Topic: Shoutbox not working

[ZJbrandon]

hello all, having problems with the shoutbox, hopefully someone can help.
Everything else in Simple portal seems to be working great, I'm loving it!

I created the shoutbox, then make a Block for it.
No matter where it is placed, top, side, only forum, or on the portal in front page mode, (even on the stock theme Curve) two things happen:

I get occasional glitches in things being drawn, like a side box is stretched too far over and there are elements being drawn twice in the wrong place. Usually refreshing the page will make things go to correct position, but the problem will happen again every now and then.

The other is that the shoutbox itself doesn't seem to function. It's there, but nothing typed in will show. The little refresh icon spins, but that's it.

My Host is 1 & 1, Php 5.6

Now, This may be related, but i don't know.
When I am in the create block for it, if I hit preview, I get this error: see attachment.

[andy]

I'm guessing from here so if someone else has  more experience/better answer - follow it.

I would check the forum database is converted to utf-8 in database under forum maintenance.

If that doesnt help maybe check the languages installed in the forum match what you installed for the portal.
There are shoutbox  problems related to the character set but I think yours in not that.

[ZJbrandon]

thanks, andy.

the forum only has English ISO-8859-1, and I'm not sure where to see the language installed for Simple Portal, looked around, did not see it.

before i convert the DB, i probably better make a backup, and be ready to restore it, which i'm not at this very moment. 

[lurkalot]

thanks, andy.

the forum only has English ISO-8859-1, and I'm not sure where to see the language installed for Simple Portal, looked around, did not see it.

before i convert the DB, i probably better make a backup, and be ready to restore it, which i'm not at this very moment. 

Yes make a backup, that's always wise.  You can check your database tables in phpMyAdmin  via your hosting control panel.  You'll see that some have different collation which is why you are seeing that error.

Noticed a lot of this happening especially if someone originally used a auto installer like Softaculous to install SMF.

Oh, and make the backup from your server control panel and or phpMyAdmin while you're there, please don't use the backup facility in SMF otherwise you might have problems. 

[ZJbrandon]

thank you so much for the help. this SQL stuff is over my head.
I'm very nervous to fiddle with it, haha!
Since this apparently might be what's causing the funky redraws and error, I guess i better trudge on!

Here is a screen of what i see on one section of php myadmin, but to be honest, i really don't know what to do.
is the next step to use SMF to convert DB to UTF-8?
Or make a fix from within the Php myadmin?
my gosh, i'm so lost.

From what i've posted already and this screen, is there any guidance you experts can offer?

[lurkalot]

There's some info here to help you with backing up your database, if it helps http://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/Backup

[emanuele]

Just to add to the confusion: the screenshot shows only the collation of the *database*, your problem is that two *tables* or even two *fields* in (one or) two tables have different collation.

[ZJbrandon]

thanks again, guys.

after I obtain a backup DB through phpmyadmin, what do you advise next?

The above mentioned SMF UTF-8 thing, or some kind of fix through Phpmyadmin?

[emanuele]

Never mess by hands in phpmyadmin unless you know what you are doing.

[ZJbrandon]

yeah, makes me nervous because i definitely don't know what i'm doing in there!

so, just to be clear, so far our best guess to fix this is use SMF to "Convert the database and data to UTF-8", yes?

[andy]

forum database is converted to utf-8 in database under forum maintenance.

There is a utf-8 conversion from the forum in the admin>  maintenance > database section.

Try running that, Im sure it wont do anything bad, but it might not solve the problem of some tables with different collocation. You can download a database backup from there too.

If that does not work (and you have backup) you can go into phpmyadmin and see which tables are different. It is easy to change the whole database to utf8_general_ci.
You can change that under the 'Operation' menu - easy to find. If trouble, empty out the database and import in your backup.

[Chen Zhen]

A tool to adjust collations is located here:
http://web-develop.ca/index.php?topic=32.0

Three versions are available as I found various syntax is needed for some setups.
Start with the first version and if there is an issue/error then uninstall & try the second and/or third.
It will adjust all database collations to be uniform.

[ZJbrandon]

thank you all, the Convert to UTF8 seems to have done the trick, my shoutbox is now functioning!

Thanks to anyone involved in creating and supporting Simple Portal.
Really glad there are folks out there making cool software for free

i have other errors in SMF that I'm pretty sure are unrelated, so i will mark this solved, and go hunt for a fix on that issue.

thanks again!