I'm not very PHP-Nuke competent at this point but have been trying to help out a group that has a site at www.kystrel.com. The site currently has a temporary page up with an exit; statement at the beginning of the <php> segment of index.html. I can remove that if someone needs to look at the current state of the index.php page and if looking at it will help someone help me.

Their previous webmaster, a college student working on the site in his spare time had installed a nukemod theme originally and the site worked great. Two fridays ago, he upgraded the theme to a platinum theme 7.6.b.4. I believe he got it from www.nukeplanet.com run by Loki, but that site is no help as it is down now. Something went terribly wrong and nothing has been the same since. I'm not sure if he didn't finish the steps necessary to make the change or what.

Modules that were there before are not there now. He suddenly was using up a 100 mbs more space then was allocated on the server. Graphics on the main page were gone. Users couldn't log in. The message boards could be gotten to through admin pages but none of the posts could access the database so they all came back with SQL errors.

I believe I have located a good backup of the data files from that morning before he started. I'm not so sure if they have a good backup of the database from that same time frame. I came to this site because their is a link on the site that links to nukemods and it said that the theme was from this site.

Can anyone provide me some guidance or point me in the right direction to find good instructions on restoring a php-nuke site from a backup?

You can reach me at glimras@aim.com.

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

Dale

P.S. When I try to open a post from the forums/message board, I get this error.

Could not obtain post/user information.

DEBUG MODE

SQL Error : 1054 Unknown column 'u.user_items' in 'field list'

SELECT u.username, u.user_color_gc, u.user_cash, u.user_id, u.user_items, u.user_privs, u.user_effects, u.user_custitle, u.user_posts, u.user_from, u.user_website, u.user_email, u.user_icq, u.user_aim, u.user_yim, u.user_regdate, u.user_msnm, u.user_viewemail, u.user_rank, u.user_sig, u.user_sig_bbcode_uid, u.user_avatar, u.user_avatar_type, u.user_allowavatar, u.user_allowsmile, u.user_allow_viewonline, u.user_session_time, p.*, pt.post_text, pt.post_subject, pt.bbcode_uid FROM nuke_bbposts p, nuke_users u, nuke_bbposts_text pt WHERE p.topic_id = '346' AND pt.post_id = p.post_id AND u.user_id = p.poster_id ORDER BY p.post_time ASC LIMIT 0, 15

Line : 602
File : viewtopic.php

Any help would be appreciated.

So was the site a nukeplatinum site or was it phpnuke? If it was phpnuke you cannot use platinum themes and vice versa as they are different CMS's.

How can I tell for sure?

All I can tell for sure now is that it the site seems to be upgraded to Nuke Platinum 7.6.b.4 and it doesn't work. I'm not sure that he completed all the steps necessary and it appears that part of his problem was he ran out of space.

From the admin pages:

PHP-Nuke Platinum: Engine Check

Update available: None. Currently running version: 7.6.b.4
Secure connection provided by: Nuke Planet


[ PHP-Nuke Platinum 7.6.b.4 ]

And from the website footer it has the same information but also says the theme was from www.nukemods.com.

I think my best bet is to try and restore the original website and database.

Anyone disagree?

Any tips?

Well it sounds like one of two things:

1. The webmaster attempted to switch from nuke to nuke platinum and failed.
2. A nukeplatinum theme is being used on a phpnuke website or vice versa.

Hopefully you have a working backup so you can restore the site as it was previous to the work being done.

Well I found instructions and scripts to update php-nuke to php-platinum. I also found instructions and scripts to update the php-platinum to the current level of 7.6.b.4.

However there were no logs generated that I could find saying which scripts had been run and their success or failure. Since the previous webmaster is not helping then I appear to be stuck with the mess.

Unfortunately, the backup I found on the site that I thought was pre-update happened to be done two days after the update was attempted. So it doesn't help me much and it appears that there isn't another equivalent backup to be found.

Thanks for all your help. Right now I'm trying to export the data from the packaged message board and see if I can upload it to a new message board that is not so integrated with the php. Both were powered by phpbb so I am hopeful.

I may be back to try a php-nuke theme from your site so that I won't be in the dark in the future. I'm also suggesting a better backup regimen for the site-owners.

Thanks again.

Hopefully you can retrieve most of your data because starting fresh sux, sorry d00d. :?

You may also want to reconsider even using platinum. I know it's feature rich but I know of two webmasters who have been hacked multiple times. One site is now offline for good (which is a shame) while the other webmaster is now considering moving to pn.

I know that platinum comes with many features but it's really not worth it IMHO.

Good luck with whatever you choose to do!

Ken

We've retrieved most of the data and I'm going to try and get the message board data loaded to a separate SQL database so that's it not tied to the rest of the site.

If we use Nuke, it won't be Platinum. I'm going to open a site to install nuke on so that I can learn how to manage the site and make changes in the color schemes, add modules, add content, etc.

A majority of the site is information that isn't updated like a content management site. The message board itself handles most of the daily contributions from members.

Thanks again for your help. When I try to do a nuke site, I may be back for some help.