How to restore SMF and TP?

[sparky33]

This is posted on SMF, TP and Crip board as it is relevent and linked to all three.

Here is the catalogue of events that lead to my forum being totally detroyed, and now weeks of work having to be redone, ok, all the important info is still there, but now I have to rebuild the structure of the forum.

It was installing SMF Links and Gallery that set it all off, they didn't show in admin, just blank spaces where they should have been so I uninstalled, and the blanks remained, ..it then turned out there was an update of dilber that fixed a bug or two..so I tried that...when I installed it I realized it was a fresh theme install, so not "modified" (I thought it would just work as an upgrade) so naturally I thought it would be ok to uninstall it, how wrong, it took out all the modifications and still the gaps remained in admin..so I thought..ok, uninstall and reinstall TP...that was when it all fell appart.

As you can see, I didn't make any errors myself and there were no warnings or failed tests either.

I managed to bring it back, but not as it was.....but there must be an easier way.

I used all the files from the packages back up folder, just chose one from before the problems started, so uploaded and over wrote the originals, that put it all back online, but that was only the half of it.

All the modifications in my non default theme were gone. to be on the safe side, I uninstalled all my modifications to see if there were any file problems, and of course there were, so I've spent 12 hrs checking, and removing code manually, before then re-installing the modifications "cleanly"

Still a couple of problems I can't seem to fix though...I can't uninstall Tiny Portal, at least not without doing it all manually, it takes ages for the status bar to get to half way then I get "page cannot be displayed", I know TP isn't right as I've got 3 sets of TP hide left/right panel buttons. (it was uninstalling TP that actually took the forum completely down in the first place)

The other problem is with my ad management, after the back up files were installed, the ads were showing, but I had no adman' admin , and in packages it was showing as not installed, so I clicked on install thinking it would just fix the error, instead it added the package twice, so I uninstalled, then I added the admin section manually, and it's all working, however packages still gives me the option to install.

Is there anyway to simply restore a forum to a previous date, without all this, you know, similar to windows restore. I wrongly thought that was the idea of the back up in admin on SMF, I thought that was what this was for:

Forum Maintenance - Backup Database
Save the table structure.
Save the table data. (the important stuff.)

[Crip]

sparkee,
----- this is not relevant to the conversion nor support I give here..
...you will need to post this somewhere else for help...not here my man!!

[G6Cad]

Make a test forum, Install a fresh SMF, a Fresh TP and then Fresh of the Arcade and last Fresh Linkmod  (just in that order i wrote now).
And offcourse everything with NO OTHER theme then SMF Default Core. (never EVER install a mod with the forum set to use any other them then SMF Default, thats probably why you ended up with errors in the first place, so you really did do wrong your self )

When you have installed the forum, tp, arcade, linkmod (in this order) and check so you dont have errors, simply take ALL the files and download them to your local PC and when you have done that, REMOVE the settings.php and Settings.bak.php from the files.

Open your forum dir (where you have your live forum)
Start upload all the files and OVERWRITE the old ones there. Refresh and the old DB should fetch all content you made before the crash.
Remember to always use the DEFAULT SMF Core theme as forum default no matter what you change in your forum, all things that are made for the forum as mods, portal, or what ever, are always made with the default theme as base, so if you have any other theme set as your forum theme, you will end up with broken things or even worse, oa totally crashed forum.

[Crip]

Thanks G6

[G6Cad]

Your welcome Crip, i can say that that warmed the fingers up 

[Crip]

i BET IT DID..

[IchBin]

I will split these off and move to TP support.

[sparky33]

Just to add, whenever I install mods, I do it in the default theme, and it was gallery and links, not arcade and links, however, I've rebuilt it all now, and learned a hell of a lot along the way, but thanks for the effort put into the answer.

Crip, I posted here because dilber was a part of the process, this wasn't so much asking for support, just letting you know of the problems I had encountered in case there was any sign of a bug in there.

[sparky33]

Well I still have a bug in the TP, anyone got any ideas, as well as not being able to uninstall it, I've got 3 sets of TP hide left/right panel buttons in default, and in Dilber if I click on the collapse welcome section it collapses the forum header??

[G6Cad]

The only thing for you to do now id to compleatly remove all files exept the settings.php and settings.bak.php

Then upload all new and fresh files from SMF package (leave out the settings files) then refresh the forum and the forum are back to normal.
Posts and other things will still be there as you dont do anything to the DB

Then go ahead with the manual install of TP. Follow the other threads made here about the steps you need to take.