CMS Made Simple Forums

Hello good people,

A couple of weeks ago, one of my clients alerted me to the error happening on their website - www.doctorjay.net.  At first, I noticed a bunch of error code lines at the top of the homepage, all referring back to various php files.  When I logged into the admin section, I immediately saw "--Add Me" error all over the login screen (ex.  --Add Me: login, --Add Me: password, --Add Me: submit, etc., etc.).  They were also found all over the admin menu after logging in, most noticeably in the drop-down menu.  Two weeks ago, the CMS version was 1.2 and given that it had been working fine on it for over a year, my first suspicion was a corrupted database somehow.  The server is Linux with Apache and PHP through Earthlink.

Before reverting to a backup of the database, though, I wondered if updating the CMS would help fix some problems.  I've upgraded to 1.6.6 and got similar errors.  I've deleted all the CMS files from the server and started from scratch, uploading the 1.6.6 CMS files and only keeping the config.php the same as before.  Now, my homepage index.php gives the "site down for maintenance" message, and my admin homepage only displays the drop-down menu but nothing below it, so I can't access templates, global settings, or anything else.  

Here's a screenshot of the current drop-down menu with the "--Add Me" error:




Has anyone encountered this problem or have leads of how to solve it?  Any technical specs I'm forgetting about that would in giving feedback?  Thank you so much for your help!!

Rob

Most times Add Me means some lang files are missing or not all the files from a module made it to site...

Thank you for the reply.  I realized that I had previously upgraded to version 1.6, so I went ahead and uploaded the entire collection of CMS files for the latest version 1.6.6.  After doing so, I went to the www.doctorjay.net/install/upgrade.php page and after leaving the language english by default and clicking the initial "submit", it took me to the following URL:

http://www.doctorjay.net/install/upgrad ... siontest=1

At this page, I encountered the following error message at the top of the page:

string(123) "Smarty error: [in upgradeheader.tpl line 25]: syntax error: unrecognized tag 'assign' (Smarty_Compiler.class.php, line 590)"

I also encountered the following error further down the page:

string(117) "Smarty error: [in upgrade1.tpl line 16]: syntax error: unrecognized tag 'cycle' (Smarty_Compiler.class.php, line 590)" string(125) "Smarty error: [in upgrade1.tpl line 23]: [plugin] modifier 'date_format' is not implemented (core.load_plugins.php, line 124)"

I've uploaded a screenshot of the page to my website:

http://fustedesign.com/screenshots/cms_error_doctorjay.png

One other detail:  the only thing that changed on the client's website shortly before it started experiencing errors was that I added a bit of embedded code for a form that signed people up to the client's mailchimp e-newsletter.  Could something in that form have corrupted the CMS and/or database files?

Thanks again for the help!
Rob

I would have kept going after seeing those errors, you should have a DB backup so you could have reverted to it if upgrade didn't work...

Putting a form on the front end shouldn't effect the back end unless it required some fodler/files in the root that overwrote existing ones...

Ok, I've gone ahead and continued the installation upgrade process for v. 1.6.6 and documented each of the seven steps with screenshots, which can be found here:

Step 1:  http://www.fustedesign.com/screenshots/cms_error_step_1.png
Step 2:  http://www.fustedesign.com/screenshots/cms_error_step_2.png
Step 3-7 (all have same error messages):  http://www.fustedesign.com/screenshots/cms_error_step_7.png
Admin Homepage:  http://www.fustedesign.com/screenshots/cms_error_homepage.png
Module Drop-down Menu:  http://www.fustedesign.com/screenshots/cms_error_dropdown_menu.png

In addition, here's a screenshot of the long error messages currently on the live homepage after finishing the upgrade to v. 1.6.6:

http://www.doctorjay.net/index.php

  Unfortunately, this leaves me back at my original problem:  I'm fully CMS upgraded but can't access anything in the CMS admin area, and the "smarty" and "--Add Me" bugs are still sprinkled throughout the live homepage and the admin areas.

I'd be just as happy to restore a database backup version and downgrade to CMSMS 1.2, and see if that would fix things, but I understand that downgrading is not possible since upgrading changes the database tables.

What should I troubleshoot next?    Will a database backup restoration fix the problem, or is all this "smarty" error code related to the CMS and, therefore, will continue to be a problem even with a previous database backup version?

Thank you to anyone that might help!!
Rob

When you upgrade do you see any other warnings like inside the required settings box/list in step 2?...

I would run /install/ but on step 5 WHERE IT ASK FOR DB INFO UNCHECK CREATE TABLES AND INSTALL DEFAULT CONTENT this should install all the core modules and any extra ones you have...

Dr. CSS wrote: When you upgrade do you see any other warnings like inside the required settings box/list in step 2?...

Yes, I do get one warning:
===
You have 8M  Checking max post size
(minimum 2M, recommend 10M or greater)

You will probably not be able to submit (larger) data. Please be aware of this restriction.
Caution ?
===
I don't believe it's a crucial one, and I've done other installs of CMSMS for clients with this warning and it never gave me problems.

Dr. CSS wrote: I would run /install/ but on step 5 WHERE IT ASK FOR DB INFO UNCHECK CREATE TABLES AND INSTALL DEFAULT CONTENT this should install all the core modules and any extra ones you have...

I went ahead and ran /install/ and it took me through the similar steps (with similar smarty error messages), and I unchecked the tables and default content boxes, and now I'm getting a "404 Not Found" error on the homepage (www.doctorjay.net/index.php).  When I access the /admin/ area, this is what I get, which is new to me:

http://fustedesign.com/screenshots/cms_error_updated_admin_homepage.png

I no longer see the "--Add Me" lines anywhere, but the CSS and layout of the admin area is still wacky, and none of the dropdown menu links display anything underneath, except for when I click on "modules" or "tags".  In the modules area, it actually lists a list of modules, and it shows that none of them are installed.  When I manually click on the "install" link next to each of them, it tells me it has successfully installed the module, but it still shows up as uninstalled in the list of modules.

UPDATE:  I noticed that the "users" page was also blank, and therefore, did what I was afraid of:  I since have logged out of the /admin area and now it won't let me log back in, citing an incorrect username or password.

Is any of this helpful?  Thanks for the help!
Rob

I decided to start from scratch and delete all my CMS files, upload a new copy of 1.6.6, and I restored an older backup of the database before the website crashed.  I went through the "new FTP install" steps, except for making sure that I unchecked the "new tables and sample content" boxes.  Everything went smoothly with no "smarty" errors like before, but I now encounter the following two problems:

1.  The main index.php page gives me a 404 error.
2.  I'm not able to login to the admin panel.

When I browse the CMS users table through phpMyAdmin, I am able to see my username, along with the two others with access to the website, still in there.  And I know that the CMS is somehow talking with the database and server, because the new database backup had a different name and when I originally installed this latest version of the CMS, it was first giving me a database connection error, which ceased to exist when I corrected it in the config.php file.

Any ideas of why the brand-new install of 1.6.6 is somehow not "speaking" with the database regarding my username and password?

Thanks for any help!!
Rob

[ SOLVED ] I found why the new CMS 1.6.6 install wouldn't work with the database backup:  It was connecting to the database, but not with the specific tables within the database.  There's one tiny bit of code in the config.php file that I noticed and once I changed the name to the appropriate table prefix, it finally connected and brought up the website again:

#If app needs to coexist with other tables in the same db,
#put a prefix here.  e.g. "cms_"
$config['db_prefix'] = 'cmsmadesimple_';

So the site is finally up and running again!  From start to finish, I wasn't able to get the latest version of my database to behave properly with the new 1.6.6 version, so I uploaded a backed-up version of the database and, with the new 1.6.6, we're in business again.

Thank you Mark for working with me and giving feedback!
Rob