Welcome Back To CricketMX!!

[battye]

As most of you know, this site has been down for nearly a week, most of you know why, but some may not, so here it is:

I downloaded the Country Flags modification (mod) hoping to use it on this forum. This mod displayed a small flag to represent your location. Unfortunately, when I installed it it messed some code in the profile and topics. I emailed the host of this domain (jmstacey) to find that he was on holiday for a few days. So I tried to continue myself, which was a big mistake, because I made matters worse . I thought it would fix it if I replaced the screwed up files with fresh copies. I saved the 'profile.php' file to my computer, then got the original one from the phpBB2 zip, and replaced it. Voila! It worked. Did the same on 'viewtopic.php' and it too worked. Sadly I then replaced all the php files in the phpBB folder (not the subfolders luckily). Afterwards, I visited my site, to be welcomed by "This directory does not exist." or some other bull. Yep, I knew it, it was lost... for good. Luckily a few days before I had created a backup file, this was to soon save me, but first I had to jump one more obstacle. Installing phpBB again. Vladds room really helped me. A user named Faery told me everything I needed to know. So I went back to the ftp, and uploaded phpBB again. Went to the install thing, username, password, blah blah blah. Submit. Error message: phpbb_auth_access already exists. Great, what was I to do now? http://www.phpbb.com of course. Right there in the Knowledge Base was the answer. Ok, did that... entered all the info, and it was up... kinda. All people that have been part of the initial stages of a forum know that phpBB automatically makes a Test Forum 1. This was kind of disappointing. I was hoping, along with many other people, that the posts would remain in the database memory. It was not to be though . I went to the administration panel, and selected restore database. I browsed, selected the sql (database) file, and then the message popped up: Successful! The forum will be the same way you left it when you backed up the file. Something along those lines anyway I clicked forum index, and saw Test Forum 1, it didn't work I tried again, same result. I left it a day, I was thinking about it quite a bit when I remembered in the initial setup I changed the table used to phpbb2_ from just phpbb_. This was to resolve the phpbb_auth_access error. I went to the backup sql file, copied it, then pasted it on my desktop. I opened it in Notepad and replaced all phpbb_auth_access with phpbb2_auth_access, I then attempted to restore that. To no avail So I replaced all phpbb_ with phpbb2_. And can you guess the result? What we have now!

So everyone, I'd like to welcome you back to the CricketMX forums and hopefully this forum will reach new highs!!

Only 50 or so posts were lost in the process which isn't bad considering I was about to start from scratch

I'd like to thank those who helped me and supported me while trying to get this thing up again:

Pooh, see, you're always right!
Faery, thanks for all your help with the database etc
Vladd44, your extensive knowledge about phpBB really helped
Boozy, thanks for PMing me so often for updates and other various things
Grinch, for taking such an interest in the progress

Yes, there are many more, to many to name. So thanks

[Layzie Bone (wanabe)]

doing phpBB mods are really for the people who are more nerdy than me, unless you know php, i would stay away from big MODs, like the one that re-does the profile, thats one i wouldnt touch. And when doing a mod, always make a copy of the files you're going to modify and back up the database.

[battye]

Not gonna bother again with mods, they arn't worth it. I'm just gonna stick with themes and languages. Having said that, I need to reinstall all of them again

[moongirl]

Glad to see the little blue floppy disc is alive and well. You had the moongirl worried for a while.

[Grinch]

Happy to see you got things straightened out. Sounded like quite a tedious task. I would have said ***** it and started fresh. My patience runs low when dealing with puter problems. Good luck to ya battye.

[Layzie Bone (wanabe)]

its not that mods are a bad thing, or whether they're worth it or not. The author assumes that we know enough to fix problems, not to mention it doesn't take much to screw one up, i in some cases dont even understand why they mess up, or how they can work without adding tables to the database. Make sure you do have technical assitance next time you want it, and you dont have to reinstall phpBB, but replace the files you modified and remove stuff you added to the database. For learning php, I suggest hanging with vulpes, the index page when you first come to the site im pretty sure was written by him...

[battye]

Yeah, I asked him, he did write it...