CMS Made Simple Forums

Dear all,

Is anyone available to discover what could be the problem with a website that I try to set up? Here's the story...

It is high time I upgrade a website that I have't paid attention to in a long time. It runs on 1.0.6 Nihau. Before I do that I want to make a backup, a duplicate on my NAS-server (with LAMP), so I can allways fall back may something go wrong.

I can't get the duplicate to run on my NAS. I downloaded the filestructure from the web, to the NAS, and also got the DB accross. I adjusted the config-file and it started to work. But not quite. I can see that the site tries to generate a page, but it doesn't succeed. It produces the template, so the layout, the borders, the footer, some pictures become visible, but NOT any content that should have been produced from the tags like {menu} or {content}. Hence the title of this post: The code that should become visible on those spots in the template simply remains empty.

Example: The template says: The source code of the produced page simply has: When I go into the admin part of the site everything is working! The pages-structure is there, the content, the editor, everything.

On my NAS:
PHP 5.3.3 / Apache 2.0 / MySQL 5.1.49 / Linux 2.6
On the web server, where all works well:
PHP 5.3.3-7+squeeze14 / Apache 2.0 / MySQL 5.1.63 / Linux 2.6

Is there anybody out there who has read enough, to be able to tell what this could be? Thanks in advance.

Regards, Thomas.

PS. I know there is a good chance that when I would crash in the upgrade and I would have to put the backup back out there, it would work well. I mean, why not? But it would give me a more confident feeling if I were to really get the backup going here at home, before I start the upgrade...

CMSMS 1.0.6 is VERY OLD.... and designed and tested on PHP 4 ... it's no surprise that it has problems running on PHP 5.3.

If you have a working version of this site it is best to duplicate the site into a folder on the same server, and then upgrade the duplicate on that server... until it is somewhat more recent.

However... whenever you move a site, you must
a: make sure that the config.php file is correct
b: clear the cache.

That is the last bit of assistance we can give on software that is now 6 years old.

Hi Calguy,

Thank you for your reply. Indeed that is a good idea. I'm going to try just that.

I'm aware of the age of the software. In all honesty, I never dove into the process of upgrading due to two reasons. 1) "If it aint broken don't try to fix it" and 2) upgrading doesn't look as attractive as in for example WordPress. It apreared as something that could actually take some time, and I never got down to doing it.

Soon I will have my first experience.

Thanks once more,
Regards, Thomas.

Make sure you back up, or even better, duplicate your site in a side folder and upgrade it there, as debugging big upgrades can cause major downtime.

And of course duplicate database. Could be interesting to have a database upgraded via cmsms in the test-folder, while that same db is used for the main website.

haha.. I forgot to mention that.

With a system that old I would consider not doing a backup at all but starting from scratch and installing a blank 1.11.5 (current) system and copying and pasting the page content over from old to new. You'll probably find it's quicker and less painful. Of course, this will only work if there are a reasonable amount of pages and not much else to the site in terms of modules etc.

You'd have to make sure your page names are the same (index.php?page=.....) in order to preseve your Google juice when you swap from old to new on the live site.

Thanks Wishbone and Velden. I'd dup the DB indeed.

But... interruption. "Never mind the captcha. Just take the form down." the owner said. So no Captcha... no upgrade... no working backup needed anymore.

I'm gonna not touch it for now. If the the site were to crash tomorrow, I have a bckup that is very close to functional (as mentioned, in the management console, all pages show). And the I would probably apply PaulBaker's solution, to install from scratch and paste all the pages and templates across. (The site is otherwise pretty plain).

Thanks evreybody. Regards.