Website fixed (finally!)

[calic0cat]

I think that I finally have my website fixed so that there shouldn't be any more mysteriously missing chapters. *crosses fingers* Hopefully, I haven't screwed anything else up in the process, since I had to set up a temporary site, re-run the upgrade from eFiction 1.1 to eFiction 2 on a backup of my old MySQL database, then export the chapter table data for all of stories that were in the database at that time and replace the faulty table data in the live site with that. *keels over in exhaustion* My head hurts... *whimpers*

Oh well, it was still better than having to manually re-create the database records for missing chapters (which also would have meant combing through the site to find every last one of them first), or reverting the live site to the old backup and re-running the upgrade, then re-uploading all the stories that had been posted since the original upgrade attempt. If anyone notices any more missing chapters or other issues, please let me know. I'll try not to scream too loudly. :P

So, now that I (hopefully) have that fixed, the next item on my to-do list is actually updating the site. *sweatdrops* I have a number of new chapters to be uploaded for guest authors. Hopefully, I'll get that done by the end of the week. *crosses fingers*

And with a little luck, I'll even have the next Kindergarten Heero chapter ready for posting by then, too.

Comments

[rhianne.livejournal.com]

Wow! ::is impressed:: I stand in awe of anyone who can understand the efiction script. I've been trying to install it on my new website for the last few days and not getting anywhere! There's nothing more annoying than things not working *g*

Congrats on the new site! :-)

[calic0cat.livejournal.com]

I haven't been hanging around the eFiction forums lately (no time), but I am on the development team and helped with the 2.0 beta testing, so if you need some help, I should be able to lend a hand. *pops over to the installation forum* Hmm, I see your thread... Have you tried Tammy's suggestion yet? This does look a lot like a server configuration issue. Who's your webhosting company?

[rhianne.livejournal.com]

Ooh! My hosting company is DreamHost. They are having trouble with their MySQL databases at the moment, apparently with hostname generation. *rolls eyes* So I'm hoping that's all that's stopping it from working. But, if once they sort that out it still doesn't work, would you mind if I asked your advice? I'm a serious novice at this, and don't understand most of it I'm afraid!

[sunhawk16.livejournal.com]

Well, most of that went right over my head. Except that little 'Kindergarten Heero' remark. *grin*

[calic0cat.livejournal.com]

I'm using Dreamhost myself, actually. *grin* So, we should be able to figure out what the heck's going on. I don't see anything about MySQL problems in the announcements, so if there's a problem, it must be with a specific server that I don't happen to have a database on and therefore didn't get informed about. I know I've had trouble with creating new MySQL databases in the past - they tended to take a lot longer to become available than it claims. Once the database was there, however, things worked out pretty well.

Take a look in your admin panel under "Goodies" and "MySQL". Is your database listed under "Existing MySQL Databases"? If it is, try accessing it by clicking its name. If you can get into phpMyAdmin for the database, then that confirms that it's up and working.

[calic0cat.livejournal.com]

The important part was that the original upgrade had missed random chapters of stories. Since it was totally random, that meant that everything initially looked okay, so I went ahead and uploaded new stories and had people post new comments, etc. Then I started getting reports from visitors that certain chapters were missing. Guh. I'm not a major MySQL-guru, so it took some experimenting to figure out how the heck to import the missing chapters without having to roll the whole thing back and reupload everything, but I finally got it figured out.

I hope. *crosses fingers*

And, yeah, KH. *coughs* Story endings always give me the most trouble, for some reason, but hopefully I'm finally going to get this beastie wrapped up. I've been alternating between working on something that the muse wants to work on and doggedly slogging my way through KH for literally months now. :P

[sunhawk16.livejournal.com]

I think we've all been in the 'slog' state before. There are days it's worse than pulling teeth. But we love you 'cause you keep on sloggin'. ^^;

[rhianne.livejournal.com]

Hi! Thanks for coming back to me :) Sorry it's taken me a few days to reply, I've been away for the weekend.

Whatever the problem was with Dreamhost, they've got it working again, so I can now access the phpAdmin and the database, but efiction still isn't working, so it's definitely something that I've done wrong.

I've moved the efiction script to a folder within my domain name so that it doesn't get mixed up with other things I'm storing on the site, so I now need to re-install the script and try it again.

If it still doesn't work, (and I'm fairly certain that it won't since I'm soooooo far out of my depth ;-)) I will send you the error messages I'm getting if you don't mind? Any advice you could give me would be very much welcome. Thanks!

[calic0cat.livejournal.com]

One of the simplest things to do is to set it up on a subdomain by itself, which automatically gives it its own folder. That's how I have mine set up - technically, it's at efiction.calic0cat.net and I just have www.calic0cat.net set up to mirror that address. One advantage is that, if I needed to take efiction down for an extended time period, I could turn off the mirroring and put some temporary content up at www.calic0cat.net (or mirror another subdomain with the temporary content) while I worked on efiction.

Tammy's patched a few more things in the script, so you might want to grab a fresh download before re-installing. If it gives you trouble, feel free to ask for help. Worst case scenario, I can clear out one of my testing subdomains and run a clean install, then talk you through it based on that. I upgraded from 1.1 to 2, so the situation was a little different, but I don't recall having any great difficulties when I originally installed 1.1; Dreamhost doesn't have the same sorts of issues that people run into with a lot of other webhosting services.

[rhianne.livejournal.com]

Hiya,

Thanks for helping with this, and it's so nice to know someone else who is running efiction on Dreamhost! *flails*

I've done what you suggested and set up a subdomain just for efiction. My question is, how do I get DreamHost to activate MySQL access for that database? Because I need to have the access name and password to enter into the db_config file, and I have a feeling that's why it's not working because I'm getting MySQL errors appearing in the code.

I did set up a MySQL database, but it's not linked in any way to the subdomain as far as I can see, and I can't see anywhere on the control panel that you would be able to do that. So erm...am I being incredibly clueless? Or does something have to be activated within that subdomain in order to get the passwords etc to work in the db_config file?

[calic0cat.livejournal.com]

If your MySQL database is visible in the control panel, then it's working and should be accessible by efiction. It doesn't need to be linked in any way to the subdomain. The one "catch" to Dreamhost MySQL databases is that they are not accessed as "localhost" - you must use the actual hostname that you used when you set the database up.

For example:

I could have a site at efic.example.net that uses a database named eficdb which is hosted at eficsql.example.net and accessed using an account called eficaccess with the password accesspass. In that case, in dbconfig.php, $dbhost would be eficsql.example.net, $dbuser would be eficaccess, $dbpass would be accesspass, and $dbname would be eficdb.

Verify your dbhost, dbuser, etc. by pointing your browser at the dbhost address. You should get a prompt for a username and password to access phpMyAdmin. Use the dbuser and dbpass to log in. The database name that is shown in phpMyAdmin should match the dbname. Take a look at the database structure (by clicking the + sign beside the database name after you've selected it). If the install worked, there will be a number of tables listed. If there aren't, then the install didn't create the tables.

Other things to check: the permissions on dbconfig.php need to be set to 666. The path to dbconfig.php, as entered in config.php, should match what you would type to change to that directory while logged in to the command prompt through ssh or telnet and in the same directory as config.php. For example, if dbconfig.php is in a folder called data located outside of your efiction installation folder, then the path would be ../data (the ../ means move up one level, the data tells it to move to the data directory from there).

Does any of that help? If not, give me the subdomain address that you've put this at and I'll take a look and see if I can figure out what's up.