I have a forum running 1.1.21 and since a recent server migration I'm getting thousands of php errors due to not having 5.4, and I believe it's causing numerous 504 errors due to the php version incompatibility. I have 5.6.4 but it isn't cutting it.

I have two questions... first...can I upload the extracted upgrade files as a folder, or do they have to uploaded individually, and is there a best place to position them in the forum file structure?

Second...should I consider upgrading in steps, or is it just as likely to work going from 1.1.21 directly to 2.1.4? The server runs AlmaLinux 9, and I have access to all php versions from 5.6.4 up to 8.3.17 if it makes any difference.

I've read countless threads here, and I'll back everything up, both on the server, and on my laptop. I'll also uninstall all mods and delete the files before the upgrade, along with any themes.

TIA

Hi everyone, I am the reluctant administrator for a small, private forum and I could really use some assistance.

Many years ago I set up a basic SMF forum for myself and a few friends. We didn't need anything fancy, just a private community where we could share stories, advice, and pictures. None of us knew what we were doing, so I wound up becoming the host/admin for the site. I have no experience in this sort of thing, but it didn't seem too complicated at the time. I apologize in advance that I will most likely use the wrong terminology in describing the problem, but I hope you understand. 

When I configured the forum, I set the robots file so it wouldn't be crawled and disabled registrations (anyone who wanted to join contacted me and I would create an account for them and forward them the temporary login credentials, which they could change after joining). We figured that would be the best way to protect conversations that were often personal, and that the site would not attract much attention since it's not public (or even particularly interesting).

Each time I saw that a new version of the SMF software was available, I updated it through the admin panel, until we got a point where that was no longer an option - I think it was SMF 1.0.23. To update the software beyond that point required a download and install, and as an utterly inexperienced admin I wasn't sure how to do that without losing our post history and table structure. One of our friends who was a member has passed away, and for sentimental reasons we'd prefer not to lose his posts when we update.

The version we had was working for our needs and none of us were really sure how to do this, so I've procrastinated on addressing this problem for a very long time. The forum experience has deteriorated significantly since then, to the point where any special punctuation (smart quotes, ellipses, en- and em-dashes) or accented characters cause the entire post to be lost when the user submits it. It's frustrating but we've managed to work around this for a while. I would certainly appreciate your advice on how to update to the latest version while retaining the post history.
 
But the thing that really motivated me to join this morning is a concern about potential malicious activity on the site.

When I logged in this morning, I saw an unfamiliar IP address listed under Who's Online. This happens fairly often with web crawlers, but they stop at the login page.

This IP was listed as "Viewing the admin help pages," and that was a red flag. I looked up the IP (213.180.203.164) and started to panic a bit.

I went to log in to the admin panel to put the site into maintenance mode (honestly I don't know if that would have done what I needed it to do - I know I need to dedicate some time to learning to administer the site properly, but I don't even know where to begin and that's a problem for another day) and was prompted for my password as normal. When I clicked in the box to enter it, a message popped up reminding me that the 'connection is not secure. Logins entered here could be compromised.' (I think this is completely normal, but if the site had been compromised I didn't want to compromise it further.)

Instead of continuing, I logged in to my account with my web host and tried to resolve it from there, but I couldn't make heads nor tails of their instructions.   
 
If anyone could advise me what to do from here - how to confirm that private information hasn't been compromised, how to secure the forum from unwanted visitors, and even how to update the forum software properly, I would be incredibly grateful.

Thanks for taking the time to read, and if I can provide any additional information please don't hesitate to ask!

I ran into this problem as well. I can't remember exactly how I got there, but it involved creating two boards in a new section, then trying to reorder them -- I think I tried to make the first board come after the second and they both ended up detached.

I stumbled into a fix: there's a way to make a "Salvage Area" appear with  "Salvaged Topics". Going in  there I was able to move the boards to where I wanted them.

Maybe somebody who's more of an expert can reply with the "how to" for this, for the use of future admins who run into this problem.

Quote from: [Unknown] on November 02, 2004, 12:39:18 AMStrange... it should be theoretically impossible to use the board management interface to cause this error.

Create a new file in Notepad (or similar, not Word or anything though) with the following contents:

Code Select Expand

<?php
include('SSI.php');

db_query("
   UPDATE {$db_prefix}boards
   SET ID_PARENT = 0", __FILE__, __LINE__);

echo 'Fixed, hopefully.';

?>
Save it as "quickfix.php" (note the quotation marks) and upload it to your server, in the same directory as SMF.  Then go to:

hxxp:www.example.com/forum/quickfix.php [nonactive]

After you've used it, please delete the file (because it could theoretically be used again by someone other than yourself.)

Did that help?

-[Unknown]

I tried the above and got an error:

Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Call to undefined function db_query() in /home1/apdamien/public_html/dolcettish/quickfix.php:4 Stack trace: #0 {main} thrown in /home1/apdamien/public_html/dolcettish/quickfix.php on line 4

Maybe the above fix is for an earlier version of SMF?

Hello good day,

I have updated my site to version 2.1.4 but I use Boilerplates for posts a lot, unfortunately it is not compatible with this version, do you know if there is any other mod that is similar or a newer version.