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

 

[bobs409]

Thanks Lawrence! It took a while but I got it up and running. Still have some tuning to do.

There is a problem however. During the conversion from vb4, my disc space usage has gone overboard! It was roughly around 4000 mbs prior to the conversion but jumped to well over 7000 after! This put my site on lockdown as I was over my limit.

I went in and deleted as many extra files as I could such as the old forum files and even ditched some picture files for the main site temporarily just to get it lowered however I could only get down to 5376mbs. (max is 5000)

Checking the database size shows it went from 1324mbs to 1675mbs. I'm thinking maybe some files got duplicated?

Any ideas on this?

Thanks,

Bob

 

[Paul B]

The search_index table is essentially a duplicate of the post table, which will account for the increase in size.

This is how the search system works in XenForo.

The table types are also different.

 

[Lawrence]

Thanks Lawrence! It took a while but I got it up and running. Still have some tuning to do.

There is a problem however. During the conversion from vb4, my disc space usage has gone overboard! It was roughly around 4000 mbs prior to the conversion but jumped to well over 7000 after! This put my site on lockdown as I was over my limit.

I went in and deleted as many extra files as I could such as the old forum files and even ditched some picture files for the main site temporarily just to get it lowered however I could only get down to 5376mbs. (max is 5000)

Checking the database size shows it went from 1324mbs to 1675mbs. I'm thinking maybe some files got duplicated?

Any ideas on this?

Thanks,

Bob

Hi Bob,

The reason your disk usage went up is due to attachments. XenForo stores attachments in the file system (protected from prying eyes). To reclaim some more space, check for any files that are zipped, or end with sql, download them to your PC (to have a copy), and then delete them. Any files that you made a bu of, e.g. myfilebu.txt, download to your PC and remove those that are BU's to. Also anything stored on your server that you no longer need, BU to your PC and remove those as well. Tedious, I know, but required as you were already approaching your quota.

A better solution is to request more file storage space from your host. Because of the topic of your site, there are going to be a lot of pictures, so this is something you should consider.

The DB is the size as it is because you used the same DB for XenForo. As XenForo uses it's own prefix, it won't interfere with anything, but (why does there always seem to be a but? sheesh), any add-ons you install for your XF, or any other scripts you install that does not use it's own prefix may potentially cause conflicts. Also when you do a DB BU, you will be backing up redundant data (the old vB tables). If you have a BU of your DB, you can remove those vB tables. Just be sure they belong to vB and not any other script that may be using the DB, and you do not use any other script that relies on vB data (ie: one for photo's).

If you need any help, let me know,

 

[James]

As Lawrence pointed out, the best thing to do would be to request more disk space. Even if you do the above, in a couple of thousands posts' time you'll be performing the same tasks.

 

[bobs409]

Thanks guys. I found ALOT of wasted disk space being used on my webmail. I wasn't aware that it was saving all kinds of things since 2004!

I deleted a whole bunch of it so far and I'm now down to 4652mbs. (just a savings of about 2500 mbs so far!) And I have a ways to go yet too.

On another more serious note, I did hear from a member that reported Norton is still saying my website is unsafe! Does anyone know if this is normal from them? Maybe it has to be reset or something?

Other than that, all is going well! The forum looks great and my users are SO happy to have it back! (me too)

Bob

 

[Lawrence]

I just checked your site at Norton's Web Safe site. Before you installed XenForo, Norton reported 7 problems, now it reports 3. The 3 links it reports that lead to a potential computer threat are the old vB links Norton has cached (showthread.php is still in the link, and XF does not use that structure). I can not recall if they expire at Norton after x days has passed or not. If not, you should see a link named Site Owner that you can click and clear your site.

The good news is that we did remove all the links to the computer threats in the posts before your import, if we did not, Norton would have shown the XF links listed with the old vB links. So, regardless of what Norton reports right now, your site is clean.

 

[bobs409]

Thanks again Lawrence. Ya know, I forgot to ask you how these links got in there? Do you think it was a flaw in the old 3.7 VB or did it somehow get in through the server. I just don't want it to happen again.

Bob

 

[Lawrence]

I would guess that a spammer posted one instance of the links. And once the thread was viewed by members the warnings were triggered. I would then say a couple of your members re-posted the links to inform you, and that caused more instances to show up. I seen this happen before. The best thing your members can do in a case like this to to just inform you of it.

If a spammer did not post links, then I would say your server was compromised and your host removed/cleaned any files that were infected. I had this happen to me before and my host denied their server was compromised. But when a few other sites on the same server complained too, then you know they were compromised. In my case I changed hosts, not because they were "hacked", but because they denied being so.

 

[bobs409]

Thank you! My host denied that could happen when I asked. I have my suspiscions on it though.

Well, a few "how do I" posts in some other areas of the forum and I should be all set. I'll certainly NEVER forget the great lengths you went to to help me.

I'll do what I can to steer some customers your way and always put in a good word for you.

Take care,

Bob

 

[bobs409]

Guys, I hate to say this but it looks like my forum may have another virus!

HOW IS THIS HAPPENING?

I haven't had anything happen to me but here are some comments from my users:

At 11:55 AM the following message came up on my AVG anti-virus: Virus Found Win32/H...129.121.200/Home...

I'm not getting any virus messages, but when I opened the site this morning, it was down loading from 123.129.?.? home page

Work computer got a virus that said Windows Recovery.

ok, i was afraid to go back on,but here goes. yesterday i got a real bad virus from here and it said windows recovery. trojan horse,some kinda add ware?? i have 2 virus blockers and spyware and mal ware programs. stilll got through. had my computer guy fix it all and thank god its ok

The only thing out of the ordinary is the tool bar with the B, I, U and smilies, etc is gone for the past 2 days. I can only assume that the two are related.

I checked my site on Norton safe site and it's showing good. Last time that's the one that had the warnings.

Any suggestions on where to look? I tried re-uploading the upgrade files but it didn't help. I searched the database for the IP mentioned above and nothing.

This is really starting to annoy me!

 

[borbole]

Can you post the link to your forum?

Did you ask your host to check their logs and see what has happened?

 

[bobs409]

Sorry, here it is: http://www.348-409.com/forum/index.php

I think I better have a little talk with my webhost. Going there now...

 

[Paul B]

I'm getting a forbidden message when I try to access the URL.

 

[Lawrence]

Bob, I can't find anything wrong with your site. No warnings, everything loads quickly.

What page were your users who reported a virus viewing? home page, forum index page, thread list?

 

[borbole]

Sorry, here it is: http://www.348-409.com/forum/index.php

I think I better have a little talk with my webhost. Going there now...

Same thing here too. I load your forum normally without getting any virus warnings. Let us know what your host will say.

 

[bobs409]

I heard back from my webhost and they will look into it but need a screen shot of the message. For now, they are scanning all the files again. I haven't actually seen the virus warning myself so will try to get one of my members to get a shot of it or more details next time it happens.

If I get that, I'll post it here and also send it to my webhost. I'll find out what page(s) it happened on too.

Thanks guys,

Bob

 

[Lawrence]

Bob, would you mind if I joined your forum to look at the missing smilies? I believe it is an unrelated issue.

 

[borbole]

I heard back from my webhost and they will look into it but need a screen shot of the message. For now, they are scanning all the files again. I haven't actually seen the virus warning myself so will try to get one of my members to get a shot of it or more details next time it happens.

If I get that, I'll post it here and also send it to my webhost. I'll find out what page(s) it happened on too.

Thanks guys,

Bob

Maybe it was on that user 's end. Sometime antiviruses give false alarms. Do you have cp? If you do, there is an option in there to scan your server space for antiviruses. You might want to give that a try as well.

 

[bobs409]

Not at all Lawrence. I turned off the "manual approval" I normally do so feel free to sign up, it should go through. I won't be online much longer tonight so will talk tomorrow if you need anything else.

Thanks,

Bob

 

[SchmitzIT]

Just checked the main page of your site and saw no errors or warnings. Checked with both FF and IE, and clicked through a few pages, but did not see anything odd.

As suggested, try and pinpoint a specific page, profile, etc. I'd gladly verify whether it throws alerts for me as well.