Hi guys, I'm a long time threads user (since UBB Classic) and have never had this problem before. If it's relevant, I switched to my own VPS a month or so ago. I am currently using UBBT version 7.1b5 and I'd rather not go through an upgrade right now to fix this problem, which would be using a big shoe to squash a little bug.
Today I noticed that a subscribe link on my forum pointed to the wrong site (I let people subscribe via PayPal to help with hosting costs). I fixed it in the header.tpl file and uploaded it. The page still displayed with the old link.
I looked at the header.tpl file directly on the server, and it had the correct new code, but loading the page in my browser still showed the old version of the page with the wrong link.
As a test, I deleted the header.tpl file on the remote server to see if it was displaying the page from a cached version somewhere, and my postlist loaded without a header and no CSS formatting (as I would expect it to with the header.tpl file deleted.)
I uploaded the new version again, and then the postlist page displayed with CSS and header showing, but still displaying the old version of the code with the old link.
I discovered I'm having the same problem with altering a template on another threads site I run on my same VPS. No matter what changes I make, it still displays the old code unless I delete the template, then it displays as you'd expect with that template file missing. Re-uploading the new version of the template restores it to showing the page with the template's old version.
It'll sound dumb, make sure you're uploading to the VPS and not the old host; i've made this mistake myself when migrating to a new server. Also be sure the DNS changes reflected to the new server for you as well (perhaps even upload a new file and try to go to it).
It's baffling, because I can look at the file with Fetch/BBEdit (a Mac FTP program & editor, for you Windows people) or even log into the site's cpanel and use that file manager to look at the file, at the code is correct. If I delete the file (header.tpl in this case), the postlist page displays as expected without the header (no CSS and no header links, etc). But no matter what I do in terms of uploading, the file does get uploaded and does contain the new code, but displays in my browser as the old code/page.
To be thorough,
I've cleared my browser cache
Looked at it in different browsers
Looked at the file on the server via different FTP programs (Dreamweaver, Fetch, CPanel's File Manager)
Finally, I've figured this out, after many months of being unable to make any changes to my templates.
The folders /myforuminstall/templates/ and /myforuminstall/templates/compile had permissions set to 755, and the compile folder was full of cached pages. Since my UBBT couldn't write to the /compile folder, it kept using the old cached versions of the pages even after I uploaded or modified the .tpl files.
I set permissions on both to 777, deleted all the cached files, and now all the template changes I made months ago are suddenly there. WHEW!
