Topic: Desperately in need....but, how do I get help if I cannot post here?

[Myst]

Hello.  I own a web site that was created last March using Simple Portal, though I did not build it myself.  The person who did, had serious health issues and as a result I think that they installed it improperly, and since then they have no ability to continue to do technical work like this of any kind.

I am being told that the reason our entire forum glitched wildly last Oct. and caused our server to crash as well MAY be as we were never told how important it was that we install the upgrades you mention, nor did we know how to install them.  We had a different forum for 6 years earlier that was not Simple Portal.  The person who was our former tech assistant would opt to skip upgrades more often than not, as she did not feel they were  necessary.  Nothing bad ever happened as a result, so this was not a pressing issue for us, or so we thought.

I have no technical skills and I do not speak in techie terms at all well.  We have found a web design company since that will help us on a very limited basis, but with our very limited resources and their time limitations we must use them sparingly.  We are a small not for profit writing oriented web site for entertainment purposes only.

Last Oct. our forum glitched so badly that many of the posts were showing up in the wrong areas of the forum, and others went missing entirely.  Our server thought it was as it had crashed on their end, and yet they could never put it to rights completely as even the backups we did were compromised.  When finally hired outside help they discovered the upgrade issues and thought this MIGHT save us from having to start all over again from scratch.  Although it appeared to have taken, as for months we were in much better shape than we had been, nothing has worked perfectly since. 

They were to begin to work on other issues for us in another week, when I started noticing more glitches again, though nothing as bad as it had been.  People not getting notifications on emails, PMs not being deliverable as the box is said to be full when this is not the case, double posts....but worst of all is when I found an errors section with what must be at least 500 of them, some of which I cannot decipher.  A red warning bar began showing on and off, saying that the server might overload and this was slowing it down so it would not crash, though it is not there today.

Worst of all...we cannot do any backups any longer.  It comes up saying zero bytes!!  When I try to come here for help from you, each time I have tried to post on here it tells me that I cannot, as I did not do the latest upgrades!  I do not know how to do them myself, unless I found Upgrades for Dummies perhaps, but the posts I see here are more specific to one issue thus far, than how to start from scratch.

The tech support that was to start with us again late next week has no time now to assist.  I am afraid to keep posting as I fear the site may crash before they can look at it again, and that with no ability to even do a backup...we will lose everything.  The tech support is not certain...but they are beginning to think that as that last upgrade never took...we do need to completely start over and rebuild.  Even if this is the case...I would like to keep the forum running during the rebuild time, so can you please advise me?

I am sorry for placing this long post in here...it is probably not the right section, but it is the only place where the bar has yet to come up saying that I cannot post at all!  Thank you!       

[ccbtimewiz]

This doesn't sound like a SimplePortal issue at all, or even an SMF issue at that.

You could try asking about this on simplemachines.org, but it may be your server. Information you could provide is a phpinfo() sheet, some examples of the errors, and a link to your site.

[Myst]

Thank you, for your response!  I am not sure that you are correct since this forum here is saying I need to do these upgrades in order to even get help here, and my tech person is saying that they believe it has to do with the upgrades not taking as well, and that we are now so badly compromised with coding errors that we should tear down and start over.  Plus...the listing of them in the find errors area of admin is enormous! 

The good news is that our server host IS going to do a full backup for us on their own through the Vdeck, which we are hoping will save us from the possibilities of a complete crash until I can get further answers to these issues.   

Other opinions would be welcome!

[Nathaniel]

Moved to the english support board.

Those do sound like server issues, although I suppose there could be some problems caused by upgrading SimplePortal.

What versions of SMF and SimplePortal are you running at the moment? What versions were you running previously? Could you please post a link to your website?