Want to move from vbulletin questions

[bobs409]

Hello all,

I am in the middle of a nightmare with my current vbulletin forum. Please bear with me, I have to start at the beginning so this makes sense to those reading.

I hung onto version 3.7 since letting my subscription run out about '08. Everything ran great until about a month ago when some of my users reported their Norton virus protection was giving them warnings. I too experienced some odd pop ups asking me to install things from microsoft which of course wasn't from them.

Being a car mechanic and NOT a computer expert, I couldn't find anything wrong so figured perhaps the old version was the culprit and it was time to bite the bullet and upgrade to the latest 4.1.3 version. I forked out the $175 and for the first day, it ran good and all seemed like it was fixed. The next day, the virus warnings came back and the occasional pop ups too even while logging into the admin area.

I was back and forth with vbulletins ticket system who couldn't find the problem. I was also back and forth with my webhosts ticket system who also couldn't help.
Bad as that was, a few days later, I started getting page errors on all the forum pages making many features stop working.

Vbulletin & my webhost could not help fix this problem either.

Could it get worse? Yep! 2 days ago, my forum stopped working all together. All I get is a white screen on ALL pages! See it here: http://www.348-409.com/forum/index.php?

There are no page errors but it only loads 4 lines of html as shown in the view page source.
Since this, vbulletin directed me to a page from their faq about white screens and has not offered any other help saying those are the only causes. I went through each the best I could with no success. My webhost is out of ideas as well.

Now, needless to say, I NEED to get my forum back in operation so here I am looking at purchasing new forum software in hopes
that I can get back to business as usual on my site. I have a few "pre-sales" questions:

1) Do you think switching over to your forum software will work given the current situation mentioned above?
2) If yes to question #1, and it ends up not working, do you offer a full refund in this case? I'm still angry about the $175 I just wasted, I would hate to add another $140 to that loss.
3) It's very important to me that ALL the information & posts with attachments from my old forum stay intact. Is that possible with this changeover and if yes, does it create the individual forums and sections my old board had so this info can be found? (I hope that makes sense)
4) Will the member names/passwords all stay intact?
5) Being a car guy and not a computer wiz, will Xen help me and stick with me until this is up and running. There is nothing
more intimidating & frustrating than getting replies from support with techno mumbo jumbo thrown at me that I am somehow supposed to understand. Would I expect them to know how to rebuild a carburetor for a 58 Chevy? LOL

While I do have many years of vbulletin under my belt (from '03-current) I know a little but I'm far from an expert in these matters. In simple terms, will Xen be gentle? LOL

Thank you for reading my novel. I'm at the end of my rope with these problems and just want some peace in my life!

Bob

 

[Paul B]

Regarding my earlier post about receiving a forbidden message, I understand you have some IP ranges blocked.

This is of course your right but be aware I won't be able to provide support in the future as I am unable to access your site.

 

[bobs409]

More info from my members was posted. Some have had no problems while others have.

Rather than post it all here, please see the post here: http://www.348-409.com/forum/index.php?threads/the-bearer-of-bad-news-bob.18091/

We even have one member say his screen is cut off so he can't even see the posts. (he submitted a screen shot in post above) Not sure if it's related but he said it happened around the same time.

I not only need to fix this but have to find out how it's getting on there so it doesn't keep repeating.

P.S. If anyone can catch the scum that write these virus's, I have the rope and a sturdy tree all ready to go!!!

 

[bobs409]

Regarding my earlier post about receiving a forbidden message, I understand you have some IP ranges blocked.

This is of course your right but be aware I won't be able to provide support in the future as I am unable to access your site.

I'm not sure how your IP is on there but if you can provide it, I can check my block list and remove it if I find it.

Thanks,

Bob

 

[borbole]

More info from my members was posted. Some have had no problems while others have.

Rather than post it all here, please see the post here: http://www.348-409.com/forum/index.php?threads/the-bearer-of-bad-news-bob.18091/

We even have one member say his screen is cut off so he can't even see the posts. (he submitted a screen shot in post above) Not sure if it's related but he said it happened around the same time.

I not only need to fix this but have to find out how it's getting on there so it doesn't keep repeating.

P.S. If anyone can catch the scum that write these virus's, I have the rope and a sturdy tree all ready to go!!!

Can you ask those users who report having virus issues if they all use the same antivirus program?

About finding out how they manage to infect your forum, you should check your forum 's raw access logs. Unless you have root access to the server, you should ask your host to check them and get back at you with their findings so you can patch up the security hole.

 

[bobs409]

I put in a request for the name of the virus programs they are using and will let you know as soon as I find out.

Not sure if this is what you requested but here is a screen shot of the server error log in the Xen admin area:

 

[Paul B]

Are your /data and /internal_data directories (and all sub directories) CHMOD 0777?

 

[bobs409]

I also found raw access logs in cpanel for my site. I downloaded it but it's in a zipped file with an MS-DOS extension. No problem unzipping the file but I'm not advanced enough to know what MS-DOS is. LOL

 

[bobs409]

Are your /data and /internal_data directories (and all sub directories) CHMOD 0777?

Just check and they are both set to 777.

thanks.

 

[whynot]

Just check and they are both set to 777.

Did you set them that way or someone else did it?

 

[bobs409]

They set themselves to that.

Bob

 

[Fufu]

Why do you have IPs blocked?
Maybe remove all blocked IPs temporally and copy the list over to Notepad?
I do not block IPs, due to, dynamic IPs or an existing user might acquire the IP later.

Does the user have ZoneAlarm by chance?

 

[bobs409]

I would just block individual IPs of known spammers as I get them.

 

[Lawrence]

Bob, just an update: I managed to download the file that the link in the thread at your site pointed to.

I uploaded it to virustotal.com to analysis it. Only 7 of the 42 virus checkers reported it, so it looks like a false positive.

http://www.virustotal.com/file-scan...da5eadfbf618d3c1b66bf6632e19afffbc-1305293392

I did some searches on it and the only solutions given to rid of the warning for members was to ensure the virus checkers are updated to the latest definitions.

It was also recommended to keep Java updated.

 

[Paul B]

I would just block individual IPs of known spammers as I get them.

I've had my static IP address for several years and have never visited your site before, or indeed spammed it.

Your policy of blocking IP addresses in this manner is actively restricting traffic to your site and hence limiting its growth.

Anyway, as I said, it's your choice.

 

[bobs409]

Ok, it took quite some time as cpanel only allows 1 delete at a time but I deleted all blocked IP's so you should be able to get in now. I didn't realize these were causing such trouble. I won't bother with them anymore then.

Thanks,

Bob

 

[bobs409]

Looks like Lawrence came to my rescue again.

He got the editor tools working again and as he mentioned above, the virus was a false positive.

I guess all is good again. (for now)

Thanks to all!

Bob

 

[borbole]

Glad to hear that Bob. Enjoy your xenforo forum.