06:00:13 AM
  • raffo: Tks Emanuele, even if I didn't understand the fix :D
    November 07, 2016, 02:01:20 AM
  • emanuele: [link]
    November 01, 2016, 12:43:50 PM
  • emanuele: raffo: the English support board is a good place. ;)
    November 01, 2016, 12:43:38 PM
  • raffo: Where can I find the fix for the shoutbox?
    November 01, 2016, 05:06:09 AM
  • {OCS}MasterSeal: To the SP team, I make a point to come here and thank you as much as possible for your work.  so again, THANK YOU!
    October 28, 2016, 10:38:05 AM
  • emanuele: That's indeed funny, the limit is present only in the patch and not the full install.
    October 22, 2016, 06:14:58 PM

* Recent Posts

Adding Forums Button to Nav bar by jirapon
[August 01, 2019, 09:07:12 AM]


Re: Board Icons by ♦ Ninja ZX-10RR ♦
[July 30, 2019, 04:03:41 PM]


MOVED: Czech translation???? by ♦ Ninja ZX-10RR ♦
[July 30, 2019, 03:04:51 PM]


Board Icons by jirapon
[July 30, 2019, 07:28:44 AM]


Re: Thankyou Simpleportal, by ♦ Ninja ZX-10RR ♦
[July 29, 2019, 09:41:29 AM]

Installation errors? Mod incompatibilities? Upgrade problems? Make your way over to the Install and Upgrade Support board for all your solutions!

Documentation

Solving Install Problems

SimplePortal, like any other mod, can be installed via SMF's Package Manager. So most problems you run into while installing SimplePortal are related to SMF and its Package Manager. Here are some solutions to some common problems.  Before you begin, please review How to Install modifications to SMF

Install didn't seem to work -- SimplePortal is not there
Most of the time, SMF's package manager does just fine installing SimplePortal, but when it runs into trouble, it can take a while to find the cause. The problem may have to do with file permission settings, with certain quirks of your host server, or with how SMF deals with unexpected file permission difficulties while installing a mod.

File and Directory Permission Problems
One common reason for this kind of "silent" problem is incorrect file permission settings. Please see What is chmod? for more information.  Different hosts have different requirements on file and directory permissions.
Some hosts use suphp, which means that php runs as though it is you, and creates files owned by you. Some of these hosts, like 1and1, will allow you to chmod 777 -- but will then give 500 errors when someone tries to use that file from their web browser. In this case, try chmod 755 for directories, and 644 for files.

Some hosts have set the webserver and php to create files as some other user than you. You need to permit this user to write files in certain parts of the website, if you want to use the package manager, allow attachment uploads, even update your Settings.php file. In this case, 777 for directories and 666 for files may be fine.
 
Sometimes, something goes wrong, and a file or folder in your website belongs to the wrong user. You can always find out who your files belong to. From a command-line FTP client, and from the better GUI FTP clients, you can check who really owns the file or folder. If you used a web-based interface to create the file or folder, the file might wind up being owned by the username that is used to run the webserver, rather than to the account holder. This means that the permissions look ok (755 or 644), but the wrong account has the permission to actually write to the files and directories. Who should the files belong to? That depends on how your host has set things up. If your host is using suphp and the files don't belong to you -- something has gone wrong, and you'll need your host's help to fix the problem.
 
temp Folder problem
Sometimes, the SMF Package Manager seems to have difficulty creating a temporary directory it needs for unpacking the mod's files. The solution to this problem is
1) Create a directory (folder) called temp (all lower-case) in the Packages directory.
2) Chmod the temp directory and your Packages directory to 777, 755, or the most permissive setting your server will allow.
3) Try again. 

FTP Path to SMF
The FTP local path to SMF is a directory path required by the package manager to set file permissions. This is important before many package installations. This path describes how an FTP client can get to the SMF directory. The FTP local path to SMF is shorter than the SMF directory that appears in server settings because the the FTP local path begins at the FTP login directory, while the SMF directory path in server settings begins at the server root. Members of the SMF community also refer to the FTP local path as the FTP path to SMF, the installer FTP path, or the package manager FTP path. The FTP local path is required in the package manager, in File Permissions for SMF 2.x, and in Options in SMF 1.x.

When using FTP to upload SMF files or webinstall.php prior to SMF installation, the administrator uploads these files to the FTP local path to SMF. SMF uses this directory when the administrator selects change file permissions in Installation Options.

For example, at 1&1.com, while the SMF directory set in Server Settings is /homepages/<number>/htdocs/<username>/domain/forum, the FTP/Local path to SMF is simply forum. For more on this subject, please see the SimpleMachines FAQs: What is installer/package manager FTP path?  and How do I use FTP? / What is FTP?

Mod Security
Some users have reported that mod security can interfere with the Package Manager doing its job, even if file permissions and file ownership (chmod and chown) seem to be set properly. In this case, it may be possible to set SecFilterEngine Off in the htaccess file.  If you have questions about this, please talk to your web host.  If they are not familiar with SMF, let them know that  SMF's Package Manager runs as part of the php application SMF, and attempts to edit files, replace files, copy files, and create new directories in order to change how the SMF application runs.


   
 
Some Install Tests Failed
or
SimplePortal doesn't seem to be all there
Sometimes the install just cannot go quite right, usually because SMF cannot figure out how to make the change in one of the files.   Rarely, something unexpected happens in the middle of the install, interrupting it, and leaving the job half done.  In either case, you'll have to figure out which files are affected, and finish the job yourself.

In case an Install Test Fails
This is the easy case.  When you hit the Install button, you are informed of every file that failed the test.  Make a list of these file names.  These are the only ones that should be affected.

In case the install was interrupted
You'll have to figure out the list of affected files yourself.

Manual Install
Fortunately for all admins, simplemachines.org provides a tool to make our lives a bit easier when the Package Manager install doesn't go quite right. This tool reads the install information in the package and displays it in an easy-to-read format.  To use it, go to the mod's page, select the correct version of the mod and of SMF, and press the parse button.


You'll see a complete list of all file edits.  If you've got a list of "failed" files, you only need to check the ones on your list.  If you've got a more confusing situation, you'll need to use this list of files and edits to figure out which files you'll need to alter yourself.

Below File Edits, you'll also see File Operations -- a list of all the files that should be copied from the package zip file into SMF directories.  You can check this list if you don't think you got them all.

And, under Code, you'll see a file that should be run as part of the update process -- often, it makes necessary changes to the database.
 
Making Manual Edits
When you are ready, do the Package Manager install if you haven't already done it.  Don't worry about the failed files.  You've made a list of them, you've figured out how to make the changes, and you are now ready to take care of them by hand.

Find the name of a file.  Look in the box that follows it.  You'll see a series of Find and Replace text. 

 
If the file failed on install, you aren't going to find EXACTLY what's in every one of those Find boxes -- the installer wouldn't have failed if it could have found them.  You will need to find the right place in the file, though.  You ought to be able to find something approximately like the Find text.  Maybe another mod has added something right in the middle of the line, or between two lines.

Now look at the Replace text.  Look for the difference between the two lines. You've got to make that change on top of the already-changed text. It can be tedious and time-consuming, but it doesn't usually require much understanding of programming.


After the Install, I got a 500 error
There are several possible causes for this. One surprising, and simple-to-fix, cause, is bad theme directories. If you have deleted theme directories without deleting the themes within SMF, or if the information, in SMF, about where to find the theme directories is incorrect (as it could be if you copied  the database from another forum), the result could be 500 errors.  Please see this topic for more: http://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/Packages