Just started getting erorr messages out of the blue... Seems users are getting them to but have not clue where to start looking.

UBB Error We encountered a problem. The reason reported was
Database error only visible to forum administrators
Please click back to return to the previous page.

Try going into phpMyAdmin from your Web host control panel

• click on Databases
• click on the database your forum is using
• go to the very bottom of the page and you should see an option to check all tables.
• Click CHECK ALL and that should place a check mark on all the tables.
• Then once again go to the bottom of the page and select in the dropdown box REPAIR TABLE
• It will then work on repairing them if there is an issue.
• Then go back and run the OPTIMIZE TABLE command

Then try to connect to your forums and see if you're still having the same issue.

You can view the error by editing the libs/mysql.inc.php file and there should be an option "show_errors" and it should tell you to change it from a 0 to a 1 to show all mysql errors; do that then upload the file back.

As for WHY these errors are hidden from non-admins is that it could potentially contain passwords, usernames, etc.

Another good thing is to setup MySQL error logging in the control panel. That way, when users get errors it will log them. You can view these via the CP or if the site isn't working at all, you can FTP into your site and view the errors.